WAR OF THE WORLDS
How The Album That Ate The ’70s began with a Lego ad, how Slim Chunder played his part, and how its current incarnation is bittersweet for some.
In 1978, JEFF WAYNE’s musical version of H.G. Wells’ sci-fi classic from 1898 was a surprise monster hit. Yet his enduring audio-dramatisation of Mars invading the Earth was arrived at via adverts for bacon and gin, calls to Richard Burton, ’orrible punk nicknames, some handy luck with the Musicians’ Union and incomprehension from his record label. Forty-three years on, it refuses to go gently. “People were calling me bonkers,” says Wayne, “but it was the only book that moved me enough.”
Jeff Wayne: In 1969, my dad [Jerry]’s production company staged a West End musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities, and he asked me to write the score. I was classically trained and had played in bands but I thought dad was bonkers because he could get any top composer. A TV director loved the score and hired me for a commercial for the Cheese Marketing Board, which won an award and led to lots more work.
Gary Osborne: Jingles now are mostly someone with a ukulele or whistling, but back then, it was the cream of singers, like Madeline Bell or Doris Troy, proper tunes and musicians.
JW: I approached every jingle as if it was destined to be a Number 1 single. Gordon’s Gin [later covered by The Human League] is mine, but if I’m known for just one ad, it’s the Esso Tiger [first used in 1975].
GO: Myself and Paul Vigrass were singers who Jeff hired for sessions: that’s us singing about Danish bacon (sings “‘Da-a-nish Bacon, the great taste comes up fresh every ti-ime’” ) and McDougalls flour. David Essex sang the Pledge and Younger’s Tartan beer ads.
JW: I never saw myself as only writing for advertising. I started producing albums, for Vigrass & Osborne and David Essex, who I’d met through [gospel-based musical] Godspell. My father reminded me that I’d always wanted to find a story to turn into a musical. 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, Brave New World and Day Of The Triffids were discussed, but the only book that moved me enough was H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds.
David Essex: I thought a musical War Of The Worlds was a great idea. Anything that panicked America, as Orson Welles had in his radio version, must be interesting.
JW: It was a great story with a great vision, an alien invasion from Mars with underlying themes of faith, hope and love. Wells was taking a pop at the expanding British Empire, and he felt any invasion was wrong. I wanted to stay as true as possible to H.G.’s characters, places and themes, unlike previous adaptations. My stepmother, Doreen, was a journalist and author, who wrote a script that I wrote the score around. I never saw The War Of The Worlds as a rock opera, or prog rock, it was the story that motivated me.
GO: Jeff asked me to write the lyrics. When I drove from my house in Hampstead to Jeff’s office or to the studio [Advision, in Fitzrovia], I’d pass what had been H.G. Wells’s home in Primrose Hill, where the Martians eventually meet their nemesis, which added a spooky vibe. I can still visualise dying Martian machines and crows picking on the innards of people.
JW: The one pure acting role was The Journalist, a survivor of the 1898 Martian invasion telling the story in 1904 for his newspaper. I needed a voice that would instantly transport the listener into our world. I had a wish list of one: Richard Burton. But would he remotely consider it?
I got lucky, because friends had seen Richard on Broadway doing [Peter Shaffer’s play] Equus. I got a letter sent to the stage door, and I got a call after, on Richard’s behalf: “Count him in, dear boy!” the guy said.
DE: I played the Artilleryman, a wide-eyed dreamer who thinks mankind can start again, living underground. I had a scene with Richard Burton, so we flew to LA where he was filming. Eventually the great man turned up. Jeff had timed the musical edits for us but Richard said,
“I don’t want to hear any of that music, I want to record this wild,” which was strange, but he was formidably charismatic and I sounded like Mickey Mouse alongside him.
JW: The Journalist travels through the story, coming across a range of characters caught up in this horrific invasion, who were played by singers. I knew David, of course, and Julie [Covington] from Godspell too, who played Beth, the wife of the priest, Parson Nathaniel. He believes Martians are the devil, whilst Beth reminds him about faith, hope and love. The priest was going to be played by Paul Rodgers [Free], who recorded his vocals but he wouldn’t come back to do the acting part. I asked Phil Lynott [Thin Lizzy] instead, who also had an extraordinary voice.
“WE TOOK IT SERIOUSLY. THIS WASN’T JUST SOME SCI-FI ROMP.” Chris Spedding
GO: Jeff is meticulous, and everything had to be as good as he could hear it in his head, or better. It didn’t leave much room for artists to put themselves into the song. The only exception was Phil Lynott. Jeff told him, “These are the notes,” but I said, “Jeff, that’s not the way Phil sings.” So we had to accommodate him.
Chris Thompson: I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to have worked with Jeff but he was a hard taskmaster. “Move that note a little longer… it needs to move more with the rhythm.” I was really happy with the end result, then Jeff said, come back tomorrow and double-track it, which was even harder! But the end result [Thunderchild] blew me away, as did the whole record, how the music and words captured the dynamics of the story, right from the opening orchestral riff
– (sings duh-duh-duuuh!) – down to Jeff having Ken Freeman [synths] build a machine to make the sound of the Martians.
Justin Hayward: I had a call, asking if I was the guy who sang Nights In White Satin: I guess Jeff wanted that same plaintive feel. He sent over a demo of Forever Autumn.
JW: I’d done a Lego ad that became very popular. People wrote in, asking if it was a record they could buy, which it wasn’t until Vigrass & Osborne wrote lyrics and it became Forever Autumn. There was a moment in the score from a story point of view, when the wife of The Journalist is missing, and it was as if Forever Autumn had been written for it.
JH: I wondered who would be interested in such a project, and to this day, I don’t know if I was right for the sung thoughts of Richard Burton. I just knew Jeff was creating something really substantial, and when I heard Phil Lynott was involved, I knew it would have huge credibility. Jeff later asked me to sing Eve Of The War that, even more than Forever Autumn, became the key track because they kept reprising the melody.
GO: Jeff lifted the two lines in Eve Of The War out of H.G. Wells’ book – “The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, he said/ But still they come.” I ended up writing three new lyrics – Spirit Of Man, Brave New World and Thunderchild, though two of the tracks were 11 and 12 minutes long, and dense with words, and complicated situations.
JW: People were calling me bonkers because they couldn’t figure out what I was making, namely a continuous work rather than individual