Most of the late-1988 UK number ones currently under discussion at Popular are awful, but one stands out, for me at least. Other commenters gave it an average mark of 4 out of 10, but then most of them don’t care for this band at all...
U2, “Desire”, 8 October 1988
In mid-1988 I bought my first CD player and CDs, which made Rattle and Hum one of the first I ever owned. What great value it seemed, 72 minutes for a single album price... until I actually listened to it. Soon it became clear that the live material was inferior to that of Under a Blood Red Sky and half the studio tracks were also sub-par. For someone who still hadn’t completely warmed to The Joshua Tree, I was wondering if my teenage U2 fandom was nearing its end. Maybe Under a Blood Red Sky, Boy, and odds and sods from The Joshua Tree, War and The Unforgettable Fire were the full extent of it.
I aired this ambivalence in my last issue as editor of our university student mag, giving it an all-too-predictable title (I Still Haven’t etc.) and describing U2 as “just not a band that I can devote myself to wholeheartedly” and the album itself as an “uncohesive jumble”. Out of its nine studio tracks, I spent most of the review talking about “God Part II”: the song chimed perfectly with my obsession that year with John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and in hindsight showed the way forward for U2, its sound a stepping stone to Achtung Baby.
Of all the reviews I wrote for the mag in 1986-88, this was the only one I felt worth posting to my site when I was first building it a decade ago; the only review that still sounded the right notes after a decade of 1990s alternative rock and Britpop (not to mention Achtung Baby). In 2000, I saw no reason to add a footnoted caveat to my 1988 opinion that “Desire” was “a brilliant song, punchy, catchy, and complete in under three minutes—the perfect single”; and in 2010, after a decade of so-so U2 albums, so-so Bono antics, and so, so many disparaging remarks about U2 in the comments threads of Popular... I still don’t.
There’s something about the opening of “Desire” that gets me every time: the strummed announcement of the Edge’s jangling guitars, Bono’s “yeah”, and the establishment of the rhythm in that first 12 or 13 seconds are among my favourite rock-song openings. And to my mind, the rest of the song delivers: once it shows you what it’s got it doesn’t go anywhere unexpected, but it does the necessary and then it’s over, wham, bam, thank you ma’am. “Desire” is a red-light district of a song, a quick turn of tricks, for love or money, money, money. From a band that already had a reputation for preachiness and worthiness, it was an effective rebranding, even if the rest of Rattle and Hum failed to follow through. The follow-through had to wait.
Reading some of the criticisms here, the attacks on its lyrics feel nit-picky: okay, there’s a cliche or two, but so what? Not every song has to be a sonnet. The point of “Desire” was surely never its lyrics but its mood. Its whole three minutes are effectively a vehicle for a single word, and it’s an effective word.
But then, I feel I’ve been here before...
After the November 1988 issue of our mag hit the refectory tables, I expected that would be that; this was before every student paper had a website where letters to the editor could turn into never-ending comments threads, and nobody bothered to write actual letters when there was no hope of publication before the summer break. But shortly afterwards I was surprised to find a letter slipped under the office door—three or four pages of hand-written analysis of my U2 review, taking issue with it. Or some of it. Actually, very little of it—the writer agreed with my overall view of the album, and agreed about most of its songs, but vehemently disagreed about two: “Heartland” and “God Part II”. The first I had dismissed as a sub-Unforgettable Fire warble, while my critic adored it; the second she didn’t rate at all, and figured I must be a “boring political-type person” to have admired it. Well, I was studying political science, so she may have had a point; but as I would have said if I’d been able to reply (she gave no return address), the lyrics weren’t the main attraction of “God Part II” for me, or the problem with “Heartland” come to that: it was their sound. Most of the time I don’t give a toss what Bono is singing; what makes (or breaks) his performances is how he sings it.
Same with “Desire”. I was 20 in 1988, and Bo Diddley beats meant diddly to me, but I knew a solid foundation when I heard it, and I heard it here. Twenty-two years later, never having got around to exploring the Diddley back-catalogue, I still get what I need from those opening bars and this tight three minutes. Rattle and Hum would get a three or four from me at best, and few of its tracks would do much better, but “Desire” gets an 8.
Later comments, synthesized:
There seems to be a lot of concern about this song's lack of authenticity. Their reasons for recording it seem honest enough to me—a half-live double album of roots rock was hardly the obvious commercial path in 1988—but surely it shouldn't matter one way or another? Wouldn't that be the authentic postmodern stance? Personally, the one positive I see in the Rattle and Hum project (apart from one or two tracks) is that the dead-end of authenticity led U2 to that postmodern stance, and to their best work. Bad luck for everyone who wrote them off and missed it.
U2 were reasonably attuned to the 1988 zeitgeist. Unfortunately, the 1988 zeitgeist was largely rubbish, or so it felt to me at the time (with exceptions, as always). The largely rubbish Rattle and Hum captured that beautifully. 1980s culture in general still hadn’t caught up with academic postmodernism; even many corners of academia still hadn’t. I encountered pomo as late as 1991 as a postgrad, which was par for the course for anyone who wasn’t a French philosopher or an architect, so am not surprised that an Irish rock band were on a similar curve. Which is not to say that there weren’t other pop artists ahead of them (not to mention, um, Pop Artists).
It’s worth noting that some of the things that made 1988 a great time in UK music didn’t filter down to me. Like many Aussie males, I was stuck in a Rolling Stone mindset at the time, which was pretty unhelpful: umpteen roundups of the Best Albums of All Time, interviews with aging ’60s and ’70s stars, etc. All useful catching-up for a twenty-year-old, but it blinded me to some of the Now. And the Now that filtered through—top ten hits, “next big thing” albums like Appetite for Destruction, pre-grunge Australian indie—didn’t do much for me.
Imagine a 1988-90 minus acid house and Madchester and you have the Australian rock fan’s zeitgeist, more or less. No second summer of love there. “In the 1988-1991 national Drug Household Surveys, only 1-2% of the [Australian] population had ever tried [ecstasy]”, and all that that implies.
Even in the UK, not everyone was dropping E’s and raving in a field. The interesting thing about “Desire” is that it tapped into a global mood, not a loved-up local one. Was there a regional effect at work? Were U2 bigger in Irish-heavy cities like Liverpool than in London and surrounds? They were certainly big in my region: “Desire” was number one in Australia too, for two weeks at the end of October on the Australian Music Report charts and three on ARIA’s.
Bonus latest-album thumbnail review:
Despite being a big fan of “Get on Your Boots”, I didn’t give No Line on the Horizon much time when it came out, but returning to it a year later found a lot to enjoy—certainly more than in How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Its main drawbacks are Bono’s aging vocals, which aren’t what they were (not his fault, of course), and some of the lyrics, which are noticeably naff enough to annoy even a lyrics-agnostic like myself. It’s quite refreshing to hear a U2 album which is a lot better than its chart performance would suggest; makes a change from albums that were the opposite.
See the original thread for more of my comments on Big Country, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Stone Roses, ecstasy, and, um, Tin Machine.
24 July 2010