Jeff Wayne

Jeff Wayne had already established a solid reputation within British rock circles by the time he conceived The War of the Worlds, the work that would keep his name in the public eye for more than twenty-five years. Born in New York as the son of actor Jerry Wayne, he spent four years of his childhood in England after his father landed the part of Sky Masterson in the original London staging of Guys and Dolls. While attending Forest Hills High School in New York, his broad musical curiosity—spanning classical and jazz—led him to private study with instructors such as John Mehegan. The remainder of his youth unfolded in California, where he began college as a journalism major before switching to music and earned money playing keyboards in local bands during the periods he was not pursuing his other consuming interest, tennis. He eventually committed to music professionally, a decision reinforced when his father produced the West End musical Two Cities, an adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities that featured a young Edward Woodward and helped steer Wayne toward his signature project.

After the experience with Two Cities, Wayne immersed himself in composing and producing, accumulating extensive credits for television scores and advertising jingles before moving into film music during the late 1960s and early 1970s. His entry into major record production came in the early 1970s with Rock On, the David Essex album whose title track reached number one and received a Grammy nomination. Further production on Essex’s next two albums and on the film Stardust, in which Essex starred, drew attention from England’s rock community and secured the allegiance of musicians including Chris Spedding and Jo Partridge, both of whom would play key roles in later endeavors. Among the traits that endeared Wayne to these performers were his exacting musical standards, which sometimes required numerous takes yet ensured that vocalists and instrumentalists alike met expectations comparable to those of classical performance, yielding polished recorded results. He also demonstrated exceptional skill with the limited synthesizers then available, crafting distinctive timbres that moved fluidly between classical and pop idioms.

Wayne devoted much of 1977 and part of 1978 to The War of the Worlds, assembling a cast that featured narrator Richard Burton, vocalists Justin Hayward, Phil Lynott, and David Essex, along with actress and singer Julie Covington. Accounts of the sessions indicate that minimal overdubbing contributed to the album’s impact; when Wayne traded phrases with Spedding or Partridge on synthesizer and guitar, or layered an intricate keyboard line over Herbie Flowers’ bass, the musicians performed simultaneously, capturing the music live in the studio. The lavishly produced and packaged double album—an arresting fusion of progressive rock, hard rock, classical elements, and literary references—achieved massive success in England, remaining on the charts for six years and becoming the best-selling English “soundtrack” release in a quarter century. Strong sales followed across Europe and much of the world, prompting a German-language version narrated by Curd Jergens. In the United States the album might have reached even greater heights when the single “Forever Autumn,” performed by Justin Hayward, gained substantial airplay and entered the Top 40 on that basis alone; however, delayed distribution of physical copies meant that by the time the record reached stores it had already begun its descent, resulting only in a substantial cult following rather than mainstream breakthrough.

The collaboration proved so rewarding for Justin Hayward that he enlisted Wayne to produce his subsequent solo album, Night Flight. Wayne also handled the score for the film McVicar, which starred Roger Daltrey. After several television-related assignments, he introduced his next large-scale conceptual work in 1992: a musical adaptation of Spartacus featuring Anthony Hopkins and singer Catherine Zeta-Jones. He further served as guest conductor with the London Symphony Orchestra, directing excerpts from his War of the Worlds score. In the mid-1990s the original album received a European remaster, and Wayne prepared a remixed and remastered highlights edition that incorporated new vocals and additional refinements.

Throughout the following two decades Wayne repeatedly revisited The War of the Worlds. Following the mid-1990s remixes, two video games based on the rock opera appeared, along with the remix collection ULLAdubULLA drawn from those game soundtracks. An attempted CGI film adaptation never materialized. In 2005, coinciding with the release of Steven Spielberg’s cinematic version of the original H.G. Wells novel, the album’s twenty-fifth anniversary prompted both a straightforward remaster and a seven-disc deluxe box set; both editions were promoted by a live tour spanning the next two years, during which the second remix album, ULLAdubULLA II, also surfaced. Amid this activity Wayne produced and scored the 2005 television documentary series The Book of Tennis Chronicles, yet he continued returning to The War of the Worlds. In 2012 he re-recorded the work with Liam Neeson assuming the narrator role originally performed by Richard Burton; the resulting album, titled The War of the Worlds: The New Generation, appeared late that year. He toured the new recording during the 2012 holiday season and subsequently mounted a farewell run titled the Farewell Thunderchild Tour over Christmas 2014. Two years later The War of the Worlds received its West End theatrical premiere in a production directed by Bob Thompson.