War of the Worlds Jeff Wayne screws it up by revisiting it just like George Lucas with Star Wars

Back in 1978, I was at one of  my St Joseph's Convent (you will read a lot about the Convent on here) friend's home. He was excited about something  & that I should be prepared for it. He produced his elder bother's copy of Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds. Richard Burton said "No one  would believe- "  and I thought " I must become an actor". So surrounded by his Star Wars wallpaper  we experienced an aural revelation.

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,

Fame- the heroin that screws up artists

Picasso was famous long before he completely lost it. His greatest period was probably 1934-1939. His Crying Woman  a depiction of  the Spanish Civil War & Guernica are from this period & were a return to the vigour of  Nude in the Forest  in 1908. 1951 he produced Massacre in Korea, an awful rehash of his tropes particularly from the 1920s accompanied by metalised execution squad ala Doctor Who monsters.    The whole painting is a laughable parody of Goya's The Third of May (Los fusilamientos del tres de mayo) the execution of Spanish resistance against Napoleon during the Peninsula War.

Picasso's abilities had not deteriorated, he had lost the fire and the passion for art. Fame, privileges & money had brought comforts that made him lazy & apathetic. Now he churned out paintings, one an hour, either sloppily executed or tediously transgressive, such as Woman Pissing (1965), it's only transient interest is the subject which is as trivial as a student's posturing artwork- a plague which has infested one of my former universities at Goldsmiths, except they don't do it in art anymore, now it's just hot air in the name of post modern bollocks.

Pavarotti similarly fell into the stupor of the 'complacent artist'. He still maintained his daily exercise of refusing to speak until he had done a couple of hours of humming, but as a tenor  his  performances dropped drastically in the 1980s (many things deteriorated in the 80s). In the 60s when he was still largely unknown, he would run, unthinkable with his later bulk, from the school where he was teaching to perform at the local opera house. He didn't need to exert himself but his desire to get to the stage drove him on.

In the 1970s, now famous amougst opera fans  he still had the hunger, passion and excitement to perform. La Boheme & Rigoletto show his focus and intensity not only as a singer but as an operatic actor.  Then suddenly he started to lose it. International & public or plebeian fame resulted in a more relaxed attitude, the voice was still there in its strength and timbre, he was never the greatest living the  tenor by the way, but that acting skill he had in his performances evaporated. 

Pavarotti coasted assured by instant sell outs of his stage performances that an uncritical public would attend a production he was in. And those opera performances were reduced in favour for the far less demanding aria recitals; no acting required & often  less demanding vocal works.  

As for his ubiquituous Nessun Dorma, he made sure that 'none shall sleep' by bellowing out the whole aria, devoid of any of the emotional intensity  that is the fibre of the song. The tenor is singing  about their impending execution if they don't discover Turandot's name by sunrise which is fast approaching.