For many people, the name Jeff Wayne is synonymous with The War of the Worlds, the record-breaking double album he wrote and produced in 1978 retelling the story of HG Wells’ classic with the aid of Richard Burton and an all-star musical cast. The album formed the basis of arena tours starting over a decade ago, and a reimagined version of the album, featuring Liam Neeson, is the backbone of the latest tour that kicks off in Glasgow on November 30.

But that’s not the only new version of The War of the Worlds with which Wayne is involved. Audible UK have released a five-hour drama, written by Richard Kurti and Bev Doyle, produced by Wayne, that uses his musical score as backdrop to a retelling of the original story – featuring Michael Sheen as the Journalist and Wayne’s daughter Anna-Marie as Carrie, a role she originated for the arena tours.

Shortly before rehearsals began for the tour, both Jeff and Anna-Marie Wayne chatted with Paul Simpson (Anna-Marie’s interview can be found here)…

It feels inevitable that you were going to do a dramatized War of the Worlds at some point.

It was an opportunity that actually came my way must be two and a half years ago. I was in the West End with The War of the Worlds on a season at the Dominion Theatre, and I can recall a couple of meetings that got this project going with the head of Audible and onwards from there. It took about a year and a half to get it all sorted and properly into production.

Who approached whom?

It was Steve Carsey, [the Director of Scripted Programming]; we’ve known each other for a while but not directly through audiobooks. He had this idea, which really was quite imaginative in truth, to take The War of the Worlds and make it into a musical drama. It’s not singing; it’s not structured in a way that my musical version was and is, but it is certainly familiar and draws anybody who’s listening to it, or so I hope, into the same focus and enjoyment that all our versions have ever done. It was a wonderful challenge to take a work that, in this  case, I’ve been familiar with for 40 years and start again.

Did you go back to basics and forget everything gone before, or could you use elements from the album version?

That was exactly what the concept was all about – to take all and any of the original score that I did and adapt it in a way that is appropriate to this production; at the same time there’s a whole range of new material and a whole lot of what I think is really interesting ways of using sound design. I was linking it all together with that which is familiar from my original musical interpretation.

It’s threadless through the ten half hours that total five hours of recording. That’s a challenge for anybody, I would say. I was retaining the familiar elements of my original and the recordings and the arena tours, and extending it to work with brand new scripts, and an entirely new cast of characters, some of which I have really admired – particularly our Journalist, Michael Sheen, who does his interpretation of the Journalist in my opinion in no less intriguing a way as Liam Neeson in our more recent versions and originally with Richard Burton. They all have quite incredible voices, so you start with something like that, you’re well on your way.

I got a shiver up the spine a couple of times when Sheen was saying lines I’ve heard so often Neeson or Burton saying – and saying them in a completely different way. How much did you need to direct him, and how much came from him?

I think a large chunk was Michael reading it a few times; yes, part of my job is to direct not just Michael’s performance but the very large cast that we had, but when you have somebody who is so good at his craft, it’s a minimal amount of input, generally speaking, and that’s how it was with Michael.

He was very keen on participating on the audiobook because he was a fan of my War of the Worlds and in fact my first meeting with him was not a physical meeting, it was a radio interview. He was the guest presenter for Radio 4 for a programme, and I only learned when we started chatting that he had been a fan since a young guy from the album’s release date or soon thereafter. He loved the work and asked for me to be his guest on this programme. Aside from the enjoyment of chatting to him, and how lovely a man he came over, jump forward to when it was time to start talking about who could be the Journalist for this production for Audible and I put forward Michael’s name. I think they thought how ideal he would be if he was interested, and it turned out, in the blink of a Martian’s eye, he was on board.

There’s a lot of us of that generation to whom it’s such a keystone of our lives – I played the double album countless times.

Thank you for that – wonderful to hear.

Was there ever an idea of incorporating any of the songs, even the lesser known ones like ‘Life Begins Again’, or the one you wrote for the stage show at the Dominion, or was it always going to be a straightforward drama with an audio soundscape with the music?

The concept to turn it into a musical drama was what appealed because I had an absolute framework right from the get-go. That was excluding whether it was the original score with their songs, or anything new – as you’ve just mentioned, the song ‘Life Begins Again’ which only appeared in our 2014 arena tour and comes back again this year; and the song we used for the West End season in 2016. Nothing in any form of singing is included in these five hours, but in a way that was a challenge in its own way. That’s the reason I think it does reach its target and makes it its own thing.

Of course for those who know the musical, when you hear the background music of that song, you’re in that particular zone of the story – did you ever want to play against that? Or was that an added extra?

That’s a good question, but the truth is when I faced the moment in any given episode where certain ideas had to be developed, I was guided by a brilliant script over ten episodes. I think I did go in both ways over those five hours. It was just how the moment arrived and was structured in the story and the way we were producing it with our cast of characters.

Did you go through it lineally from the first meeting with Ogilvy all the way to the PTSD that he experiences at the end? Or did you work on sections at a time?

It was guided by the script which had a lot of musical cues; some were really spot on, there were others where I felt there was a different way to achieve what our writers wanted, but at all times, it was a score driven by the story and the ideas that come from these new scripts.

How closely did you work with the writers on the scripts?

They had the original period of time to develop what has turned out to be five hours, ten half hour episodes, and we had a couple of production meetings with them, then they stepped back and allowed me to get on with the producing, with the knowledge that I might make some edits, which I did, or put some accents into the direction of the story. There were a couple of moments where there was an overdevelopment of a couple of the main characters, and I think we all knew once you started adding all the other elements – what I’m scoring or I’m working on the sound design – I had to balance all those elements together. I haven’t seen them appear at my doorstep with shotguns so I’ve taken the decision that I haven’t offended anybody!

There are places where the music is allowed to be the focus, and others where there are long dramatic sections without any of the score – did they come from the writers, or from you as producer?

The spacing, the structuring, that was down to me. Good or bad, that was down to me, and I only ever decided on the basis of what’s good for the scene, the episode and the overall project. It would be very easy as a composer, as a musician, to put the dominance on the musical content but that wasn’t what this was about. I never really stopped thinking about that from the moment I handed it in.

There are times where the music flows around Sheen’s narration – was he aware of  how you were going to use the music when he recorded his sections? Or did he record and you worked the magic later?

The order of production was working with all the characters, all those performing on it, directly from the scripts that they had. They wouldn’t have known the end result until they received a copy. That’s just the way the production was laid out, probably the right way and very traditional.

To me everything that you’re hearing is bouncing off of their performances and being sure in my job as the producing point to keep an eye on the flow and let their performances dominate at the right times. When there’s time for the music and sound design to flow through it would be used in a way that would be part of the project, not be the project.

For the sections where Carrie is narrating – which is a complete change from any previous version – did you approach them differently in terms of the music that you brought with it or was it again dictated by the areas of the story she was dealing with?

That was one of the ingredients that actually surprised me; not because it wasn’t a great idea, because I actually think it turned out very well. Carrie in the musical versions, right up to our arena tours, has always been the fiancée of the Journalist. But we start off in this story and she’s married the Journalist by this point and she’s looking back at how they survived through this Martian invasion. They get separated, and ultimately at the very end they come back together – it’s quite emotional. It directed me from a point of view of not just directing performances, but the scoring and the sound design.

I should point out that I at my studio, which is actually four different studio set ups, there was quite a team going at it. We were doing 7 days a week for many months. For a team getting everybody on the same wavelength is essential and I think the end result shows that.

For the musical score – did you take pieces from earlier versions or is this a complete new recording? There’s obvious new pieces like the solo piano at the end, but a lot of it I wondered if I’d heard many times before…

(chuckles) That is part of the concept. I was able to work with my original samples from the tape recordings of 40 years ago which with analogue sound has a quite beautiful sound, particularly with strings and natural instruments like pianos, but at the same time because there is so much new content, I worked completely from my studio. The object was to hopefully achieve a threadless quality, so when I was working with any of the samples and adding new instrumentation, or new content that wasn’t at a given moment using the original samples, it still to the listener was a threadless work. That wasn’t my biggest challenge on any front – to be threadless.

What portion are you most proud of, that you think works best?

When it comes to the part when it says ‘The End’! (laughs) It meant that over a year of challenge came to an end, and to feel proud of it, and I know that the people in my studio feel very much like that. For me it really starts with HG Wells, and follows on with the actors that we were privileged to work with, and of course as a composer and producer binding it all together with what my role in the project was all about.

Your name has become almost as synonymous with War of the Worlds as HG Wells; do you ever feel that that’s a burden rather than a privilege?

No. It’s a good question because I’ve heard of writers and actors that get defined by one major piece, despite in their whole lives previously and thereafter they’re doing the same quality of work that they’ve always done. For me it’s the same answer. If I feel that I’ve become associated with something, in this case a work of brilliant literature, I’m very proud of it, and I will gladly go to the Tennis Court in the Sky and look back and think, “Maybe I did do something with a collection of great artists and great musicians, great talent all round, leave something behind that might be around for another 40 years.”

People are going to hear this who (perhaps because they’ve been on a remote island for decades) have never heard of your version of The War of the Worlds and are going to look at the tour coming up. Is there anything new for the 2018 tour?

Every tour we try to top the previous one. This one has two new physical ingredients with something we’ve never tried. We have a sequence, 12 or 14 minutes long called ‘Brave New World’. That’s performed by the Artilleryman who has this vision that he can take the best of those who have survived the Martian invasion and start all over again and eventually take back the world from the Martians that are above ground. We’ve always had on stage for all of our tours since 2006 a bridge, which forms a large chunk of ‘Brave New World’. We have a new bridge that’s much bigger, that comes down from out of the gods, so to speak, at the appropriate moment, and attaches to the lip of the stage and goes out over the audience. The two biggest venues we play are the O2 and the Manchester Arena and it goes about halfway out into the audience. The people who are underneath it are going to get an experience that’s different from those up in the gods. The smallest arenas – four or five thousand seaters – the bridge goes pretty much to the sound desk. It’s a pretty big piece of gear and I hope it will reach the audience in a way that we’ve never had the opportunity to by keeping the bridge on the stage.

We still have our Martian fighting machine, 35 feet tall, 3 tons of heavy gear still firing my five-plumed heat ray of real flames over the audience.

The other new ingredient are a couple of giant screens that we’ve added on to the one that we’ve always had at the back. It brings the audience more into the show itself – so that current fave rave word, immersive.

Musically, do we have Life Begins Again, and the stage show number With Joy, Hope and Wonder?

That one isn’t coming back but Life Begins Again most certainly is including all of the new members of the cast.

There’s a few other subtle things that are musically new – one bigger piece is the song ‘Forever Autumn’ which has always been and remains in the first half as a solo. That is going to be sung by Newton Faulkner who is the new Sung Thoughts of the Journalist, but we’ve now created a reprise of ‘Forever Autumn’ that starts the second half. It’s a duet between Newton and my daughter Anna-Marie, who plays the role of Carrie, the Journalist’s fiancée.

It changes the emotion tremendously because from the story point of view, she has escaped at the end of Act 1 to distant shores, so she’s singing out to the Journalist, George, and he’s on stage from where he last saw her on the steamer that she and her father were on. They’re both singing out to each other but they don’t see each other and the emotion is pretty beautiful.

Was that in the Dominion show?

Yes, but it’s different in structure and physicality of where it represents. The seed of the idea started in the West End.

Did you ever for a second think it would have this sort of life?

No, and I absolutely could not have, if for no other reason than the contract that I had prevented me from even dreaming of talking to you 40 years on. On my original record contract with CBS Records in those days (today Sony Music), I had a decent budget but it was to be a single album, only thematic, no guest artists. Very quickly I realised as I started composing that this was never going to fit on a single album, I didn’t want it to be as musicians a trip into its own music. I felt it wanted to be what it became, a musical work that is an interpretation of HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds and whatever came out of me and the team that I worked with was the best that we would look back and feel proud of.

But I didn’t have a guaranteed release – what the contract stated when it was all handed in was that CBS had 30 days to have a listen and to make a decision whether they wanted to release it or not.

When I handed it in… I should qualify that. I was too chicken to hand it in, my wife Geraldine who worked at CBS (that was how I first met her) took it in and we then waited. My dad who was my partner on The War of the Worlds, and Doreen – his wife who grew up in Manchester and became an author and journalist in her own right – we had a lot of trepidation for 30 days, and then the moment came when the call came through from the head of CBS. He said, “Jeff I don’t think any of us here thought we’d hear anything that we couldn’t imagine where this came from. It’s so unique. But at the same time, we don’t have any idea who would be wanting to listen to a continuous play double album that’s got a great story and unbelievably good performances by fabulous singers and a couple who did acting on it but they’re not in a band together. And there’s you, this Yank who’s come along and written and produced something of this sort. We can’t say yes at the moment but I don’t want to say no – can I have another 30 days please?” So what am I going to say? Take my ball and go home? No I said, “Of course you can have another 30 days,” and it was another period of agony.

But when he came back that second time, he wasn’t alone. He had a queue of all the important people that were going to be part of the decision making and they were all waiting to speak to me. They said it was truly special and they were going to give it their utmost backing… and that’s what they did.

Even when it came out, my dream was to see my double album in the British charts for maybe one week. I would have gone home very satisfied if I’d seen my name in the UK charts as an artist, as well as being the writer and producer. Who knew that 330 or so weeks it would still be in the album charts and it’s continued to bob in and out for 40 years now and grown into what it’s become…

 

The War of the Worlds: The Musical Drama is available now from Audible – click here

The War of the Worlds 40th Anniversary Tour begins in Glasgow on November 30 and concludes in Brighton on December 17, 2018.