Yesterday it was the WAR's 30th Anniversary the album that turned U2 into a committed band with a message, thanks to singles like"Sunday, Bloody Sunday" or "New Year`s Day".
After an album on relatively naive feelings of adolescence (Boy, 1980) and another one more spiritual themed (October, 1981), U2 reflected their adult rage in War (1983), the first album with songs openly themed about politics. The album was characterised by the aggressive militant pacifist, the military boots, white flags, martial rhythms.
1-War is an album that tried to reflect in its title concisely the tense atmosphere of the early eighties, with wars in various parts of the world (Middle East, the Falklands ...) But the war is not only an act of violence, but also an internal fight being waged within each. Always looking for peace as the only possible ending
2- Bono wrote good part of the lyrics during his honeymoon in the mansion of the owner of Island Records, Chris Blackwell, in Jamaica, _called unpretentiously 'Goldeneye' (it formerly had belonged to Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond). It is significant that someone writes songs for a record called War during their honeymoon, but the singer and his wife Ali are on their way to their 31st anniversary...
3 -While Bono, Larry and Adam were on holiday, The Edge was in charge of the first musical sketches in Dublin, frustrated by not feeling a good enough composer. In this struggle against himself emerged the preliminary ideas that will later become "New years' day" and models of "Sunday Bloody Sunday", "Seconds" and "Drowning man".
4 The sound of the album is deliberately more abrupt, harsh, angry, with less effect on Edge`s guitars . There will be be time later to create atmospheres, this is rock battle line in their beloved The Clash`s style, but always with the epic heroism inherent to U2 from their first steps.
5 -The force of Sunday bloody Sunday resides mainly in the martial drums that Larry Mullen plays, who has acknowledged that what he learned during his years in the Post Office Workers Band playing military marches is reflected in the song. By the way, it was in the recording sessions of this album when the drummer began using the click track to schedule his rhythms in the studio, something that before he felt reluctant limiting and uncreative.
6 -With the theme of Sunday bloody Sunday U2 played a wild card, because in the British Isles it is not exactly comfortable talking about the issue of violence in Northern Ireland. The song refers to the Irish independence demonstration in Derry on 30 January 1972 that killed 14 people. The first time they played it in Belfast, Bono previously warned of its subject and said that if they did not like they would not play it anymore. The reaction could not be more positive.
7- The bass line of New Year's Day is one of the most famous one in rock music and, as usual, it came almost by accident. In fact, Adam Clayton has admitted that it all started when he was trying to play Visage's techno pop success "Fade to Grey". The more trained ears certainly would find similarities, never denied by the band.
8- New Year's Day began as a love song for Bono's wife, but eventually it won the political background shaping the history of the Solidarity Movement in Poland led by Lech Walesa against the communist regime. Bono has stated on several occasions that he thought on Walesa who had been imprisoned without the possibility of being visited by his wife because of the Martial Law. Once the song was recorded, on December 30, 1982 the military government outlawed martial law in Poland, almost in New Year, making real that of "I will be with you again" even before the album was released.
9- The first promotional video for the album was for New Year's Day, hot topic in advance. It was recorded in northern Sweden in the snowy, icy countryside. Bono was unable to lip synch as his lips were frozen . Somehow this brings even a more epic detail the outcome.
10- In the album credits Steve Wickham appears as violinist in Sunday bloody Sunday and Drowning man. The involvement of this young man (who was just twenty years oled) could not be more casual: he just went to The Edge while he was waiting at a bus stop to go to Windmill Lane recording studios and asked if he was the guitarist for U2. Three days after Wickham spent half a day in the studio playing with the band and leaving his mark on those songs forever.
11- Another more or less random collaboration was the Coconuts, choir girls of Kid Creole & The Coconuts. The New Yorkers met with Irish lads in a party in Dublin and ended up participating in Like a Song, Surrender and Red Light.
12 Bono's stay in Jamaica was prolific , but back in the Irish capital he could not go back to that creativity. While remembering those months he always stresses that his new-wife Ali had to get him out of bed and practically forced him to write. Under pressure somehow Bono finally began to feel comfortable as a lyricist.
13- Next to the policts implied in New Year's Day and Sunday Bloody Sunday , there was also space in War for other topics. For example, love in another powerful composition of the album, which was the second official single in the U.S., UK and Australia, Two Hearts Beat As One (Sunday Bloody Sunday was in the Netherlands and Germany). Other themes include prostitution (Red light), the reaffirmation as punk rock band Like a Song, warning about a hypothetical nuclear war in Seconds, the religiosity of Drowning man ...
14 Bono, The Edge and Larry finished the last song on the album, 40, just when they were running out of time engaged in the study while the next band, Minor Detail, was waiting to enter . Desperate after a sleepless night, they took up an idea that stripped of all complexity and Bono opened the Bible to meet face to face with Psalm 40. In 40 minutes everything was perfect, thanks to the effectiveness of producer Steve Lilywhite, who mixed it in a hurry.
15- War was U2's first number one in the UK, a position which debuted in its first week, ousting no less than the almighty Michael Jackson's Thriller. In the United States it had to settle for 12th place, and was generally quite well received in all markets, albeit with disparate positions. In its original version cassette tapes bearing the entire disc with 43 minutes in each of its two sides.
16- The boy on the cover is Peter Rowen, the youngest brother of one of Bono's best friends since adolescence , Guggi. Peter had starred in the cover of Boy (1980), and War presents a more disgruntled face, as if he had grown too fast in a short time, leaving the innocence along the way. Earlier, in 1979 Rowen appeared on the cover of U2 single-Three. Also in 1983 his image appeared again in the maxi single for New Year's Day and on the compilation The Best of 1980-1990 years later, becoming a symbolic face for fans of U2.
17- Before hats, giant screens and sunglasses, Bono waving a white flag in the War Tour concerts of 1983 is the first major iconic image of the history of U2. So much so that even a famous namesake fanzine published in Spain in the eighties, at that time without internet and social networking was called White Flag.
18 War is a key work in U2's career. It opened the doors of massive success and carried a handful of timeless classics. Sunday Bloody Sunday and New Year's Day in fourth and fifth place in the history list of the songs that U2 has performed live more full times (apart from 'snippets') with 751 and 698 respectively. Just behind I will follow, Pride and Where the streets have no name.
19 An extension of what U2 did in the study was the direct War Under a Blood Red Sky (recorded at different locations) and the legendary concert in the auditorium at Red Rocks (Colorado) on June 5, 1983, a concert for which the band had invested previously everything they had earned, about $ 30,000, with the intention to register it on video. A terrible storm was about to send it all to hell, but the group took the stage ignoring those who wanted to persuade them to quit. The mix of combat rock and inclement weather resulted in a context concert infernal battler. U2 still cemented their legend as tireless fighters.
20-For years, 40 was a perfect closure for the gigs , very chanted by the audience. A stadium anthem repeating like a mantra that "How long to sing this song?" Seeking explanations in a world inexplicable. The foundations of the Bernabeu still tremble to remember that moment in that first U2 concert in Spain on July 15, 1987 along with UB40 and The Pretenders. There is no other possible way to finish this memory of the album which marked the end of innocence for Irish education: 40 at Red Rocks.
David Gallardo
translation: mysteriousways©
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