Jeff Wayne's musical version of War of the Worlds

[august]

I'm surprised we apparently never discussed this here. I'm posting it under "tv" since there is a video of a live stage performance that I caught on tv this past weekend - PBS was airing as part of their fund raising/pledge drive programming. You know, mainstream, accessible programming like live all-star performances of Les Mis and Phantom, highlights from the last 25 years or Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame ceremonies, the Fleetwood Mac and Eagles reunion tours, etc. that they only show once per year while claiming "support us to see quality programmig like this!"

At any rate, anyone familiar with this? I actually bought this on vinyl when I was in college, and had listened to it on the radio when it came out a few years earlier. It was a "concept album," the type popular in the 70's especially among British art-rockers, produced by Jeff Wayne, an Alan Parsons-like studio producer guy and composer who recruited an all-star cast to sing and speak the H.G. Wells story, which he transferred into a rock opera (or rock musical, anyway.) Richard Burton narrated, and people like Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues, David Essex, Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy and Chris Thompson of Manfred Mann's Earth Band sang. A lot of people thought the Moody Blues did the whole thing, since it does sound a bit like them, morphed with Alan Parsons and Andrew Loyd Weber. It was and is one of my favotire albums - Hayward had the one hit single, "Forever Autumn" (which most people think is called "For You're Not Here.")

Anyway, as detailed here it eventually became a multi-media stage show a few years ago, and that's the version that was filmed and is now out on dvd.

REALLY well done, with many of the original session musicians, plus Hayward and Thompson still sounding good 30 years later. A creepy hologram recreates Richard Burton though, still using his narration.

"The chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one, he said....
The chances of anything coming from Mars
Are a million to one...
But still they come...."

[Bern]

Heh. Wow, that sounds pretty cool. I`d be interested in seeing that. Never heard of the album before, but it sounds like something a person I know would have known about. I`ll have to ask him. I should have watched PBS this past week/weekend.

[august]

Here's Justin Hayward:

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And here's Chris Thompson:

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[EDSEL_PK]

This is cool.

For a minute, I thought they were gonna do it llike 'Wset Side Story', with Martians and Earthers marching down the street singing 'Tonight, Tonight'".

I think the Moody Blues song was on the soundtrack for the 'War of the Worlds' TV series.