Sometimes when the great works of rock become too familiar from years of perpetual listening you need to hear the songs afresh to get a new angle, see new hues, hear new sounds, pick up new thoughts. Sometimes it is the artist who obliges by releasing demos, different mixes or new live arrangements. The Twentieth Anniversary remasters of Achtung Baby in its deluxe box and uber box versions might allow U2 to do just that but before those boxes hit the recession with pre recession prices Q magazine provides the rock fan with a variety of services. Firstly a free cover CD worth listening to is a huge surprise; I usually keep them in the cellophane until I need the box. And... secondly a re-listen to an epic album is what you get from an array of big names doing specially commissioned versions of those great songs!
It is a remarkable album that you can’t believe is available free with a magazine. If it is not sacrilegious the only wasted track is the U2 remix of Even Better Than The Real Thing; simply because it is too familiar in the midst of a bombardment of stimulus. Damien Rice gives One his beautiful ambient songwriter brooding; Snow Patrol bring space and electronic atmosphere to Mysterious Ways; Patti Smith has all the wild drama to take on the Judas and Jesus story of Until The End Of The World; The Killers make another hint at being the natural successors to the U2 crown with a typically clean Ultra Violet; and Jack White simply reshapes Love Is Blindness with a broken hearted riffed out rock rawness of pain. Elsewhere Trying To Throw Your Arms Around the World gives The Fray their best recording to date and if Gavin Friday sounds a little bit like U2 on The Fly it is because Bono was trying to sound like Gavin Friday in the original version way back when!
I spoke at the outset about the chance in new recordings to hear songs afresh. What struck me in these new settings was how much this album really was about Edge’s first marriage breaking up. It would have to be remembered that Bono and his wife Ali were not isolated bystanders in that break up. Indeed neither was the rest of the band. This was a very closely bonded bunch of friends and Aislinn would have been part of their lives for years and as Edge lost her so did they all. The study of love, the secret’s of it working and the pain of it breaking down is here for all to hear. For Edge, a man of very high spiritual and moral values and very focused on doing the right things in work and life, this must have been a very dark night of the soul and his lyric writing buddy catches that darkness in these songs. The line that most caught the eye of my soul on listening to this version was from that Snow Patrol version of Mysterious Ways perhaps because it gets such room to breathe; “One day you will look... back/And you'll see... where/You were held... By this love....” If Achtung Baby and the nineties were about what U2 didn’t believe, as the eighties were about what they did, what they believed was never absent and this line suggests a pastoral care of a line from Bono to Edge that the Bigger Love is watching and caring as the earthly one in this case fails.
U2’s Blood On The Tracks revisited. It wasn’t just the sound and the incredible reinvention of a band that should be considered at this time of anniversary reminiscence. Thanks to Q and these artists we are reminded of how good are the songs. Go straight to the local petrol station/corner shop/newsagent and buy... NOW!
Interesting comment about U2's "Blood on the tracks." Another parallel struck me:
"Maybe someday you’ll see that it’s true
There was no greater love than what I had for you"
and
"Maybe someday when you’re by yourself alone
You’ll know the love that I had for you was never my own."
From 1986...
Posted by: The Slicer | 28/10/2011 at 10:34 AM