In a Starbucks last week we were talking about the opening of the new Spielberg film, "War of the Worlds" and we remembered the long-forgotten rock opera version of War of the Worlds from the Moody Blues' Jeff Wayne and an audio cast led by Richard Burton.
No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
Like the pinpoint flares of distant launches, barely perceptable memories gradually approached and grew until they covered my sky...
From the e-text of HG Well's original science fiction novel, first published in 1898:
With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.
The discofied, electronic version created a very different hysteria than the mass panic of Orson Well's 1938 radio broadcast. Late nights crowded on the floor of a cramped, candle-lit dorm rooms... refugees from the library... blasting the disco beat of the double album on somebody's overpowered hi-fi, an inebriated chorus crying the lyrics to Justin Hayward's "Forever Autumn"...
I'm ordering the remastered CD set from Amazon, but I found these tracks on Rhapsody.
1. The Eve Of The War - Jeff Wayne
2. Forever Autumn - Jeff Wayne
3. Thunder Child - Jeff Wayne
4. Brave New World - Jeff Wayne
5. Dead London - Jeff Wayne
6. Epilogue Part 1 - Jeff Wayne
Apparently I wasn't the only one to suddenly recall the album. Not coincidentally, July 5 will see the release of two new versions of the opera. From Moody News:
Two expanded editions of Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds (hereafter WotW) will be released on July 5. The original two-disc set, released in 1978, set H.G. Wells’ novel to music and narration via the talents of Richard Burton, Phil Lynott and, of course, Justin Hayward. The project spawned “Forever Autumn,” a Hayward-sung track that was a worldwide hit for the Moodies guitarist. Of the two new editions, the first is a remastered version of the album as a double-hybrid SACD collection that features both 5.1 surround sound and stereo mixes. The second, more tony version, is a seven-disc, limited edition box set. The box includes the double-SACD hybrid package; club remixes issued between 1979 and 2005; and three rarities discs, including outtakes and unreleased tracks. Finally, the box set includes a 75-minute “making of” documentary on DVD.
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