Entertainment Swindon

It’s been described as ‘the best concept album ever made’. And I would have to agree! War of the Worlds was one of the first albums I was given as a child, back in the day when we played music on vinyl.

It’s now 130years since H.G. Wells put pen to paper, to start writing The War of the Worlds, and the 20th anniversary of the not so great Steven Spielberg big screen adaptation starring Tom Cruise. To date, The War of the Worlds has inspired seven films, as well as various radio dramas, comics, video games, television series, and sequels or parallel stories by other authors.

Most are set in different locations or eras to the original novel. Among the adaptations is the famous 1938 radio broadcast narrated and directed by Orson Welles started with a series of news broadcasts for the first two-thirds of the 60mins broadcast which is said to have led to outrage and panic by listeners who believed the events described in the program to be real. However, later critics pointed out that the supposed panic was exaggerated by newspapers of the time, seeking to discredit radio as a source of news and information or exploit racial stereotypes.

The iconic 1976 album ‘War of the Worlds’ was my first introduction to War of the Worlds before I ever saw the 1953 Movie adaptation of the H.G. Wells classic. Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues sang the memorable song ‘Forever Autumn’.

Justin Hayward OBE was born on 14th October 1946, in Dean Street, Swindon. The son of two teachers, he was educated at Shrivenham Primary School in nearby Shrivenham and later at Commonweal School in Swindon. During his early teen years, Hayward played in several bands. He performed with local groups in clubs and dancehalls, playing mostly Buddy Holly songs. At the age of just 18years, Hayward signed an eight-year deal with record producer Lonnie Donegan which he would later regret, as it meant he rights to all his songs written prior to 1975 would always be owned by Donegan’s Tyler Music.

From 1966, Hayward was the guitarist and frontman to rock band Moody Blues to 2018. During his time with the band, he became the groups principal vocalist and its most prolific songwriter between 1967-74, composing several international hit singles for the band.

Producer Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of War of the Worlds is a studio double album by the American born British musician, composer and record producer which was released on 9th June 1978 by CBS Records.

A musical adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel was a Rock Opera style album with a rock band, orchestra, and narrated by actor Richard Burton and featured guest artists such as David Essex, Phil Lynott, Chris Thompson, Julie Covington and of course Swindon’s very own Justin Hayward.

Hayward once said “When Jeff Wayne [the producer] puts his name to something, you know it’ll be good,” Hayward said. “I wasn’t sure if the whole idea would work at first, but it was a fantastic project to be a part and I’d like to think it was some of my best ever work.”

Hayward’s ‘Forever Autumn’ is a beautifully orchestrated track that describes the devastation brought on by the extraterrestrial intruders, and became a top five hit in the UK charts in 1978 and helped TWOTW album become a multi-million seller around the world, and cement its place as a seminal piece in rock history.

Ironically, the masterwork proved especially popular in North America, where an original radio broadcast of HG Well’s classic of the same name forty years earlier had caused widespread panic amongst those thinking that the world was about to end.

That stunning effect wasn’t lost on record impresario Jeff Wayne, who in the mid-70s decided to musically re-visit TWOTW, this time by re-constructing the stunning radio masterpiece with an equally memorable piece of his own.

But it is the former-Commonweal schoolboy, Justin Hayward, that fans vividly remember the most when, as the first singer to appear on the album, he hauntingly reminds us: “The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, but still they come”.