I did eventually train and do a quite a number of films & theatre in London. Prior to that there had been a year of naval college (place was falling into chaos but it impresses people on my CV), arts & sciences studies.Then often part time pharmacology,chemistry,physics,engineering, film & broadcasting, the acting with design, while attending the classical music & psychology depts. Then part time sound engineering & music production and more recently forensic science.
As with everyone else who was in awe of the album I believed 'The Coming of the Martians',sides 1 & 2, that's what an LP has for those under 30, was the best. Of course everyone is wrong!
The 'Earth Under the Martians' is musically & dramatically superior. The Red Weed could have been sketches by Alban Berg. The Spirit of Man is the strongest composition on the album & so amougst the best of any musical or rock opera. And Richard Burton outdoes his outstanding narration on the The Coming of the Martians part.
Jeff Wayne doesn't write much! His next original composition was Spartacus 16 years later which met a muted response & featured Catherine Zeta Jones descending into her 'wilderness years' until she was sitting in a Hollywood restaurant & famous sex-addict Michael Douglas spotted her.
To keep busy Jeff likes to revise his most famous composition, as does George Lucas to his Star Wars trilogy. You should now see the iceberg looming.
The first thing Jeff Wayne did to 'improve' his classic album was alter the heat ray sounds. He ruined them. The loud blazing sound like a crash of thunder accompanying the searing light of lightning across blackened clouds was removed. The next sacrilegious desecration was lower the Martians in the mix. In the original the Martians ROAR their strident call for human annihilation ULLA . A sound so powerful that it still has an impact 37 years later. Now they squeak by comparison.
Ulla is Gaelic for apples apparently. The Martians invaded Earth in pursuance of cider it seems.
Jeff decided that the lily needed even more gilding. By God he shoved that lily in a load of manure next!
A new version featuring the excellent Liam Neeson was announced. It would offer an alternative take.
Liam Neeson took the Richard Burton role of Narrator/Journalist. The emphasis here was on the Journalist role whereas in the Burton recording he was the Narrator. Liam Neeson sounds like he is proof reading his newspaper article during the whole album. This is more faithful to the book, but is devoid of Richard Buroton's immediacy & drama of someone actually living through the end of the world and recounting it in the present tense.
That production decision was understandable, new album new interpretation. But then things got really bad:
Apparently there is a live drummer on the album & not a drum machine. The drumming is indistinguishable from a 1980 drum machine. It is devoid of any human qualities such as rhythm, swing (which Black Sabbath drummer Bill Ward has amply) or variation. It sounds like someone reading a percussion sheet music and having never heard any of the music before.
And the clearly best part of the album, Spirit of Man? The Parson is delivered by a caricature Irish accent. Imagine a drunken impression of Frazer from Dad's Army. Beth, his wife, now is a hysterical girl panicking because there's no biscuits for afternoon tea or such like.
I know the two singers for the Parson & Beth are skilled singers probably from a musical theatre training, but by comparison to the original:
Phil Lynott of Thin Lizzy, screamed and roared like a soul ripped apart. Almost nothing can compare in rock,musical or opera. He embodies the agony of a priest who's greatest strength is love & compassion drives him insane when confronted with the apocalypse of the Martian invasion.
Julie Covington played the original Beth. Her characterisation is of an unbreakable force who saves her tortured husband's life & refuses to let him be engulfed by his insanity instead she fights indefatigably.
The new interpretations of Forever Autumn, Thunderchild & Brave New World are equally screwed up.
The Martians now sound more emasculated than previous tinkering. The Heat Ray is now a cheap sound effect from a cheap early Yamaha digital synthesizer; not the sonic gorgeousness of an analogue one.
So why did Jeff Wayne want to mess around with such a classic? For more money? No for this:
The revelation-
Jeff released a 7 cd collection of out takes & demos. The out takes include informative A cappella from everyone & Richard Burton drinking coffee then saying into the microphone "shouldn't drink coffee when doing a voice over".
The demos are the 'thing'. In the 1975 demos the Parson & the other singers do sound like the new album & stage show. Clearly when the album was made the cast on the album were too good, they were above what Jeff Wayne intended. So the new War of the Worlds album is to achieve the mediocrity he had hoped for,
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