12 October: Jesus Christ Superstar

On this date in 1971, Jesus Christ Superstar, the rock opera, was first performed on Broadway. 10 things you might not know about it:

1. The music was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and the lyrics by Tim Rice. The pair had already written a successful musical together: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat in 1968.
2. Despite this, the proposed show about Jesus Christ didn’t go down too well with prospective producers. One told Lloyd Webber it was "the worst idea in history." Undeterred, the duo decided to produce it as a two disc concept album instead. Which, they later said, turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The exercise of fitting their idea onto two records meant it was shorter, more streamlined and more contemporary than it would otherwise have been. The album was released in September 1970, and by February 1971, it hit number one on the Billboard charts. This meant that by the time it became a stage show, people already knew the songs.
3. Lloyd Webber has said in interviews that he can’t remember when the theme song first popped into his head, only that he promptly forgot it. He did remember, however, exactly where he was when the tune popped into his head again. He was walking along Fulham Road in London, near a restaurant called Carlo's Place. As it happened, the owner was an acquaintance of Lloyd Webber’s and so anxious not to forget the tune a second time, he went in and asked the owner for some paper to write it down. The paper he got was a napkin, so the song was first written down on the back of a napkin.
4. The ballad I Don’t Know How to Love Him was adapted from another song Rice and Lloyd Webber had written, called Kansas Morning. It’s also said to sound like part of Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor. While Lloyd-Webber didn’t purposely steal from Mendelssohn, he would have heard the tune growing up and admits it would have been absorbed into his brain.
5. Yvonne Elliman, who played Mary Magdalene on both the album and in the first Broadway show was discovered by accident. Lloyd Webber had gone to a club in Chelsea called the Pheasantry Club, to check out another singer who’d been suggested as a possibility to play Pontius Pilate. Having heard the man perform, Lloyd Webber decided he wasn’t suitable. Elliman, however, aged 17, was his warm up act, and when he heard her sing, he knew - “we had found our Mary.”
6. American theatre groups started staging unauthorised productions in theatres and churches. In response, an official Jesus Christ Superstar concert tour was arranged, starting at Pittsburgh’s Civic Arena on July 12, 1971.
7. The Broadway production was directed by Tom O'Horgan and starred Jeff Fenholt as Jesus, Ben Vereen as Judas and Bob Bingham as Caiaphas. Lloyd Webber hated the way it was done. “Never in my opinion was so wrong a production mounted of my work,” he said. In his opinion, it was a “brash and vulgar interpretation.”
8. Needless to say, the show offended a lot of people and religious groups in particular. Some Jewish people objected to the Jews being shown as responsible for Jesus's death and thus making them the bad guys. Some Christians denounced it, too, not least evangelist Billy Graham who declared it bordering “on blasphemy and sacrilege", his main criticism being that it didn’t tell the story of the Resurrection. “If there is no Resurrection, there is no Christianity,” he said. He did concede, however, that it might inspire some young people to pick up a Bible where they could read the Resurrection story for themselves. The show was banned in South Africa at first, because it was likely to offend religious groups. Even some secular groups denounced it, such as the British National Secular Society; and the Hungarian People's Republic banned it as “religious propaganda”. That said, the Vatican loved it, played the album on their radio station and declared it “a work of considerable importance.”
9. It has been adapted for the screen twice, in 1973 and 2000. Pope Paul VI was treated to a private, advance screening of the 1973 version. In 2018 it was adapted for TV with John Legend in the title role.
10. King Herod has been played by Julian Clary, Rik Mayall and Alice Cooper. Often a colourful character, but one Herod, who portrayed the King as a pink haired Elvis impersonator, was thought to have gone too far and was fired. His name was Richard O’Brien, and he went home in a huff, determined to write a rock opera of his own. The result was The Rocky Horror Show.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

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