the war of the worlds (musical)

align="center" bgcolor="orange" colspan="3"\|Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds
lign="center" colspan="3"\|
lign="center" bgcolor="orange" colspan="3"\|Album by Jeff Wayne
lign="left" valign="top"\|Released	colspan="2" valign="top"\|1978
lign="left" valign="top"\|Recorded	colspan="2" valign="top"\|1978
lign="left" valign="top"\|Genre	colspan="2" valign="top"\|Musical
lign="left" valign="top"\|Length	colspan="2" valign="top"\|?? min ?? sec
lign="left" valign="top"\|Record label	colspan="2" valign="top"\|CBS Records
lign="left" valign="top"\|Producer	colspan="2" valign="top"\|Jeff Wayne
gcolor="orange" colspan="3"\|Professional reviews
gcolor="orange" colspan="3" align="center" style="color:black;"\| Jeff Wayne Chronology
br>(none?)	*The War of the Worlds* (1978)	*Spartacus* (1992)

Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds was a 1978 concept album by Jeff Wayne and others, retelling the story of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells.

About the album

The War of the Worlds starred Richard Burton as the narrator-protagonist, Justin Hayward (of The Moody Blues), and David Essex. Burton was recorded separately from the other actors, so when his character interacts with the others he sounds a little detached. "Forever Autumn", "Thunder Child", and "The Spirit of Man" were some of the individual songs. "Forever Autumn" also became a separate radio hit for a time. The repetition of "Ulla!", the sound of the Martians' Heat Rays throughout the musical and certain musical refrains pull the musical into a tight coherent whole. The official album comes with several paintings by Peter Goodfellow, Geoff Taylor and Michael Trim that help to illustrate the story from beginning to end. A special German version was also released in 1980 with Curd Jrgens taking the part of the journalist. A sign of the album's influence and enduring popularity is that the 1998 computer game based on The War of the Worlds (the original book) not only featured music from the album and Martian war machines based on the illustrations throughout the album booklet, but was actually called Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds.