War Tour

After War had been recorded, but three months before it was released, U2 began playing the Pre-War Tour: 20 shows, and a television appearance, in halls in Western Europe, commencing on 1 December 1982 in Glasgow and finishing in the band's home town, Dublin, on 24 December. in May 1983 On 26 February 1983 at Caird Hall in Dundee, Scotland, the War Tour proper began, with the album's release coming two days later. The band played 29 shows and three television appearances in Scotland, England, and Wales, ending on 3 April with a single continental show at the Printemps de Bourges in Bourges, France. Three or four additional songs from War were added to these set lists, including "Two Hearts Beat As One", and the band started their 1980's practice of ending shows with the War song "40". The next leg went to North America for 48 shows and two radio appearances, beginning on 23 April in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and ending on 26 June at the Hudson River Park Pier 84 facility in New York City. The War Tour was U2's first as a full-time headlining act. Most of the venues were colleges and smaller auditoriums, but they played a few arena shows, such as at the Centrum in Worcester, Massachusetts and at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. Many of the shows featured the Welsh band The Alarm as the opening act. During this tour, they appeared before one of the largest audiences in US music history: on Memorial Day at the US Festival in San Bernardino, California, they appeared at noontime on the third day of the festival before a crowd of over 125,000. The festival was broadcast live on MTV. The performance climaxed in a grand finale where Bono scaled the proscenium of the US festival's huge stage while singing the song "The Electric Co.", ending up about 100 feet above the ground. , near the end of the War Tour on 21 August 1983 A week later, their 5 June 1983 performance at Red Rocks Amphitheatre (an outdoor venue near Morrison, Colorado in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains that many travelling musicians consider the most spectacular outdoor venue in the United States) was recorded for what turned out to be a live album entitled Under a Blood Red Sky and concert film entitled Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky. Frequently shown on MTV, the video helped to further expand the band's American audience and rewarded the large financial risk the show had represented. U2 then played at 5 outdoor summer festivals in Western Europe in July and August. After a nearly three-month interlude, U2 played a show in Honolulu, Hawaii, before their first tour of Japan for six shows, with the tour ending on 30 November 1983 at the Nakano Sun Plaza in Tokyo. While in Japan, U2 made two television appearances, one of which featured a performance of "New Year's Day" in which Edge performed almost entirely on piano due to a guitar failure. ==Shows and reception==

In both UK and US publicity for the tour, the group emphasised that it opposed "wallpaper music" from artists who spent more time on their hairdos than anything else. In the US, advertisements for the tour read "U2 Declare War" and talked about "The War on Boring Music", especially in the context of breaking up conservative radio formats. Older songs such as "Gloria" and "11 O'Clock Tick Tock" were kept in the set list. "40"'s show-closing, thoughtful presence – wherein The Edge and bassist Adam Clayton swapped instruments, then three band members left one by one leaving only drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. – grew into an audience participation ritual that would continue even after the band had left the stage. Initial British critical reaction to the first leg of the War Tour was favourable but with some reservations. The group was already well known there, and while War debuted at the top of the UK albums chart, it had encountered some early backlash, with NME saying "the great personal fury" of U2's early work had been replaced by "literal but sincere sloganeering". Sounds magazine said a Birmingham show had pacing and thematic problems due to "newer numbers clumsily breaking the mood that had earlier been created" but praised many other elements of the show, saying that "their skill at breaking down barriers between band and audience has never been better." U2's exciting concerts The New York Times John Rockwell wrote that: "This is a great live band. Bono is a riveting public personality, leaping and crawling all over the stage and above it into the scaffolding." The Boston Globe wrote that the group's performance "reached a rare, wondrous zone – where rock 'n' roll transcended the ordinary and took the audience on a lift that was equal parts spiritual and sensual." It said that Bono's vocals "sound like pleas and prayers, the lyrics failure and hope" and described The Edge's guitar playing as embodying "clear, ringing lines that were both atmospheric and jarring." The Village Voice wrote that U2 in concert evoked an "undeniable righteousness" about which "U2 was thrilled [and] their audience was thrilled". Tickets were in demand in the US, spurred by word-of-mouth and the breakthrough of "New Year's Day" as a hit single there. At the same time, the band had to deal with larger-scale success for the first time, with more of a distance between themselves and their audience and with the audience itself changing in nature. The group was being mobbed by fans at some locations and Bono became a sex symbol to female fans. ==Themes and legacy==

The War Tour was the first U2 tour on which the lighting and stage design was done by Willie Williams, who would continue to perform that role in all of U2's subsequent tours. While originally hired for just lighting, Williams quickly became involved in all aspects of the group's visual presentation. The white flags were also sometimes handed off the stage, where they would be passed around amongst the audience. Bono said that his "limited voice" compelled him to search for other ways to express a song's meaning, and here this was the "idea of a flag drained of all colour, the idea of surrender." This became the focal image of the tour, The move upward from clubs to halls to arenas that the War Tour spanned did not faze the group. This had been their plan, and Bono said, "If we stay in small clubs, we'll develop small minds, and then we'll start making small music." And early on, Bono had told Williams that someday the group would do "Pink Floyd-size shows." ==Tour dates==