War

Written by U2 and recorded at Windmill Lane over autumn 1982, with Steve Lillywhite producing and Paul Thomas engineering. Bono worked on lyrics during his August 1982 honeymoon in Jamaica. New Year's Day began as a love song for his wife and was reshaped around the Solidarity movement in Poland. The Edge wrote the riff and a rough lyric for Sunday Bloody Sunday in 1982 while he was depressed, and Steve Wickham's electric violin was added in half a day.

Mullen resisted a click track until the drummer Andy Newmark persuaded him to try one. The closing track, 40, was recorded in the last hours of the sessions, after Clayton had gone home. The Edge played both guitar and bass, and the lyric comes from Psalm 40. Bill Whelan produced The Refugee.

Chart and reception

War entered at number one in the United Kingdom, displacing Thriller, and stayed on the chart for 148 weeks. In the United States it entered at 91 and peaked at 12, becoming the band's first gold record there. About 11 million copies have been sold.

Robert Christgau of the Village Voice wrote that the "deadly European virus" tainting the band was their characteristic melodic device. Dave Marsh called it as good as any post-new wave rock around. Gavin Martin of the NME was negative, calling it another example of rock's impotence and decay, while Liam Mackey of Hot Press saw a major leap forward in concept and technique. The album placed sixth in the Village Voice critics' poll for 1983.

Singles and tour

New Year's Day came out as the lead single in January 1983, reached the UK top ten and was the band's first release on the Billboard Hot 100. In March 1983 Two Hearts Beat as One was released in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, where it reached 18 in the UK, and Sunday Bloody Sunday came out in Germany and the Netherlands, where it reached 3. Forty was issued only as a promotional single in Germany. Seconds is about nuclear proliferation and samples the 1982 documentary Soldier Girls, and the Edge sings its first two stanzas. Like a Song... was aimed at critics who thought the band too worthy and not punk enough, and was played live only once. Drowning Man was never performed live. In live versions of 40, Clayton plays guitar and the Edge plays bass. The boy on the cover is Peter Rowen, who also appears on Boy and Three.

The Pre-War Tour began on 1 December 1982, and the War Tour proper ran from 26 February to 30 November 1983 for 110 shows in Europe, the United States and Japan. The band played the US Festival on Memorial Day weekend to 125,000 people, and Bono waving a white flag during Sunday Bloody Sunday became the tour's image. The Red Rocks concert on 5 June 1983 was held on a rain-soaked evening.