To my Father, this rendering of his idea.

Okay, with all due respect to my previous blog and to the work of Cat Stevens, this CD is the first of my Dad’s collection where there’s a real strong connection and association that I hold between the music and my Dad. It’s interesting to me that in all the times I’ve listened to it before now, and all the times that I’ve pored over the CD inlay booklet that comes with it, that I’ve never seen the dedication held within it. “To my Father, this rendering of his idea” is subtly tucked away on the inside cover of the booklet and having not noticed it in all (at a guess) 28-ish years of my being aware of this CD it seems suddenly very poignant that I’ve now seen it while undertaking this project.

So, for those of you who didn’t suss out my little clue at the end of the last blog, and for those of you who haven’t clocked the cover art either - I’m going to spend a little bit of time talking about Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds. In terms of finding connections back to my Dad, this one was an easy selection to make. It’s one of a handful of pieces of music that I can always remember being there, being played on any occasion as deemed appropriate (or otherwise) by my Dad and usually played at too high a volume as well. My Mum tells a story of one of my sister’s school friends coming to visit us, and my Dad (possibly under the influence of one or two cans of Anchor Beer (the local brew in Malaysia)) putting this on, to leave Candace (I think her name was) absolutely bewildered and “shit-scared”. And that sums my Dad up to a T really - an appreciator of the things that he liked and enjoyed and willing to share them with anyone, regardless of the circumstances or their reaction to it. 

The general story of War of the Worlds has been retold in many different ways to varying levels of success. H G. Wells wrote the original book on which the variations are based back in the late 1800’s and (in)famously Orson Wells (no relation…apparently) did a radio broadcast in the USA in 1938 retelling the story that was reportedly so realistic that widespread panic broke out. Just imagine Americans over-reacting to something, eh? Would never happen these days in the modern era of social media and whatnot, would it? Equally famous (but a lot worse) was the Tom Cruise film that came out in 2005. Not even Morgan Freeman doing the voice-over could save that one apparently. Equally, Jeff Wayne himself re-imagined parts of the show and has done a couple of live tours in the past 10 years or so. While many of the original cast are no longer around, they’ve found some adequate replacements in general and some very creative ways to replace elements of the cast. I also attended a live show in 2005 or 2006 which was quite the experience.

The album itself takes the form of a fairly conventional ‘musical’ and uses the facility of a narrator (voiced by Richard Burton) to move the story along and bridge the gaps between the different tracks that tell the story. To give a broad summary of the actual story, aliens (well, martians - even though the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one) descend on Earth, take over and a war between the humans and the martians breaks out. Although one of the tracks taken from it was released as a single (“Forever Autumn” by Justin Hayward… but more on him later), you really do have to just set aside a good couple of hours and listen to this one from end to end to fully appreciate its majesty and to take in the full impact of the story. 

There was some amazing talent involved in producing the album as well. Not only Jeff Wayne himself composing the music and his mother Doreen adapting the original book into the story told (the aforementioned Justin Hayward aside), but when you add in Phil Lynott (of Thin Lizzy fame, another favourite band of mine and my Dad’s), David Essex and Julie Covington (who came from a more traditional ‘musical’ background) everything just sort of clicks and the result is (in case it wasn’t already clear) one of my very favourite things to listen to now. To anyone who says that musicals aren’t cool, aren’t their thing and are somewhat pretentious, I would say that a single listen to this one would smash those perceptions.

For me though, Richard Burton is the real star of this show. While it seems a bit of a disservice to a piece of music to heap the largest praise on someone who ‘only’ narrates the story, he really is the glue that holds everything together. From his opening monologue (which still sends tingles down my spine whenever I hear it) through to his move from narrator to character when interacting with other individuals within the story it’s just an incredible piece of work. Hard to believe that someone simply reading words from a piece of paper could overshadow all of the other musical talent around him, but he does it with ease. 

Now Justin Hayward has cropped up a couple of times in this blog already, and I’ve sort of got to take a bit of an aside here. Again, it all comes back to a memory of my Dad. Justin Hayward was a member of the Moody Blues (and I’m sure there’ll be some of their stuff hidden away in his collection somewhere, so we’ll get to them when the time comes) and for whatever reason my Dad was (potentially just in jest…?) never really a fan of his. I remember sitting watching a video of a Moody Blues concert (potentially “A Night at Red Rocks”) with my parents and my sister, picking up on my Dad not liking Justin Hayward and taking great glee in joining in with berating him (Justin Hayward - not my Dad). For some reason I recall one of the other band members playing one of those guitars with two necks and thinking it was hilarious to point out that the rest of the band obviously had to work double-duty to cover for Justin’s ineptitude and overall lack of talent. Some might say that my humour hasn’t improved in the time since then either, come of think of it.

Anyway, I digress… For me this album is simply something everyone should listen to at least once a year. I’d make it part of the National Curruculum, to be honest. I know that some people out there will feel this is excessive, that the album is flawed and that the second CD/disc/part is a lot weaker than the first - but there is still some great stuff on there. Anything where Phil Lynott plays the part of a Parson who has been driven mad through the events unfolding around him can’t be bad really. So I really can’t recommend this one enough. I’d imagine (or hope, at least) that most people of my generation have encountered it through relatives of my Dad’s generation. And I can easily see that in the future that it will in turn be passed on and down the line or at the very least I hope that it will.