Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War Of The Worlds
It's 1978, Sunday evening, around 7pm. My Dad has just picked another album to pass the time between tea and bed. It's our weekly ritual. His record player is in the front room. A place I am rarely allowed in as it's kept for "best". This means birthdays, Christmas, Sunday evening music sessions and swinging. I am not a participant in the last activity. Nor ever will be. I sit on the sofa, he has the armchair. It's a sofa that I now look back on with some disgust, no wonder it got so threadbare.
He puts the record on, sits in his chair, grabs his glass of single malt and leans back, looking at me for my first reaction. Richard Burton's deep deep tones clearly come through and I half grimace. Not another spoken word album. Please. Derek and Clive were ok but I didn't understand any of it. And then the orchestra hits. He smiles then, knowingly. Badly nodding along.
And so my first introduction to Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds has happened. I went to school the next day talking about nothing else. Of course my friends were used to me banging on about random music none of them had ever heard of but this time my rantings were to be proved prophetical as a week later it was picked to be the album of choice in my music class. I was way ahead of the curve. Well, a week.
My only trouble was, I wanted to listen to it again and again. Not possible with it being in the swinging room. So I forked out a lot of my hard earned pocket money, it was a double album which cost more. A lot more. Over the next few weeks we dissected the whole damn thing, so much so that I became sick of it all. The oooh laaa's, the deep deep tones and the smooth singing. And besides, I'd moved onto Tubeway Army. Still way ahead of the curve. Thanks to my older cousin.
But since then?
I still have the original album I bought, and my Dad's copy. I've seen the stage show and I even went to the interactive thingy in that there London last year. Almost shed a tear in memory of my Dad, He died when I was 21, as it brought back so many lovely memories. And the odd not so lovely ones. That bloody sofa for one. It is another album that goes on a few times a year. Nostalgic? Probably. Because I like it? Definitely.
1. The Eve Of War
2. Horsell Common and the Heat Ray.
3. The Artilleryman and the Fighting Machine.
4. Forever Autumn.
5. Thunder Child.
6. The Red Weed (Part 1)
7. The Spirit Of Man.
8. The Red Weed (Part 2)
9. The Artilleryman Returns.
10. Brave New World.
11. Dead London.
12. Epilogue (Part 1)
13. Epilogue (Part 2) (NASA)
