Show’s had devoted following since 1971
MICHAEL COVENEY AT THE BIRTH OF HIT MUSICAL
AFTER their initial success with an early, 20-minute version of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in 1968, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice were taken up by producer David Land.
He gave them a weekly wage of £20 each, and an office, and encouraged them to write anything at all – not about the Bible; he’d had enough religion already.
So, of course, they wrote Jesus Christ Superstar.. Superstar was first conceived as a stage show but entered the world as a double album.
That recording featured some of the best rock musicians of the day. Murray Head was Judas, Ian Gillan of Deep Purple was an affecting Jesus, his voice a pickled, rasping gurgle, and Mike d’Abo of Manfred Mann sang King Herod’s camp “challenge” number (“Prove to me that you’re no fool, walk across my swimming pool”).
The gloriously gifted Madeline Bell sang in support and the role of Mary Magdalene was taken by 19-year-old Hawaian Yvonne Elliman, whom Lloyd Webber had found singing Blowing in the Wind for £5 a night plus drinks in a club along London’s King’s Road.
The music had tremendous energy which, blending with Rice’s cynical, quizzical lyrics, never stood still for a minute. Lloyd Webber’s taste for unusual time signatures made a stunning debut in Mary’s Everything’s Alright, a number that bowls along, five syncopated beats in a bar, like an undulating hillside or gentle wave. And, of course, there was I Don’t Know How to Love Him with its Mendelssohn quotation. One critic made comparisons with the fierce, Eastern European modernist composers Ligeti and Penderecki. Another invoked Greig and Prokofiev. When Dmitri Shostakovich, arguably the greatest composer of the 20th century, came to London shortly before he died in 1975 to attend the British premiere of his Fifteenth Symphony, he asked to go and see a performance of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Palace Theatre. He was so impressed that he watched it again the following night.
It was the subject matter as much as the music that caused the stir that followed the album’s release. In 1966, John Lennon declared that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, and there was even a short time when it seemed possible he might take the lead in the stage version of Superstar.
In February 1971 – as the album hit the top spot in the US charts – Rice and Lloyd Webber, with David Land, went to New York to discuss strategies. The producer Robert
Stigwood, put out a concert version, like a rock and roll tour.
The first performance was given to an audience of 12,000 people in Pittsburgh in July 1971. After a four week tour visiting 19 cities, it was raining money, and by September a second tour was on its way. There followed a college tour. And then Stigwood licensed performances all over the world.
Finally, on October 12, 1971, Rice and Lloyd Webber made their Broadway debuts when Superstar was produced at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on 51st Street. Director Tom O’Horgan had been brought in with the brief of “theatricalising” an oratorio. Everyone learned the hard way, and too late, that this was an unnecessary approach. Huge angels swung about on psychedelic wings across shimmering, surreal sets with laser beams, smoke and wind machines. There were dancing dwarfs and lepers and a crucifixion scene set on a dazzling golden triangle.
Still, it was instantly a landmark in musical theatre history. The theatre was picketed by the National Secular Society with leaflets dubbing the show “Jesus Christ Supersham” and one irate nun carrying a banner declaring, “I am a Bride of Christ, not Mrs Superstar!”
Lloyd Webber’s first reaction to the Broadway production was to return to basics, strip away the veneer and insist on an austere London production more suited to the rawness and simplicity of the work itself. To this end, the Australian director Jim Sharman was recruited to do the opposite of Tom O’Horgan’s extravaganza, and the uncluttered production which opened at the Palace Theatre on
August 9, 1972 was an instant hit. It became the longest-running musical in West End history, overtaking Lionel Bart’s Oliver! with its 2,620th performance on October 3, 1978 and closing in 1980 after playing for 3,358 performances.
The London cast included another sand-blasted voice in Stephen Tate’s Judas, a sympathetic and good-looking Jesus in Paul Nicholas, the huge and lustrous Dana Gillespie as Mary Magdalene and Paul Jabara as Herod.
The chorus of unknowns included Floella Benjamin, Diane Langton, Elaine Paige and Richard O’Brien, later renowned for writing The Rocky Horror Show.
The show has now outlived its own notoriety and has witnessed many revivals.
Jesus Christ Superstar is at Birmingham Hippodrome from April 22–27.