Yes, that ol’ rock opera from Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice. Mind you, I’m only talking about the original album, featuring Ian Gillan of Deep Purple as Jesus and Murray Head as Judas.
In light of the recent blog posts by several Quakers, including my dear friend Robin M., about their relationship to Christianity, I’m pleased to be able to start with this.
Why waste your breath moaning at the crowds?
Nothing can be done to stop the shouting.
If every tongue were stilled the noise would still continue.
The rocks and stones themselves
Would start to sing!
Hey-sanna, ho-sanna, sanna sanna hey, sanna hosanna
Hey JC, JC won’t you fight for me?
Sanna ho, sanna hey, Superstar!
When I was young, my parents were highly suspicious of rock music. When I was about five years old, my parents finally gave in to my two older sisters and bought two contemporary rock albums. Because of their suspiciousness, though, there had to be some redeeming content.
One of the two was Fragile by Yes. Rick Wakeman was trained as a classical pianist, and one song, “Cans and Brahms,” was influenced by classical music. So, the parental reasoning went, there must be redeeming social value. It wasn't until one very late and rather intoxicated evening in college some two decades later that I realized just how ridiculous a lot of the lyrics were; they had just soaked into the fabric of my mind, making them seem normal by their very familiarity. A more drug-addled, albeit pleasant, example of early 70’s overblown prog rock would be hard to find. I still listen to it from time to time.
It was a rock opera, which is a term from classical music, and it was about a religious topic, so it had two redeeming features!
More soon...
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