Jeff Waynes War of the Worlds
The prog rock masterpiece work of Jeff Wayne, the War of the Worlds was first released in June 1978 after taking well over a year to record in its entirety. The musical adaption of HG Wells novel of the same name is one of the best known and best selling musical works of all time. To date t has sold approximately 15 million copies around the world and has been adapted into several foreign languages. It has charted in no less than 22 countries and reached the coveted number one spot in 11 of them. It also went on to win two Ivor Novello awards, and the USA Best Recording in Science Fiction and Fantasy, being judged by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Alfred Hitchcock. Significantly, it remains to one of the best selling albums in SONY/BMG’s catalogue. It is considered to this day to be one of the definitive progressive rock masterpieces. Its format is Prog-Rock spliced with a narrative and leitmotifs to move the story along between the classic songs which portray various characters throughout the epic. The album went on to be one of the best selling in its genre in UK history. A little known fact about the whole album however was that Jeff Wayne actually considered a number of other science fiction novels to base his work on before choosing the War of the Worlds. The other contenders included The Day of the Triffids, and Brave new World. The current Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds Tour is a blend of classic tunes from the album and a scarcely believable stage show, which features Just Hayward from the Moody Blue’s, Liz McClarnon (formerly of Atomic Kitten), Rhydian Roberts (X Factor), Chris Thompson and Jason Donovan. The stage show also features an 11 foot high hologram of Richard Burton, and the near 50 piece orchestra are conducted by Jeff Wayne himself.