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What Webber and Rice seem certain of is that Christ was a profoundly humanitarian radical thinker, not unlike Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. Near the end of Superstar, the authors invite comparisons between radicals, old and new, using the voice of Judas, who appears this time as a kind of 20th century Everyman, not in a flashback, but in a 2,000-year flash-forward:
Why'd you choose such a backward time And such a strange land? If you'd come today you would have reached a whole nation. Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass communication.
Whatever the reaction to Superstar may be, Webber and Rice have fused words and music into such a convincing narrative style that rock may never be quite the same again. Webber's clever sounds and rhythms (such as Latin, soft rock, ragtime, Prokofiev four-step) not only do not drown out Rice's words, but actually show an awareness of their syllabic structure. Just imagine, listening to rock and understanding the words too. The musical depiction of Christ (Ian Gillan) is far too neutral to capture either a man or a myth. But Mary Magdalene (Yvonne Elliman) has been etched in melodically with Puccini-like tenderness, and the rollicking minstrel beat under the Apostles' chant, "What's the buzz? Tell me what's a-happening," is a Cakewalk of pure joy. The swinging gospel-rock music sung by Judas (Tenor Murray Head) brings him brilliantly to nagging, skeptical, near-paranoid life. Sound effects add to a building sense of drama: the listener hears the slap of 39 lashes over a satiric rock beat, as well as the noise of nails being driven into the cross.
Superstar occupies the same assimilative position in the pop world that Ginastera's Don Rodrigo does in serious opera. Webber and Rice do not outdo the Beatles or the Rolling Stones or the Edwin Hawkins Singers, Prokofiev, Orff, Stravinsky or any other musical influence found in their work. But they have welded these borrowings into a considerable work that is their own. Tommy (TIME, June 22) was the first, flawed suggestion that rock could deal with a major subject on a broad symphonic or operatic scale. Superstar offers the first real proof. William Bender