Jeff Wayne is the composer and producer behind the 1978 album The War of the Worlds, his lavish musical interpretation of HG Wells’s classic tale of Martian invasion.
He has considered the possibility of life on other planets.
I like the concept of things being proven scientifically. So if you were to ask me things like, ‘is there life out in the universe somewhere?’, my answer would always be that it has to come back to science: fact and proof, rather than blind faith.
Though he’s actually not that into science fiction…
The stories I look for have to have a passion and a big canvas that can engage audiences. If you take away the fantasy of alien invasion, HG Wells is really taking a pop at the expanding British Empire. I look for the story, the thing that moves me; that’s why I’m hoping my next musical adaptation, Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, will emerge –if I can finally defeat these Martians and get back into it.
His genes are immeasurably superior to ours.
I lived in England for four years as a little boy. At that point my father was a singer and an actor in the West End. He was the very original Sky Masterson in Guys and Dolls, the romantic gambler played by Marlon Brando in the movie. He was a wonderful singer. And he was a national standard tennis player.
Serve-and-volley-wise, he’s a chip off the old block.
I actually studied journalism at LA Valley College but I tried to get into UCLA because they had the best tennis team in America. I was national standard, but they had people like Arthur Ashe, Charlie Pasarell… I wound up playing against Arthur Ashe. I played him twice and lost twice. The second time I took a set off him. I think he must have fallen asleep for a set.
He once scored a Findus advert directed by Ridley Scott…
It was turned into a song called ‘Gone Fishing’ and it became quite popular. Orson Welles was brought in to do the voiceover. The producer said, ‘You know, the way you’re saying ‘delicious?’ We think you could have a little more accent on that word.’ And this bellowing voice of Orson Welles came back: ‘So you want it to sound like ‘diddle-icious?’
When it comes to climate change, he thinks there must be some hope for us all.
As a species we’re in control of our own destiny. I believe that we can survive, we can achieve what we set out to do. Unfortunately there are those who are more on the bleak side, the destruction side – that’s
what makes up this world of ours.
