Description
Andrew Lloyd Webber And Tim Rice – Jesus Christ Superstar (The Original Motion Picture Sound Track Album)
Featuring: Murray Head – Ian Gillan – Yvonne Elliman – Mike d’abo
The 12 page libretto book & both the vinyls are in mint condition.
Label: MCA Records
Catalog#: MCX 502
Format: 2 x Vinyl, LP, Album. MCXS 5021 + MCXS 5022
Country: England
Released: 1973
Genre: Rock
Style: Classic Rock
Check all samples:Â www.allmusic.com/album/jesus-christ-superstar-mw0000056121
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Jesus Christ Superstar is a 1970 rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. 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.”
The albums story is based in large part on the Synoptic Gospels and Fulton J. Sheens Life of Christ, which compares and calibrates all four Gospels. However, greater emphasis is placed on the interpersonal relationships of the major characters, in particular, Jesus, Judas and Mary Magdalene.
The album reached #1 on the Billboard chart in 1971 and served as a launching pad for numerous stage productions on Broadway and in the West End.
Tracklist
A1 Overture 5:26
A2 Heaven On Their Minds 4:22
A3 Whats The Buzz 2:30
A4 Strange Thing Mystifying 1:50
A5 Then We Are Decided 2:32
A6 Everythings Alright 3:36
A7 This Jesus Must Die 3:45
B1 Hosanna 2:52
B2 Simon Zealotes 4:28
B3 Poor Gerusalem 1:36
B4 Pilates Dream 1:45
B5 The Temple 5:26
B6 I Don’t Know How To Love Him 3:55
B7 Damned For All Time / Blood Money 4:37
C1 The Last Supper 7:12
C2 Gethsemane (I Only Want To Say) 5:39
C3 The Arrest 3:15
C4 Peters Denial 1:26
C5 Pilate And Christ 2:57
C6 King Herods Song 3:13
D1 Could We Start Again Please? 2:44
D2 Judas’ Death 4:38
D3 Trial Before Pilate 6:47
D4 Superstar 3:56
D5 The Crucifixion 2:40
D6 John Nineteen: Forty-One 2:20
Notes
Conceived and created by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice.
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Main Players
Ian Gillan – Jesus Christ
Murray Head – Judas Iscariot
Yvonne Elliman – Mary Magdalene
Victor Brox – Caiaphas, High Priest
Brian Keith – Annas
John Gustafson – Simon Zealotes
Barry Dennen – Pontius Pilate
Paul Davis – Peter
Mike d’Abo – King Herod
Supporting Players
Annette Brox – Maid by the Fire
Paul Raven – Priest
Pat Arnold – Background vocals
Tony Ashton – Background vocals
Peter Barnfeather – Background vocals
Madeline Bell – Background vocals
Brian Bennett – Background vocals
Lesley Duncan – Background vocals
Kay Garner – Background vocals
Barbara Kay – Background vocals
Neil Lancaster – Background vocals
Alan M. O’Duffy – Background vocals
Terry Saunders – Background vocals
Choir conducted by Geoffrey Mitchell
Childrens choir conducted by Alan Doggett on “Overture”
The Trinidad Singers, under the leadership of Horace James, on “Superstar”
Musicians
Neil Hubbard – electric guitar
Henry McCulloch – electric guitar, acoustic guitar
Chris Mercer – tenor sax
Peter Robinson – piano, electric piano, Organ, positive organ
Bruce Rowland – drums, percussion
Allan Spenner – bass guitar
Other musicians
Harold Beckett – trumpet
Anthony Brooke – bassoon
James Browne – horns
Jim Buck, Sr. – horns
Jim Buck, Jr. – horns
John Burdon – horns
Joseph Castaldini – bassoon
Norman Cave – piano
Jeff Clyne – bass guitar
Ciclone – Saxophone
Les Condon – trumpet
Keith Christie – trombone
Alan Doggett – principal Conductor, Moog synthesizer
Ian Hamer – trumpet
Ian Herbert – clarinet
Clive Hicks – guitar
Karl Jenkins – piano
Frank Jones – trombone
Bill LeSage – drums
John Marshall – drums
Andrew McGavin – horns
Anthony Moore – trombone
Douglas Moore – horns
Peter Morgan – bass guitar
Chris Spedding – guitar
Louis Stewart – guitar
Chris Taylor – flute
Steve Vaughan – guitar
Mike Vickers – Moog synthesizer
Brian Warren – flute
Mick Weaver – piano, organ
Andrew Lloyd Webber – piano, organ, Moog synthesizer
Alan Weighall – bass guitar
Kenny Wheeler – trumpet
Strings of the City of London Ensemble
Jesus Christ Superstar started life as a most improbable concept album from an equally unlikely label, Decca Records, which had not, until then, been widely known for groundbreaking musical efforts. It was all devised by then 21-year-old composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and 25-year-old lyricist Tim Rice. Jesus Christ Superstar had been conceived as a stage work, but lacking the funds to get it produced, the two collaborators instead decided to use an album as the vehicle for introducing the piece, a fairly radical rock/theater hybrid about the final days in the life of Jesus as seen from the point of view of Judas. If its content seemed daring (and perhaps downright sacrilegious), the work, a “sung-through” musical echoing operatic and oratorio traditions, was structurally perfect for an album; just as remarkable as its subject matter was the fact that its musical language was full-blown rock music. There was at the time an American-spawned hit theater piece called Hair that utilized elements of rock music, but it wasn’t as unified a work as Webber and Rices creation, and it was less built on rock music than on pop music that referred to rock; Webber and Rices work presented a far sharper, bolder musical edge and pushed it much further and harder than Hair ever did. Serving as their own producers, the two creators got together more than 60 top-flight singers and musicians (including Chris Spedding, John Gustafson, Mike Vickers, P.P. Arnold, and members of Joe Cockers Grease Band, not to mention Murray Head, Ian Gillan, and Yvonne Elliman in key singing roles), and managed to pull the whole production together into a more than coherent whole that contained a pair of hit singles (the title track and “I Don’t Know How to Love Him”) to help drive AM radio exposure. Whats more, the whole album sounded like the real article as far as its rock music credibility was concerned — it was played good and hard for a studio creation. Released in America by Decca as a handsomely decorated double-LP set complete with illustrated libretto, Jesus Christ Superstar seemed to pick up where the Whos Tommy (also a Decca release) and Hair had left off, and audiences from across the age and cultural spectrum responded. Teenagers who didn’t know from Jesus, opera, or oratorios liked the beat, the hard rock sounds, and the singing and bought the album, as did parents who felt that the record offered a chance to understand some aspects of this youth culture around them, and especially its music — and so did some more forward-thinking clergy and theologians, who saw any opportunity to spread the word about Jesus where it wasn’t previously going as intrinsically good.
The result was a chart-topping LP followed in short order by a Broadway production and, a little later, a multi-million-dollar movie (oddly enough, the original double LP created barely a ripple in England in 1970 and 1971, though there was eventually a British stage production that went on to become what was then the longest-running musical on Londons West End). And all of this acceptance and embrace in America took place scarcely five years after an innocent observation by John Lennon concerning the relative popularity of the Beatles and Jesus, made in England but reported in the American tabloids, had led to protests and a media boycott of the bands music and their 1966 tour across the Bible Belt. Jesus Christ Superstar, by contrast, passed through the border and Southern states without any controversy, speaking volumes in the process about what had happened to American society in the interim. The original release was also the first “event” album of the ’70s, presaging a brace of generally less successful efforts in that direction, ranging from Lou Adler and Lou Reizners orchestrated version of Tommy (Pete Townshends rock opera basically blown up to Jesus Christ Superstar dimensions) to the soundtrack All This and World War II and Leonard Bernsteins Mass.
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