Christopher Lee

Spanning nearly seven decades, British actor and singer Sir Christopher Lee cultivated a reputation across an array of parts that proved memorable, often villainous, and consistently compelling. After distinguished military service in World War II, he spent a decade in minor supporting parts before securing prominence in horror cinema, above all as Count Dracula in multiple Hammer Studios productions filmed in London.

Toward the close of that horror cycle he made his musical debut, delivering a vigorous vocal on Paul Giovanni’s “Tinker in the Rye” for the 1973 mystery musical The Wicker Man. The role of pagan leader Lord Summerisle in the British cult film remained one of his personal favorites. A longtime devotee of occult and fantasy literature, Lee contributed a track to the 1977 British folk concept album The King of Elfland’s Daughter, drawn from Lord Dunsany’s classic novel.

After settling in Hollywood in the early 1980s he portrayed Mr. Midnight in the comedy-rock musical The Return of Captain Invincible, singing Richard O’Brien’s “Name Your Poison.” An ardent opera enthusiast equipped with a deep operatic bass, he recorded every role in a 1986 version of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale. In the mid-1990s he released the collection Christopher Lee Sings Devils, Rogues & Other Villains.

In 2005 his passions for opera and fantasy converged when Fabio Lione, the classically trained singer of Italian power metal band Rhapsody of Fire, invited him to duet on the group’s third single, “The Magic of the Wizard’s Dream.” At eighty-three this introduced Lee to heavy metal; concurrent with his late-career resurgence as Saruman in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, he embarked on a parallel path as a fantasy metal vocalist. He continued working with Rhapsody of Fire and joined Manowar for one track.

On the 2006 album Revelation, his second anthology of opera and musical material, Lee included a metal arrangement of the “Toreador Song” from Carmen with Inner Terrestrials. His solo metal debut arrived in 2010 with the symphonic concept album Charlemagne: By the Sword and the Cross, which earned the Spirit of Metal award at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods ceremony; Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi presented the honor.

Displaying a playful wit, he issued the EP A Heavy Metal Christmas in December 2012. The following year he delivered the full-length Charlemagne: The Omens of Death, featuring arrangements by Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner, together with the second holiday EP A Heavy Metal Christmas Too. Its single “Jingle Hell” reached number eighteen on the Billboard Hot 100, making the ninety-one-year-old the oldest living performer ever to chart. Lee’s metal activity continued in 2014 with the EP Metal Knight and the holiday single “Darkest Carols, Faithful Sing,” his final recording before his death in June 2015 at the age of ninety-three.