Before I get into the review itself I want to share with you the strange twilight zone I’ve been in over the last few weeks.

About 3 months ago when our illustrious leader mentioned this most influential albums thingy my first choice was easy, Jeff Wayne's War Of The Worlds. It was the first album I ever asked for, but more of that later. In the meantime I dug out the CD and, having not listened to it for several years and played it a few times to refresh the old memory. A week or so later my father-in-law says mentioned that he'd got an early Christmas present for me, a pair of tickets to see to the current live rendition of  War Of The Worlds doing the rounds. At around the same time I saw a posting about two new albums featuring John Payne and knowing my colleague Al Hay was a bit of fan sourced copies of those for review (but that’s another review or two coming soon). Knowing I was going to see the live War Of The Worlds I checked out their website and found, to my surprise, that Payne was playing the part of Parson Nathaniel original portrayed b the one and only Phil Lynott. And all of that only goes to show that there really is only the proverbial six degrees of separation between all things....

Anyway lets get back to this here feature, well to be more to be precise lets go back to 1978 when I was 8 year old school boy and had just gone through that most horrible of experiences, going from being an only child to a big brother. A new English teacher at school asked us to go to the music room one day, strange place for an English lesson it seemed but it all became clear when he played the first side of the War Of The Worlds album and set an assignment to write a war of the worlds inspired story. What I heard on that fateful day has influenced me ever since. I asked for the album as a Christmas present and duly received the LP, along with a record player to play it on and thus began a lifelong love of music.

If you’ve never heard the album you will have heard the opener (after Burton’s chilling spoken intro) The Eve Of The War somewhere as its haunting string arrangements have been used hundreds of times for thousands of reasons. Having read the book it was obvious that for the album Wayne had followed the original story very closely and the highlights included the smash ht ballad Forever Autumn, which featured Moody Blues frontman Justin Hayward and the track that got me into rock music, The Spirit Of Man - which featured  Richard Burton, Julie Covington and the one and only Phil Lynott. So impressed was I by Lynott's performance the next album I bought was Thin Lizzy's own Live And Dangerous effort. Add to the music some stunning art work and the large gatefold sleeve, the booklet that illustrated the important parts of the story and what you had was an album to out and out impress an eight year old searching for an identity.

And the rest as they say is history. Surprisingly after the impression Lynott made at such an early juncture in my life I never saw Lizzy with Phil Lynott as he passed away the day after my 16^th birthday. In fact the first live show I ever attended was by a little know Californian outfit featuring two ex-pat Dutch brothers and an hyperactive frontman who released their debut album the same year I got War Of The Worlds - oh an they were supporting some easily Birmingham band named after a dark Sunday. But that is yet another tale.

The recent War Of The Worlds live show only underlined how important the album was to this nascent music fan. Even thirty years after the event the music still moved me. The 10-piece band, 48-piece string orchestra, voice actors, screen projected images and even an holographic Richard Burton. The perfect amalgamation of sights and sounds. No wonder it made such an impression. In hindsight War Of The Worlds explains a lot of my current musical tastes, it’s variety and musical adventures mixing rock, pop, classical and electronic music to produce a sort of rock opera - and that's the best description I can come up with. That there was some very progressive overtones and the fact is a concept album to boot all explains my open-mindedness to all things musical to this day. And of course the contribution off one of my all time heroes, Phil Lynott, can only help....

Let us know your views on War Of The Worlds

Track Listing

The Eve Of The War
Horsell Common And The Heat Ray
The Artilleryman And The Fighting Machine
Forever Autumn
Thunder Child
The Red Weed (Part 1)
The Spirit Of Man
The Red Weed (Part 2)
The Artilleryman Returns
Brave New World
Dead London
Epilogue (Part 1)
Epilogue (Part 2)