Too Much Heaven On Their Minds

I didn't grow up with musical theatre, which is another post in itself, and my love for theatre came gradually, with a few show pushing me along until a weekend in New York six and a half years ago tipped the balance. The first musical I discovered on my own that I actually liked was JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR when I was in seventh grade.

My parents, who are neither into musicals nor into rock music, somehow had the concept album of JCS on record. I don't know which of them had bought it in the early 1970s--both being practicing Catholics, it could have been either of them, since I assume the title is what caught their attention--but it was there in the study amongst my dad's folk music records. Back then, my sisters shared a room and we kept our one computer in the study, so I that's where I wrote all my middle school and high school papers. We had dial-up until the early 2000s (late high school for me), but even though the internet wasn't really a distraction back then, music certainly was. There was a whole stereo system up there (and still is, when that room was converted to a bedroom for one of my sisters), complete with CD, cassette, and record player, so I used to search through my dad's CDs and records when I wanted new writing music. In seventh grade, I was starting to get into rock and heavy metal, so I would look through his record collection in hopes of finding an album by The Doors or Jimi Hendrix. Instead, I found an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.

I don't remember why I tried listening to it--probably because of the title, since I certainly hadn't heard anything about it before--but when I did, I was floored. The only musicals I had heard up to that point were movies of a few Rodgers and Hammerstein (which were all right, but felt stuffy and unrelatable...except for THE SOUND OF MUSIC), HELLO, DOLLY (which I hated), Muppet movies, and Disney movies. JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR sounded nothing like any of those movies. It was rock music--early '70s rock, but rock nonetheless--and it put the gospels, which I had been reading my whole life, in an entirely new context. "Heaven On Their Minds" quickly became one of my favorite songs for how it concisely and beautifully depicted Judas as someone who did love Jesus, but whose concern for the bigger picture and persistence in viewing Him as simply another radical led to that Thursday night in the garden. I loved how it focused on Mary Magdalene and Simon Peter, two figures I'd always particularly liked for their sheer humanity. While I still don't really like "Gethsemane," I loved how the song gave voice to Jesus' doubt and reluctance to follow through with His crucifixation. And I loved how so many of the lyrics were directly from the Bible.

I was obsessed with that album, listening to it over and over every time I had to write a paper for school. I soon discovered that we had the movie version on VHS, which I loved for how deliciously campy it was. And for Carl Anderson's incredible performance as Judas (who honestly gets the best songs--I mean, "Heaven On Their Minds?" "Damned For All Time/Blood Money?" Seriously). Years later, when I was a freshman in college, I saw the tour with Carl Anderson a few months before he died. Seeing my favorite Judas in my first time seeing that show staged during Holy Week was tremendous. By that point, I'd also gotten the 1996 recording (with Zubin Varla, who I loved a Judas and would later love as Freddie in CHESS), and knew all the lyric differences between the tour, the '96 recording, the concept album, and the movie.

I don't listen to JCS that often, but I do listen to it every year during Holy Week, when I also usually watch the movie (and the video of the 2000 production). I have probably six recordings of JCS (my favorites are the '96 one for its completeness and for Zubin, and the Australian cast recording for its amazing, rocked out arrangements), which I cycle through during that week.

I'm much more of a Sondheim/LaChiusa fan now than a Lloyd Webber one (though there are some shows of his I love), but "Heaven On Their Minds" is still one of my favorite theatre songs--and once I started writing theatre myself, I realized just how complex that song really is. For one thing, there's no real hook. The structure is verse intro/AABAA/abbreviated A, but the As don't all share the same phrase--the same lyrical place to rest. Most, but not all the A sections start with "Listen, Jesus," but musically that's not a hook; it moves too fast and is too unresolved. That's pretty unusual, but it makes perfect sense given Judas' character and the tension he feels between his loyalty to Jesus and his deep concern that Jesus is attracting the wrong kind of attention. "I Don't Know How To Love Him" is a much more standard AABA song structurally and lyrically, with the hook in the first line of each A.

The other weird thing about "Heaven On Their Minds" (which is AWESOME) is the time signature. Most rock and pop music is in 4/4 (four beats per measure, with a quarter note getting one beat). Musical theatre songs are much more varied; A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC is largely in 3/4, for instance. But "Heaven On Their Minds" is in 7/8--seven beats per measure, with an eighth note getting one beat. Writing lyrics to a song in 7/8 is a little crazy; I can't imagine what learning a song in that time signature must be like.

And of course, there's a lot going on lyrically, as Judas switches from addressing Jesus directly to talking about him ("Table, chair and oaken chest/Would have suited Jesus best"). Judas moves from expressing his fear that if the other apostles knew Jesus really was just a normal guy, not the Son of God, they'd turn on him, to his concern that the Roman authorities will think Jesus is a revolutionary and crack down on them. It's an honest, harried message that, though misguided, is clearly well-intentioned. Which is probably the only way you can introduce Judas, whose name has became to basically mean "traitor" over the past two thousand or so years.

So today and tomorrow, I'll be listening to a lot of JCS, and probably watching the movie. It wasn't the show that addicted me to theatre, but it cracked open the genre for me, so listening to it (in addition to having Easter significance) reminds me who I write theatre for: those kids growing up without really knowing what theatre is. If one of my shows can do for someone what JCS did for me, I'd know I'd done my job.