Our Favorite Martians

This month finds Jeff Wayne bringing his acclaimed, multi-media stage adaptation of War Of The Worlds to the 02. Wayne originally produced an album based on HG Wells’ famous sci-fi story in the ’70s, and the massive-selling record featured a decidedly eclectic array of guest talent, ranging from Richard Burton to Phil Lynott.

When did Wayne first get the idea to adapt the album into a live show?
“The album came out in ’78,” reflects Jeff, sitting in the lounge of the Morrison Hotel in Dublin. “And our aspirations were that if the album enjoyed any form of commercial and critical success, we would try and bring it to the stage. But we were thinking at most a West End kind of production, and I was offered the opportunity to conduct concert renditions and so on. I guess in 1984, my father and I started thinking about the type of production that you see today, but the technology didn’t exist back then.
“The only thing that did exist at that point, and what Richard Burton had I agreed to do, was something called talking head technology – basically, you filmed the performer and that was then projected onto a sculpted head, and it was very compelling when you saw it from a distance, because it did have that three-dimensional quality. Richard had just finished filming on the film version of 1984, and he was going on a two-week holiday to Switzerland.
“We’d set up the session for when he was to return, but unfortunately he passed away a week later in Switzerland, and that was sad and tragic, and killed any feeling for wanting to do the production of War Of The Worlds. I never returned to it until the early noughties, when I started conceptualising with some people who were into live entertainment on a large scale. The technology had finally caught up with our ideas, but the opportunity to do arena shows didn’t come around until 2005. That was the beginning of it.”
How did Phil Lynott get involved with the recording of the original album?
“All of the guest artists were people I worked with or was a fan of. Phil, I didn’t know; I was just a fan of Thin Lizzy. I had a mutual contact who knew their management, and that friend approached them and said, ‘Would you consider asking Phil to this?’ He was up for at least listening, and he came into the studio in London, checked out what we were doing and said, ‘This is great, I’d love to be involved.’ I went to a couple of Thin Lizzy shows and we developed a rapport.
“When it came to recording War of the Worlds, I produced his singing and my Dad directed the acting sections, and Phil’s performance was fantastic. On the last day of recording he produced a book of poetry that he’d just had published. He was definitely living the rock ‘n roll lifestyle, and that sensitive book of poetry showed another side to him.”
Does Jeff consider the current live performance of War Of The Worlds – which features Moody Blues singer Justin Hayward on vocal duties – to be gig with visuals or a full-on theatrical production?
“It’s a multi-media extravaganza!” he chuckles. “The heart of it is that we’ve brought the musical work to life, so we’re playing real music in a live environment. Everything you hear is being played and sung live, but what’s around us is technology at its most cutting edge. The last tour was the first time we added an illusion that comes from the world of levitation - when one of the characters perishes, her body rises up from the stage and at about 15 feet disappears in full view of the audience. It had never been done before in live entertainment on an arena scale.”
Of course, in 2005, Steven Spielberg directed a film version of War Of The Worlds with Tom Cruise in the lead role. Has Jeff ever met Spielberg or George Lucas?
“No, but one of the awards which War of the Worlds achieved was the best recording in Science Fiction and Fantasy,” he explains. “It was about a year or so after the album came out, and three of the judges on the panel were Spielberg, George Lucas and Alfred Hitchcock. My Dad wrote to Steven Spielberg asking if he fancied making a movie version of the album, and he wrote us a letter – which I still have to this day – saying, ‘This album deserves to be made into a movie, but I’m committed to other projects.’ He was working on some small-scale, arthouse films like ET and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind!”
Was Jeff taken by surprise by the enormous success of the original album?
“I had no expectation one way or the other,” he replies. “When I was writing and producing it, we were in the midst of the punk revolution and disco was king on the dancefloor. And there I am producing a 100-minute continuous play recording, and trying to interpret some Victorian tale. I’m a Yank and I’ve got a Welsh actor telling the story. It’s like, ‘What’s this about?’ But I was proud of it, and everyone who participated gave of their best – the musicians, the guest artists, the painters who did the artwork.
“I also did edits of some songs that made them suitable for radio. That turned it from being this slightly intimidating piece of work into something where people could go, ‘Hey, there’s a pop tune here we can play on the radio.’ And that definitely made
a difference.”

The War Of The Worlds is at the O2, Dublin on November 29.