The War of the Worlds: Alive on Stage
Jeff Wayne Interview

By Richard Lewis 20/11/2010

One of the most enduring adaptations of H.G. Wells’ groundbreaking work, Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds has toured as a stage show since 2006. The original album the production is based on was a huge international hit upon its release in 1978, going on to clock up worldwide sales of fifteen million. Prior to playing the Liverpool Echo Arena on 17th December, Nerve met up with Jeff for an interview.

The staging of the Musical Version of The War of the Worlds is a colossal affair. Thirty-five foot high tripods, an eleven-foot high holographic Richard Burton as the narrator of the story, myriad special effects and pyrotechnics, all backed with a one-hundred foot wide by twenty-five foot high screen that broadcasts a CGI-animated film. Whilst the action onscreen is synchronized with the performers onstage, the original album is recreated by a ten-piece group, The Black Smoke Band and a forty eight-piece string section, the UlladubUlla strings. Jeff Wayne takes “the best seat in the house” as he describes it to conduct both, reprising his role from the initial project when he and his father Jerry pulled the mass of material together. Whilst the parts onstage are sung as if in a traditional musical, the presence of the band, orchestra, screens and models has led to the combined effect being described as one of the biggest multi-media productions ever mounted.

Given this is the fourth consecutive year that The War of the Worlds: Alive on Stage has toured, is he surprised at how long the project has endured? “Yeah, it’s had a remarkable life” Jeff nods. “Like the album there were no predictions for it, it didn’t fit into any format of the day when I first composed and produced it. When the opportunity came along all those years later to create a multimedia combination of technological and live performances in one event and I was asked ‘Who do you think will come and see it?’ all I could say is ‘I’m not sure’. I had to presume if we sold any tickets it would be people who know the album from the original time it was released, but it’s turned out from the very first show it pretty much crosses all age groups and all musical tastes,”

“Originally it was only going to be one show at the Royal Albert Hall”, Jeff continues. “It sold out in about two hours and the box office said they had enough demand for ten or eleven dates. It was at that point the promoter said if you can take this from more of a concert rendition, we could probably book you into a few of the major arenas of Britain if you can add physical elements that would make it a true arena experience.”

Reportedly one of the most expensive albums ever recorded upon its debut in 1978, The War of the Worlds (cover, pictured) has provided source material for DJs Orbital and Todd Terry, and spun off two top ten singles in the form of The Eve of War and Forever Autumn. Steven Spielberg has declared himself a fan and the LP partially inspired him to mount his own reworking of the story in his 2005 blockbuster. Co-songwriter and band leader for David Essex in the mid 1970s, collaborating on one of his biggest hits, Rock On, Jeff settled into a life of scoring music for TV commercials. His father Jerry reminded him however that the two had loosely agreed to work on a big project at an unspecified time in the future. Deciding to adapt a novel in musical form, they set about trying to find a suitable contender. After delving through several works, they settled on H.G. Wells’ 1898 classic.

A highly varied cast was assembled for the album, including the aforementioned Essex, Moody Blues’ lead singer Justin Haywood and legendary Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott. Haywood - who sang the LP’s hit single Forever Autumn - is also present on the current tour, reprising his original role. Accompanying him is Chris Spedding, a contender for the post of Rolling Stones’ lead guitarist in 1974 and responsible for much of the guitar work on the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks. Along with bassist Herbie Flowers, writer of the bassline on Walk on the Wild Side, these luminaries and a host of others including Manfred Mann singer Paul Thompson formed the band that was used for the entire project.

Whilst Jeff looked after the musical side of the project, his father handled the singing and spoken roles. A highly successful Broadway performer, he guided the musicians and actors through the adapted screenplay supplied by his wife and Jeff’s mum Doreen. David Essex was swiftly signed up as The Artilleryman and the team set about filling the other roles. Although Paul Rogers of Free and Bad Company fame was initially considered to play Parson Nathaniel on the album, he was reluctant to take on the speaking part that was crucial to the character. Despite his lack of acting experience Phil Lynott was recruited to the role and was able to handle both duties.

One of the toughest tasks was the casting of the journalist who narrates the story (George Herbert in the original novel, an inversion of Wells’ initials). The part went to highly revered stage and screen actor Richard Burton (pictured), the choice Jeff and Jerry had made initially. As Jeff explains, “We had a draft script with all the characters identified and a small list of people who could be our Journalist, the second you heard their voice took you into our world of The War of the Worlds and Richard Burton’s name was right at the very top.”

Securing the services of the legendary actor turned out to be surprisingly easy. “Some good fortune occurred when we had a friend who had just come back from New York who had just seen Richard in a play called Equs” Jeff says. “I thought ‘Well, if you’re in a play you’re probably doing about eight shows a week, spending a lot of time this one theatre, so I found out the name of the theatre, wrote him a letter to introduce myself, explaining what I wanted to do and sent him that and a draft copy of the script. I sent it to the stage door of the theatre, which was the real bit of good luck, rather than sending it to his manager or an agent. I hoped that the stage door man would hand him my package and sure enough, two or three days later I got a call from his manager saying Richard loved the idea. His exact words were ‘Count him in dear boy.’” Although Burton had acquired a reputation as a hellraiser, with lurid tales of his womanizing and drinking habits in the press, the actor completed his parts for the project in a single day, having originally been booked in for four.

Given that Richard Burton’s voice is such an integral part of the album, how important is it to have the visual representation of Richard Burton on the screen? Those who know the album know that he is the main character who travels all the way through and he had this gorgeous voice”, Jeff says. “We were so fortunate to attract him to be on The War of the Worlds that when we started touring there was no question that we wanted to have his voice represented, beyond that was the question whether we could do anything visually. He passed away in 1984, we never filmed him and we did bring back a technological performance, so he’s there in sight and sound. He’s technological, so he’s always in the right place but the live performers singing and acting suddenly have to interact with this holographic performance, so they’re the ones with the tougher job. Because they’re doing it all live, they’ve got to be in the right place at the right time when it’s his turn to speak to them and them to him.”

Keeping the story faithful to Welles’ original was hugely important to Jeff and Jerry. Unlike Orson Welles’ 1938 radio production which terrified American listeners - some going as far as shooting at water towers they thought were Tripods - the Musical Version stays true to its Victorian origins. “I fell in love with this Victorian tale”, Jeff says. “I could never see it as a modernized tale set in America because the essence is lost.” Respected visual artist John Pasche was brought on board as art director for the project, overseeing the paintings in the original LP booklet and supplying the distinctive Victoriana typeface of the logo. Designer of the Rolling Stones’ instantly recognizable lolling ‘tongue’ logo, the stage show retains the look and feel of the work done by Pasche and his team, including of course the highly memorable tripod designs.

The surprise success of Forever Autumn helped to publicize the album on its release, a song with an unusual genesis. The track’s origins date from Jeff’s time as a composer of advertising jingles, starting life as a melody from a Lego advert. “I arranged it as a sort of Simon and Garfunkel acoustic tune and it was one of those things that sometimes happens where the public write in and say ‘What’s that piece of music?’ We knew it was connecting in some way, so I said ‘What about extending this? It’s just an eight bar introduction, but it’s clearly resonated’ and that’s how Forever Autumn was created.”

Aside from the huge record sales, the album won two prestigious Ivor Novello awards in the UK and picked up the award for Best Recording in Science Fiction and Fantasy in the US. The accolade is highly notable considering three of the judging panel that year included film directors George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Alfred Hitchcock. “You know I never received the award!” Jeff laughs when asked how he felt about the achievement. “I received a letter from Walter Yetnikof (combative CBS Records chairman) in New York which said, ‘Dear Jeff, this is to let you know you’ve won this amazing award, congratulations.’ ‘Where’s the award?’ I’m looking round to see if the letter is attached to a box. So I actually called him, ‘Walter, thank you for the letter, that’s amazing, particularly considering who the judges were. Did you send the award?’ And he said ‘No, I’ve got it here in my office in New York!’ I never saw it, I got the letter but he never gave me the award. It was pretty difficult to argue with the man that he was, particularly in his heyday.”

Given that Steven Spielberg admired the album, what did you think when you heard he was making his own version of The War of the Worlds? “I have a letter from Steven Spielberg, actually to my dad” Jeff states. “Probably a year or two after the award, he knew the album and it said, ‘Dear Jerry, Jeff’s album should be made into a feature film, unfortunately I’m not available at the moment as I’ve got a few movies lined up.’ His next movie was E.T.; we published the letter in the (2005) Collector’s Edition booklet of the album.”

Leading on from Spielberg’s endorsement, The Musical Version of The War of the Worlds came out at a time when science fiction was becoming a popular cinema genre again after a fallow period in the 1960s and early 1970s. “When the album came out, there was suddenly a rediscovery of the science fiction genre with films like Close Encounters, Star Wars, the first Star Trek movie, all these things that were happening in media. It was just good fortune again, where I was in the right place at the right time as a genre”, Jeff states.

Fortuitously, Spielberg’s film came out as the remastered edition of the album hit the shelves in 2005. Jeff recalls being asked in several interviews at the time what he thought of the director’s version. “Wherever I was to promote the album the movie had either just come and I had missed it by a week or I was in front of it by about a week and I was forever being asked what did I think of it and I hadn’t seen it yet!” Jeff states incredulously.

Whilst H.G. Wells’ socialist principles led to him writing and speaking extensively on the subject, Jerry Wayne’s similar political beliefs led to much unwanted attention from the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). A fundraising concert Wayne Senior performed at for persecuted singer Paul Robeson attracted the attention of HUAC and he was singled out as a ‘Communist’ by Senator Joseph McCarthy, the leader of the witch-hunts of the 1950s. Persecuted by McCarthy and others, Jerry left America for England to continue his career on the West End Stage. “He was blacklisted during the McCarthy period” Jeff nods. “He was a very popular entertainer and a large part of his career just disappeared because of it. I guess you would call him a socialist in the simplest form; he did concert work that supported certain causes. He was one of several who were singled out and McCarthy was on the rise and that was one of the reasons that we moved to England. He had had three number one records in America, he did theatre, TV, radio, he was a very well-established artist.”

The allegorical depths to Wells’ work appealed to both Jerry and Jeff. “One of the things that me and my Father liked was that Wells’ created these Martians with their tentacles, what he was doing was a social comment, criticizing the expanding Victorian Empire. In his view, even if it’s your own nation which is invading another, if your expansionism is at the hands of somebody else who is suffering, it’s wrong.” In addition to this (then) unfashionable belief, many of the elements used in the stage show such as the pyrotechnics, down to the presence of the Tripods themselves is a tribute to the far-sightedness of Wells’ writing. “Wells’ science was so good,” Jeff nods. “He created a weapon called ‘black smoke’, which is basically chemical warfare and the heat ray. The weapon the Martians bring is a laser gun.” These themes of expansionism and warfare resonate strongly in the current climate, which may explain why The War of the Worlds has endured so well to the present day.

Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds: Alive on Stage plays at the Liverpool Echo Arena on 7th December.

For more details visit www.thewaroftheworlds.com

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