This is a sort of milestone, being my 450th column for Steve Davidson’s Amazing Stories (that doesn’t count my 1980-81 columns for the print Amazing Stories). So I hope I’ve been either entertaining or informative, or that you’ve gotten something out of reading my columns for however long you’ve been doing so. I hope to continue at least until column 500, which should be in about a year. Let’s get into it!
Rock music has always had a strong relationship with genre writing. Discounting such outliers as Buchanan & Goodman’s The Flying Saucer (1956), Sheb Woolley’s The Purple People Eater (1958) and the like, in the 1960s and 1970s, genre titles and concepts began making their way into rock (not just pop) music. 1966 brought The Byrds’ “Mr. Spaceman,” for example. Famously, Hawkwind was associated with Michael Moorcock (Warrior on the Edge of Time, 1975) for example; Alan Parsons released Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976) and I, Robot (1977), and so on. But the double album (vinyl and cassette) called Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of War of the Worlds, which burst on the music scene in 1978 was, I believe, the first soundtrack/audiobook in major media with a set of major stars, including stage/screen icon Richard Burton and well-known rock singers like .Justin Hayward (Moody Blues), David Essex, Philip Lynott (Thin Lizzy) and Julie Covington (Rocky Horror Show, Evita stage shows). Plus, most songs or albums with genre titles, like Alan Parsons’ I, Robot and later Dune and Eye in the Sky just used the titles, without necessarily tying the songs or albums to the books’ content.
As a fan of H.G. Wells’ original book, Wayne wanted his book to be as faithful to the original as possible (given that there are always compromises when translating from one medium to another), so it had to be a period piece. According to the internet (which I’m sure is a trustworthy source, right?), Wayne worked closely with Wells’ grandson and, although he condensed a few characters into one and added characters such as the Narrator’s fiancée and the Parson’s wife and, naturally, condensed the whole timeline of the book to fit the allotted space.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell any reader of this column what the book’s about, so I’ll talk only about characters that appear in the album. The Narrator/journalist is unnamed, but Richard Burton’s voice added depth to the character—that Shakespearean voice with its rounded syllables was what (IMO) this album needed; I can’t think of any rock singer who would have served as well. The record starts with Burton’s calm narration of those familiar words “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…” followed by the orchestra hit, “Dum da dumm!” which echoes throughout the record. I’m sure most if not all of you have heard or read these words before.
Justin Hayward was the lead singer of Part 1 (the first side of the first record), comprising “The Eve of the War” and “Horsel Common and the Heat Ray,” for a length of just over 20 minutes. (“The Eve of the War” was later released as a single.” Hayward’s repetition of Ogilvy the Astronomer’s “The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one” was one of the songs that stuck in my mind (and I’m sure, many others) long after I finished listening to the album. Along with that, Burton’s talk about Horsel Common” is, to me, a perfect shorthand of a Victorian evening, with steam trains huffing and puffing in the background; perhaps ladies and gentlemen strolling on the common greensward, and so on.
The next day began the actual war upon humankind—the description of the Martians themselves—the great luminous eyes, the wet, bear-like body and its “snake-line tentacles” was the prelude to the description of the invisible heat ray, turning human bodies to ash and lighting trees and bushes on the Common. The music turns to a vaguely honky-tonk rhythm to possibly indicate the coming mechanisms—the Martian tripods. The Narrator’s egotism is shown, when he says “People clawed their way off the Common, and I ran too. I felt as if I was being toyed with; that when I was on the very verge of safety, that this mysterious death would leap after me, and strike me down,” as if the Martian invasion was aimed straight at him.
Side Two comprises three sections: “The Artilleryman and the Fighting Machine (David Essex), where he tells the Narrator how his artillery unit was wiped out; the song “Forever Autumn” (Justin Hayward), where the Narrator worries about his missing Carrie, who used to kick through the fallen leaves with him (this song became a Top Ten single record); and “Thunder Child” (Chris Thompson [Manfred Mann]), where a steam fighting ship attempts to shoot down the Martians on the water before falling victim to the heat ray. Side 2 is again, about 20 minutes.
Side Three comprises two instrumentals (“The Red Weed” Parts 1 & 2) and two vocals. The Martians are “Terraforming” England, with the red Martian weed choking out native plants and covering the landscape; Part 1 is followed by “The Spirit of Man” (Phil Lynott and Julie Covington), where Parson Nathaniel screams that these are not Martians, they are devils and that we’re all doomed, and the Parson’s wife, Beth (Covington) cries “No, Nathaniel… there must be something worth living for—even something worth dying for.. somewhere in the Spirit of Man.” (I found the Lynott performance way over the top; but my wife, the Beautiful and Talented Lynne Taylor Fahnestalk, seems to think it’s appropriate for the character. (I remain unconvinced.) This is followed by the second part of the Red Weed, which is followed by a segue into side 4 with…
The Return of the Artilleryman (Essex), who tells the Narrator that the Martians are everywhere and humanity has no choice but to literally go underground in the tunnels of London and elsewhere. He builds a word picture that fails to convince the Narrator—of humanity living and building underground and then coming up to defeat the Martians. The Narrator leaves him drunk and dreaming, and comes back up to find London dead and in ruins. As are the Martian machines. The machines lie slumped and broken all around, and each machine’s hood is alive with scavenger crows feeding on the dead Martians, who fell to the smallest enemy alive in Earth’s atmosphere: germs! The Martians had no resistance to any of Earth’s diseases and were felled even as they conquered England.
There are two epilogues, in one of which, the Narrator is reunited with his beloved Carrie; and another, which if you haven’t heard, I will leave as a surprise for the listener. The whole album is available on YouTube. If you are one of the unlucky few who’s never heard it, I hope you find it and listen to it. The original album had a portfolio of paintings of the various scenes of the book; I would scan it, but I can’t find my copy. I will say that whether you’ve heard this before or not, when you do hear it again, it will stick in your mind for a while after it’s done.
I’ve really enjoyed revisiting this album; I hope you find something of worth in my journey back to 1978!
NOTE: This column is in no way researched, written, edited, proofed or composed by AI, though some of my photo editing software uses it in some capacity. This is a human column and will remain so.
So… Do you have any comments about this? Have you listened to the album? PM me—I’m on Facebook—or email me (stevefah at hotmail dot com) and let me know. I appreciate all comments! My opinion is, as always, my own, and doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of Amazing Stories or its owner, editor, publisher or other columnists. See you next time!
Steve has been an active fan since the 1970s, when he founded the Palouse Empire Science Fiction Association (PESFA) and the more-or-less late MosCon in Pullman, WA and Moscow, ID, though he started reading SF/F in the early-to-mid 1950s, when he was just a sprat. He moved to Canada in 1985 and quickly became involved with chairing or helping run Canadian cons, including ConText (’89 and ’81) and VCON. As a fan, he’s published a Hugo-nominated (one nomination) fanzine, New Venture, and he’s founded two writing groups (Writers’ Bloc and Writers of the Lost, Ink). He’s emceed and auctioned art at many West Coast and Northwest conventions including one Westercon. As a writer, he’s published a couple of books and a number of short stories (including one in Compostella [Tesseracts 20], and has collaborated with his two-time Aurora-winning wife Lynne Taylor Fahnestalk on a number of art projects. As of this writing he’s the proofreader for R. Graeme Cameron’s Polar Borealis and Rhea Rose’s Polar Starlight publications. He’s been writing for Amazing Stories off and on since the early 1980s. His column can be found on Amazing Stories most Fridays.
Recent Comments