Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar (Original Studio Cast Recording)
Is this a little different then the other albums I’ve discussed? Yes. Am I still discussing this 23-track rock opera like any other album? Yes. I decided to make this blog post to talk about the music of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, rather than the broadway show or movie. Furthermore, I don’t want to talk about just any recorded version of the show, I want to talk about the original studio cast recording feature the likes of Ian Gillan, Murray Head, and Yvonne Elliman.
Ian Gillan, the lead singer of early rock band Deep Purple, sings as Jesus in this recording, and I honestly think that no other rendition of this role has lived up to the performance that Gillan gave. His voice was already defining so much of the “rock” sound in the late 60’s that he gives each of song he sings an unmistakable feel. I think the harsh and raw emotion Gillian’s voice gives to this role is so fitting for the period of Jesus’s life in which the show is focusing on— i.e. the end of his life leading up to the crucifixion.
Ian Gillan
Murray Head, Judas, and Yvonne Elliman, Mary Magdalene, also have astounding voices with a similar grit to Gillan, making for a cohesive auditory aesthetic. Reviewing the amazing musicians that are apart of this cast reminds me why I’m so adamant about only listening to this recorded version. The talent on this specific version strays from the cookie-cutter broadway sound, which has a time and place but I think there’s something to be said for the way this album transcends a classic show-tune album and morphs itself into an art rock, concept album.
No matter how much I might want to, I could hardly talk about each track off this record. It’s 23 tracks long with an 87 minute total runtime and there’s so much going on, I find it hard to narrow my focus. However, after a considerable period of consideration, I’ve decided to talk about the following tracks: “Heaven On Their Minds”, “Pilate’s Dream”, “Damned For All Time/Blood Money”, “The Last Supper”, “Gethsemane”, “Judas's Death”, “Trial Before Pilate”, and “John Nineteen Forty-One”.
Yvonne Elliman
I think it’s important to note before I start that I have played the music of this show in its entirety. I sang as a gender-bended version of Judas along side another female Jesus in a run of strictly the music of this show. A group of musicians and I played it as an album, top to bottom, rather than performing it as musical which allowed me to play guitar, bass and key parts for the songs which I was not singing. Considering this, I like to think that I know the show inside and out, and have plenty of anecdotes to share along with my analysis, which I’m sure I’ll be doing plenty of.
My musician friends and I all agree, “Heaven On Their Minds” might be the hardest, coolest, and best way to start a show. It’s the second track of the show, after the overture, which is normally a cumulative composition made up of bits and pieces of the songs in the coming act. The song starts with one of the big motifs of the show, a guitar riff in Dm going D-D-D-Eb-C-D. The tone of the guitar is thin, yet heavy and distorted, paralleled with the bass playing the same riff underneath. Murray Head soon follows in on this intro with some very eerie vocals. Head on this song is singing to Jesus, trying to warn him about the stir he’s causing by claiming he’s the son of God. And, although I have a great admiration for trained broadway vocalists, something about the music of this show calls for raw, rock vocals, and Head definitely delivers that on this track.
Further into this song, we go into this funky 7/8 hit type part. It was always a tough little section for me and the folks I was playing with since it’s kind of out of nowhere, and the vocals really lead the drums, rather than the other way around. They’re playing more off each other than they are dancing together. But it’s a cool section, and it’s not long until you’re back to the steady rocking 4/4 of the rest of the song.
The next track I want to talk about is “Pilate’s Dream.” As one can conclude from the title, the song is about the infamous dream that Pilate has, depicting the downfall of Jesus, and the role he has to play with that. The song has these dreamy twin acoustic guitars, and personally, I’m a fan of twin guitars, anytime, any place, whether it be Heart or King Diamond or, of course, Jesus Christ Superstar. The guitars perfectly intertwine with each other, and it’s a little hard for the ear to pick out which guitar is doing what, which I believe is the intended purpose to achieve the dreamy, confused state that bewitches Pilate in this moment. It’s truly just a hauntingly beautiful track, it’s short, it’s different from the rock stuff, and it always really stands out to me.
“Damned for All Time/Blood Money.” It’s really the turning point for the show in terms of the action, and from here, everything is starting to go down hill— fast. Judas gives up Jesus’s expected location to Caiaphas, meaning that the plot to kill Jesus has been set into motion.
The soliloquied guitar solo in the beginning makes the piece unforgettable, the tone is really nasty and I will always have a memory of this song starting when we played it at shows because it’s just one of those nose-crunching kind of sounds that catch your attention. After this and a following soloed flute part, the song breaks into full I-IV-V, bluesy, fast tempo rock. I used to play bass on this song, it was always moving around, and the lyrics going on above the line are so interactive and desperate, so it’s easy to get into the groove of the song. There’s nothing theoretically difficult about this song, it’s really just about this fun rock groove. Of course there’s amazing musicianship, but that’s the truth for every one of these songs. During this song, Murray Head is really just running around questioning his morals in the most fun of ways— this song is incredibly memorable and just one of my favorites.
Murray Head and Yvonne Elliman
Next is “The Last Supper”— another rather big song. This song takes us through so many twists and turns and I chalk that fact up to how melodically driven this song seems to be. I’ve noticed that actually with most songs in this show. The songs here rely heavily on melodies and it’s not really about lush chords or harmony based motifs, and I can’t quite decide if that’s due to the fact that this is still a theater-based show and I’m judging it as if it was an album, or if that’s just the way Andrew Lloyd Weber decided to construct his compositions. Furthermore, when we analyze the time signature, we watch as it changes from 4/4 to 5/4 to 3/4 back to 4/4 and into this short cadenza-ish bit and then there’s a coda to the 4/4 part. To me, a constant change in meter is a sign that is emphasizing that the words, the plot, and the story are important here, and the band is simply working to support the singers on stage who are conveying the message.
Whatever the case may be— “The Last Supper” has one of the most memorable melodies tucked within a few parts of the song. The song starts off with that famous melody that is sung by the apostles. After that refrain is sung a few times, Jesus comes in with a haunting acknowledgement of his fate to come. I think structurally this part is interesting. It feels very obvious that the melody which Jesus is singing is driving the orchestra and band behind him, instead of the other way around. We can really confirm this idea when we look at the chord structure for this tiny chunk. The part where Jesus sings, “the end is just a little harder when brought about by friends,” the band is playing chords in quick succession that make sense structurally, but they just so obviously cling to the overlaying melody that the integrity of the chords them self is low. This is an observation, not a bad thing either, I think it’s interesting to see this pattern in
