U2 Brings Experience Innocence to New Yorks Madison Square Garden It was the strength of the live material featured both on screen and throughout the soundtrack that helped make this cynical young music fan so annoyed by those Joshua Tree singles on heavy, heavy pop radio rotation throughout 1987-88 a true believer.

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Those were the first words uttered by Bono in the 1988 U2 rockumentary Rattle and Hum before the band ignited a sold-out McNichols Sports Arena in Denver with a rendition of Helter Skelter so electric Manson himself mightve felt its vibes through the walls of San Quentin.

Thirty years later, Manson is dirt in the ground and Helter Skelter is 12 minutes long on the 50th anniversary edition of The White Album coming out this November.

Yet the critical disdain for both the Rattle and Hum film and its chart-topping soundtrack remains the same as it ever was.

Upon the release of the Jimmy Iovine-produced album (Oct.

Oct. 27), Rattle and Hum was met with largely complacent and downright hostile reviews.

Artist Mentioned U2 By almost any rock roll fans standards, U2s Rattle and Hum is an awful record, wrote Tom Carson in The Village Voice.

But the chasm between what it thinks it is and the half-baked overweening reality doesnt sound attributable to pretension so much as monumental know-nothingness.

In The New York Times, Jon Pareles accused the band of trying to grab every mantle in the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame before scowling what comes across in song after song is sincere egomania.

This is a mess with a mission, wrote David Fricke in his year-end review of Rattle in the Dec.

Rolling Stone.

U2s 25 Best Songs: Critics Picks For most of the naysayers, it wasnt so much the actual music that got their collective goat as it was the way the band portrayed themselves to filmmaker Phil Joanou, who was only 26 when he directed Rattle and Hum (it was his second feature film behind the 1987 high school black comedy Three OClock High ).

In between performances, however, were scenes of the group traversing through American cities crucial to the fabric of rock n rolls history.

They went to San Francisco to play the Save the Yuppies concert in Justin Herman Plaza, where they dazzled the impromptu crowd with a version of All Along the Watchtower which served as the perfect middle ground between Bob Dylan s original and Jimis fiery takeover of the song.

They visited Harlem, where they cut a gospel version of their Billboard Hot 100 No.

I Still Havent Found What Im Looking For with the New Voices of Freedom choir and caught the renowned street blues duo Satan and Adam busking on 125th St.

They also recorded When Love Comes to Town at Sun, a song that helped many young U2 fans find their way to the catalog of the songs soulful co-captain B.B.

King and such blues classics as Live at the Regal and Indianola, Mississippi Seeds.

But for a 14-year-old in 1988 in the first weeks of his freshman year of high school, Rattle and Hum -- both the film and its soundtrack -- proved to be an eye-opening introduction to music beyond my narrow scope of MTV and rock radio at the time.

It was the first time I ever heard about A Love Supreme or experienced the string arrangements of Van Dyke Parks, who along with Benmont Tench on pump organ, provided the sweep of heartbreak that imbues the album and films closing number All I Want Is You, still very much considered U2s greatest ballad.

I never truly, honestly felt the shimmy of the Bo Diddley beat before I listened to Desire, a song that earns the distinct honor of being the first single to simultaneously top the mainstream and modern rock Billboard charts (and scored the group a Grammy in 1989).

God Part II gave me a deeper appreciation for the solo work of John Lennon, particularly Plastic Ono Band, whose key track God U2 were responding to as Bono defends John and Yoko by taking a shot at controversial biographer Albert Goldman with the line -- I dont believe in Goldman, his type like a curseInstant karmas gonna get him, if I dont get him first.

The atmospheric beauty of Heartland -- featuring Brian Eno on keyboards -- was a perfect gateway to the more esoteric moments on The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree, especially for someone who went into the Rattle and Hum experience as something of a U2 skeptic.

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