DAVID BOWIE
The colourful cast of David Bowie’s 1971 reconvene – Rick Wakeman, Woody Woodmansey, George Underwood, Dana Gillespie and Tony Defries – to fathom the miraculous career-reviving coup that was Hunky Dory. “My God! This could actually be huge!”
tracks of three to four minutes. Once CBS heard it, they couldn’t get their heads around who might buy it: a 96-minute record without obvious singles, which didn’t fit in 1977, where disco was king, and punk was the revolution.
GO: In the studio, we all had punk names. The ones I can remember are, I was Snot Gobber, Phil Lynott was Slim Chunder, and Jeff, being the boss, had to have the most extreme alias, so he was Cunt Asshole. What a wonderful bunch of guys, like Barry Morgan, Herbie Flowers and Chris Spedding.
Chris Spedding: We were the equivalent of the Wrecking Crew. Jeff knew how all his favourite session musicians played, so all he had to do was count us in. He knew what he wanted, a contemporary ’70s sound rather than something that fitted with H.G. Wells. We took it seriously too. This wasn’t just some sci-fi romp. Not with Richard Burton involved. I knew Jeff was capable of a major opus, which it turned out to be.
JW: CBS eventually got their heads around it. A year later, we had a press launch at the London Planetarium, with a laser show, and we could see the reaction. Forever Autumn came out before the album.
GO: Forever Autumn bubbled under the Top 30 for a while, but it was increasingly losing radio play. Then Top Of The Pops called. They had a union rule: that the orchestra had to be used once a show, and no Top 30 song could accommodate an orchestra that week. Forever Autumn was the highest candidate, at Number 46. If another candidate had been 45, Forever Autumn might never have reached the Top 30. It ended up at Number 5 [in August 1978] and made a huge difference to the album’s initial success.
JH: Forever Autumn was the greatest gift, because I can go anywhere in the world and people know it. I’ve heard that it’s popular at funerals, just like Nights In White Satin is popular at weddings.
JW: The album [released June 9, 1978] charted for 330 consecutive weeks, and has bounced in and out over the years. It’s currently sold about 16 million copies. Rather than being rejected during disco and punk, it found a place. We couldn’t have staged The War Of The Worlds in the ’70s, but arenas, and particularly technology, have grown, so in 2006 it became a multimedia show, with The Journalist rendered in 3D and giant Martian fighting machines.
Herbie Flowers: To see an orchestra of 40 on-stage, and a 10-piece band, and Jeff on his podium in the middle, and a giant screen with shots of space and machines and a big picture of Richard Burton, and effects like flames, it’s ridiculous. But when you add it all up, it was like a Mendelssohn piano concerto, impossible in theory but in practice, gigantic genius. The oddest things are often the most interesting.
JW: We toured for about six years before I thought of the New
Generation version [Liam Neeson as the Journalist, roles for Gary Barlow and Ricky Wilson], and to extend the story after I saw what played well to a live audience. With Richard [Burton] and Phil [Lynott] long gone, it was a natural breaking point.
CT: The last time I did the show, at Wembley Arena [in December 2010], at the end I walked past Jeff’s dressing room and heard him discussing the idea of the New Generation, and heard myself getting sacked! I was pretty disappointed with that. So was Justin. We both thought, Fuck man, someone else is singing our songs when we’re still alive! They even got rid of Richard Burton.
JW: The Martians, with all their superior machinery and weaponry, hadn’t anticipated human bacteria – with a sneeze, they were wiped out. Who’d have known that, over a hundred years later, we’d face an epic pandemic along the same lines? The forthcoming tour is titled Life Begins Again, after the song I introduced on the 2014 tour. It’s relevant to both The War of The Worlds, and to the real world.
DE: Whenever it comes around again, I laugh and think, There goes Jeff again. But people love it.
Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version Of The War Of The Worlds: The Life Begins Again Tour opens in March 2022.