Jesus Christ Superstar is a 1970 album musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, on which the 1971 rock opera was based. Initially unable to get backing for a stage production, the composers released it as an album, the success of which led to stage productions. The album musical is a musical dramatisation of the last week of the life of Jesus Christ, beginning with his entry into Jerusalem and ending with the Crucifixion. It was originally banned by the BBC on grounds of being "sacrilegious".[6][7] By 1983, the album had sold over seven million copies worldwide.[8]
Lyrics in the 1964 Bob Dylan song "With God on Our Side" resonated with Rice: "You'll have to decide / Whether Judas Iscariot had God on his side."[10] Another inspiration was an advertisement showing Tom Jones dressed in white with the word 'SUPERSTAR' emblazoned across him.[11]
Rice and Webber wrote the title song, Superstar, first, in July 1969. Webber explained, “It was agreed that we would first sort of ‘send up a flag' to see whether the public would accept our approach to the subject."[12] They spent the next four months producing the single. They wrote the rest of the songs from November 1969 to March 1970.[13]
The album's story is based in large part on the Bible and Fulton J. Sheen's Life of Christ. Rice said, "I used the King James and Catholic versions — whichever was handier — interchangeably. My biggest aid was Fulton Sheen's Life of Christ, in which Bishop Sheen calibrates and compares the Gospels."[12] However, greater emphasis is placed on the interpersonal relationships of the major characters, in particular, Jesus, Judas and Mary Magdalene, relationships that are not described in depth in the Gospels.
"Herod's Song" is a lyrical rewrite of "Try It and See", previously written by Lloyd Webber and Rice as a proposed British entry into the Eurovision Song Contest 1969 to be sung by Lulu, then recorded and released as a single by Rita Pavone. The writers had also included it (as "Those Saladin Days") in an aborted show about Richard the Lionheart called Come Back Richard Your Country Needs You.
The melody of "I Don't Know How to Love Him" also predates Jesus Christ Superstar; it was rewritten from a 1968 Lloyd Webber/Rice collaboration titled "Kansas Morning".[14]
Recording
The album was recorded from March to July 1970.[13]
For the recording, Lloyd Webber and Rice drew personnel from both musical theatre (Murray Head had just left the West End production of Hair) and the British rock scene (Ian Gillan had only recently become the singer of Deep Purple). Many of the primary musicians—guitarists Neil Hubbard and Henry McCullough, bassist Alan Spenner, and drummer Bruce Rowland—came from Joe Cocker's backing group The Grease Band. Saxophonist Chris Mercer had also played with Hubbard in Juicy Lucy.
Release
The first piece of Superstar released was the title song, as a single in November 1969 backed with the instrumental "John Nineteen Forty-One" (see John 19:41). The full album followed almost a year later.
In the U.S., the double album was released on 27 October 1970. Less than three weeks later, on 16 November, it achieved gold status ($1 million in sales).[15]
The album topped the U.S. Billboard Top LP's chart in both February and May 1971[16] and ranked number one in the year-end chart ahead of Carole King's massive hit Tapestry.[17] It also served as a launching pad for numerous stage productions on Broadway and in the West End. The original 1970 boxed-set issue of this two-record set was packaged in the U.S. with a special thin brown cardboard outer box ("The Brown Album")[18] which contained the two vinyl records and a 28-page libretto.
Reception
Hubert Saal, in Newsweek, called it "nothing short of brilliant — and reverent. Staying well within limits prescribed by the Gospels, the opera galvanizes the story and the scenes of the Passion with its own fresh imagination and vitality."[19] Critic John Rockwell, writing in the Los Angeles Times, thought, "...at its best, Jesus works. Rice and Weber have managed more effectively than the composers of any previous rock-opera that I know of to characterize individuals in both words and music. And they are helped by an excellent cast."[20]Billboard's critic wrote, "This brilliant musical portrayal of the last seven days of Jesus is destined to become one of the most talked about and provocative albums on the pop scene.[21] Music critic Thomas Willis wrote in the Chicago Tribune, "I am neither a theologian nor a rock critic, but if Jesus Christ Superstar isn't the most important religious music of the year — and one of two or three significant recordings of the decade — I am sadly mistaken."[22] He added, "The ingredients in this unique production are absolutely first rate." Nat Hentoff, in Cosmopolitan, called it "the most remarkable large-scale rock work yet created" and called the singers "superbly cast."[23]
Other critics unfavourably compared it to the Who's Tommy: Variety thought, "Somewhat overstated, the opera lacks the overall impact of Tommy."[24] Mike Jahn, in the Baltimore Sun, went further: "Tommy seemed a labor of love, with good stories well-told...In comparison, Jesus Christ Superstar seems a labor of opportunism with almost no inspiration. In fact, when it isn't dead boring it's embarrassing..."[25]
Original Concept Recording. Jesus Christ Superstar – A Rock Opera. Universal City, California: MCA Records Inc. [USA], (released 24 September 1996). Cat. No. MCAD2-11542 [2 CDs], UPC 008811154226.
2012 remaster
In 2012, the MCA reissue was remastered personally by Andrew Lloyd Webber, who released the result on his own Really Useful Music imprint under the Decca banner. In his liner notes, Webber states that he was hoping to find some unreleased recording within the original masters, but he found out that only three out of twenty tapes had survived the 2008 Universal Studios fire, and those tapes did not contain any unreleased material. However, it later turned out that he did possess a copy of the complete masters in his own archive, and he worked from that.[27]
2021 expanded reissue
In 2021, for the 50th anniversary of the original staging, Universal Music Group released an expanded reissue (under its Decca Broadway imprint) consisting of 3 CDs and a hardback book. The first two discs contain a new remaster of the original album, made at Abbey Road Studios by staff engineers Miles Shovell and Nick Davis; the third disc includes demos, rarities, single edits and more, all sourced from Tim Rice's personal archive.[28]
The book includes many photos from the era, an extensive chronicle of the making of the album (compiled by writer Lois Wilson from interviews with Webber, Rice, Yvonne Elliman, Murray Head, Ian Gillan and musicians involved in the album), appreciations by English comedian/musician Matt Berry and Chic founder Nile Rodgers, a facsimile of the lyric book included within the original 1970 album and the script for an "open-end interview" (i.e. a pre-recorded interview with music and gaps for radio DJs and presenters to insert their own voices) with Webber and Rice, whose audio part is on the third disc.
The artwork for the box set includes both the brown American cover (on the slipcase for the set) and the more colourful British one, on the book itself.
^Bloom, Jerry (2015). The Road of Golden Dust, Deep Purple Story (1st ed.). Wymer Publishing. p. 67. ISBN978-1-908724-23-6.
^Walsh, Michael (1997). Andrew Lloyd Webber: His Life and Works. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc. p. 71. ISBN0810912759. ...the complete Superstar hit the American market on October 27, 1970.
^Nassour, Ellis; Broderick, Richard (1973). Rock Opera; The Creation of Jesus Christ Superstar from Record Album to Broadway Show and Motion Picture. New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc. p. 100. The Broadway opening was set for October 27, to coincide with the initial release of the album in the United States on that date a year before.
^"... the BBC banned it, they banned this record, because they thought it was sacrilegious."—Ted Neeley, in conversation with Norman Jewison"Archived copy". Archived from the original on 17 July 2011. Retrieved 27 November 2009.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^"Celebrating 50 years of 'Jesus Christ Superstar': Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice tell Neil McCormick how 'the worst idea in history' became a musical phenomenon". The Daily Telegraph. 22 September 2021.
^"Celebrating 50 years of 'Jesus Christ Superstar': Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice tell Neil McCormick how 'the worst idea in history' became a
musical phenomenon". The Daily Telegraph. 2 September 2021.
^ abRock Opera: The creation of Jesus Christ Superstar from record album to Broadway show and motion picture. Ellis Nassour and Richard Broderick. New York: Hawthorn Books. 1973.
^ abSuperstar sells a million. Poughkeepsie Journal. 29 Nov 1970: 79.
^Walsh, Michael (1997). Andrew Lloyd Webber: His Life and Works. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc. p. 14. ISBN0810912759. The hit love song from Superstar was a pop number Lloyd Webber and Rice had written earlier and sold to a publisher; its rights were bought back by David Land, then Lloyd Webber and Rice's manager, and it got a new set of lyrics. Thus the pedestrian 'Kansas Morning' became the soaring 'I Don't Know How to Love Him.'
^'Superstar' Turns Gold. The Hartford Courant. 05 Dec 1970: 12.
