Day 5: "Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of War of the Worlds" - Jeff Wayne (1978)

When I look ahead in my first pile of CDs to see what is coming up next, I start to think about what that album means to me, or how I'm going to feel listening to it again.  Yesterday, I saw this, and just thought "Oh, hell yes".

listen to me here

I can't remember how old I was when I first heard this album;  maybe 7 or 8, possibly even younger than that.  I know one of my parents' favourite parenting tricks when I was a young boy was to put my Dad's big headphones on me, sit me down next to the record player and put on some long playing album, and leave me parked there, entranced.  There were a bunch of narrative-led albums at the time, because it was the 70's and why wouldn't you make a narrative-lead concept album if you were a musician, and I probably sat through all of them in my parents' dining room, next to the record player.

"War of the Worlds" probably came later than other stuff like I'd listened to as a kid, like Pink Floyd's "The Wall" or Harry Nilsson's "The Point".  I've heard my parent's say that I was trying to sing songs from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" when I was a toddler.   And I guess my parents figured that if I was happy watching Daleks and Cybermen threaten Earth on a Saturday evening when I was 7, then I'd be just as happy listening to the musical version of a global alien apocalypse.

I remember listening to it vividly.  The gatefold vinyl LP my Dad had came with a fantastic art book (which is nicely reproduced in the CD I have), and the combination of the visceral imagery and the fairly disturbing (for a young boy, I guess) content of the album both fascinated me and proceeded to scare the shit out of me at the same time.  I had listened to this album probably more than a few times following my initial exposure to it, as I was as demanding a child as any other I suspect, except instead of requiring that my parents put on Peppa Pig endlessly, I just wanted to listen to this over and over again.  To this day, I've still had alien invasion nightmares similar to ones that started as young boy from time to time.  I don't have any kind of irrational fear of alien invasion normally, you understand, its just that whatever part of my subconscious this album imprinted itself on when I was seven years old occasionally likes to stretch its legs when I'm sleeping.

The art book I mentioned before remains one of my favourite things about the whole album;  in just seven paintings by Peter Goodfellow, Geoff Taylor and Mike Trim, the entire album is brought to life. One of my favourite surprises was to discover, years later when I was starting to get a little cultured, was that the painting of Parson Nathaniel and the Fighting Machines was based on a painting by Salvador Dali which 7-year-old me would not have been aware of...

Dali's "Invasion of the Weird Horse Elephant Church Creatures" would be far less successful

As an album, it's impossible to separate from its narrative framework in my mind.  I can see that Spotify has listings for a "Highlights from War of the Worlds" album which I assume is the same album but with all the talking sections cut out, which to me seems insane.  The songs on this album aren't intended to be taken out of context, apart from "Forever Autumn", which was written before the album and kind of just got shoehorned in (and as such, feels weirdly out of place when the Narrator is upset his girlfriend isn't at home when alien machines are destroying England).  I'd imagine if you just listened to the songs, you'd be inclined to believe that the album is not especially great - several of the songs are simplistic (as you might expect when you're trying to convey story as well as musicality), and instrumental movements like "The Red Weed" lose a lot of their impact when you're not aware of what they are trying to represent.

When not chopped to pieces, I still think this is a great, great album.  The simple guitar theme from "Dead London", even though it lasts only about a minute, is one of my favourite pieces of guitar music just because its so evocative with Richard Burton's spoken word narration under it.  I still think the album might be the best telling of the War of the Worlds story as well, despite countless adaptations in other media over the years.  

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that years ago, an old girlfriend of mine bought me tickets to see the live show of this at Sheffield Arena, which was actually really great;  the lighting and stage effects were top notch, and it was really cool to hear the orchestral and electric parts of this album played together live.  If you're a fan of the album, and you aren't sure about seeing the live show, do yourself a favour and check it out, it's pretty fun

However, in preparation for listening to this, I discovered something which shook me to my very core.

Liam Neeson?  Gary Barlow?!  Featuring Ricky Wilson from Kaiser Chiefs as the Artilleryman, Maverick Sabre as Parson Nathaniel and Joss Stone as his wife?  I've been looking at this listing for about 36 hours now trying to figure out if I can bring myself to listen to it.  I suspect any attempt to might sully my memories of the original forever.

If this is what the Spirit of Man has wrought in their absence, bring on the Martian invaders.