When newspapers reported that the story would be told from Judas’s point of view, the record label found itself with an increasingly dangerous–and marketable–property on its hands. “Superstar,” released in November 1969, excoriated Christ for not arriving later, after the world had developed mass media to spread his message it was packaged in a simple white sleeve, with the promise of a forthcoming rock opera titled “Jesus Christ” but no identification of the character singing the song. The opera originated in a gospel-rock single that Rice and Lloyd Webber recorded with Scottish singer and stage actor Murray Head. The UnGala is back! Clic k here for the ticket link for this year's celebration at Epiphany Center for the Arts on Oct. Why–some might say it borders on blasphemy and sacrilege. The Pheasant Run production, directed by Diana Martinez, compromises Judas’s narration to make the show more palatable to conservative folk and waters down his searing rock numbers from the original score. But the last 27 years have brought fresh outrages, and the music that caused so much controversy has long since been overtaken by the celebrity culture it critiqued, absorbed into the ranks of suburban cabaret. Like Rice and Lloyd Webber’s Evita and Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard, Jesus Christ Superstar sets up an equation between fame and divinity–a decade before John Lennon’s murder, Judas was the ultimate disillusioned fan, selling his idol to the Man for 30 pieces of silver. “I decided for the opera to view Jesus in one dimension instead of two or three….Having put forth one interpretation of what actually could have happened, we then found many, many parallels and arguments that are very relevant today.”
“The idea of the whole composition is to show Christ through the eyes of Judas–and also to reveal Christ as a man, not a god,” Rice said in a radio interview at the time. We fought over who got to sing Judas: the protean one-string riff and Otis Redding chorus of “Heaven on Their Minds,” the frenzied, sax-driven MC5 ripoff “Damned for All Time,” the showstopping “Superstar.” Onstage Judas even got to hang himself like Alice Cooper.
Anyone could tell this was a new kind of gospel, with no miracles, no resurrection, and no promises, and Jesus (Ian Gillan, whom Rice and Lloyd Webber plucked from Deep Purple) shrieking at lepers and temple merchants as though he might at any moment tear into “Space Truckin'”: Come ow-n! Come ow-n!īut it was Judas who truly rocked. That didn’t appease Billy Graham, who declared that it “borders on blasphemy and sacrilege,” or the folks who picketed it on Broadway shouting “Read the book!” My devout Catholic parents always insisted that my brothers and sister and I treat it with respect, listening all the way through and reading the libretto, but still the album cleaved their collection of show tunes like Moses parting the Red Sea. Jesus Christ Superstar wasn’t always such a harmless bit of all-ages fun: MCA, which put it out as an album first, premiered the stage show warily in 1971, at Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York, with slide projections of religious art and a boozeless reception afterward.
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