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Jeffry "Jeff" Wayne, born in Forest Hills, Queens, New York, is a musician best known for Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, his musical version of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. Wayne has written approximately 3,000 advertising jingles in the 1970s which appeared on television in the United Kingdom, notably a Gordon's Gin commercial which was covered by The Human League. Wayne also composed numerous well-known television themes, including Good Morning Britain (TV-am), ITV's The Big Match and The World of Sport, BBC's 60 Minutes, and for 24 years, the UK's first news radio station, LBC. Wayne wrote feature film and documentary film scores and was musical director for various artists. Wayne published a book called The Book of Tennis and created, produced and scored eight thirty-minute episodes of The Book of Tennis Chronicles that was distributed by Fox Sports in approximately twenty countries, and was broadcast in the US on The Tennis Channel between 2005 and 2008.
Jeff Wayne was born on 1 July 1943 in Forest Hills, Queens. His father, Jerry Wayne, was an actor, singer and theatre producer who had a profound influence on Jeff's life, inspiring his love of music and tennis, and introducing him to H. G. Wells' book The War of the Worlds. Wayne studied classical piano from the age of five, learnt jazz piano and was taught tennis by his father. He spent four years of his childhood in the UK when his father played romantic gambler Sky Masterson in the original West End musical production of Guys and Dolls.
Four years later they returned to New York. Wayne graduated from Stephen Halsey Jr. High and attended Forest Hills High School for one year, and played for its tennis team, before moving to California. Wayne graduated from Grant High School, then from Los Angeles Valley College with a journalism degree. He played keyboards in local bands and coached tennis to support himself. After completing his journalism degree he switched to music, playing keyboards briefly with The Sandpipers.
In 1966, Wayne composed the score for his father's West End musical Two Cities based on Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities which ran at London's Palace Theatre. The musical was successful, winning for Edward Woodward the Evening Standard Award for Best Male Performance in a Musical for 1968-69. Returning to the UK, Wayne became a record producer and helped produce David Essex's album Rock On. Essex was a voice actor in The War of the Worlds, playing the part of The Artilleryman.
In 1978, Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds was released and achieved international success, including worldwide hit singles "The Eve of the War" and "Forever Autumn", with vocals performed by Justin Hayward in both. It won two Ivor Novello Awards and The Best Recording in Science Fiction and Fantasy, (the judges included Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Alfred Hitchcock)."The Eve of the War" was used by the offshore radio station Radio Delmare as its theme tune. The record was re-released in 1995 on audio CD; five tracks were remastered and placed on the second disc, mostly without Wayne's input.
After The War of the Worlds, Wayne continued to compose and produce music, such as the music for The Who's movie McVicar, released in 1980. Wayne composed music for the Fry's Turkish Delight advertisement in 1981, the theme for Good Morning Britain in 1982 on TV-am, and music for the 1984 album Beyond the Planets, Kevin Peek and Rick Wakeman's progressive rock recording of Holst's orchestral suite.
In 1992 Jeff Wayne released Spartacus, his first major release since The War of the Worlds. Its cast included Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta Jones, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and Marillion's Fish. It featured a libretto by Gary Osborne and a story combining powerful themes of oppression, desperation, love and death
In 1998, Jeff Wayne was involved in producing Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds, a computer game that included 45 minutes of music from his Musical Version of The War of the Worlds which was re-scored and remixed in an electronica style with techno beats.
In 2004, Jeff Wayne and Ollie Record Productions began work on a feature-length animated CGI film version of his musical version of The War of the Worlds, with a planned release date in 2007. The $48 million project used CGI and motion capture technology.
In the summer of 2005, The War of The Worlds was re-released. It spent ten consecutive weeks in the Top 10 of the UK Album charts. Including this re-release, the album achieved sales to 3 million in the UK, and approximately 14 million worldwide.
Also in 2005, it was announced that the musical would be going on a UK tour in April 2006. The live show was taken to Australia and New Zealand and returned the UK during December 2007. The show, produced by Damian Collier used a ten-piece band and a 48-piece string orchestra, voice actors, screen projected images and animatronics. Universal Pictures released a DVD of the show, filmed at Wembley Arena using 23 high definition cameras and directed by David Mallet.
Wayne's first television series, The Book of Tennis Chronicles, was broadcast worldwide in 2005 and distributed by Fox Sports. It features well-known tennis players and events, set against events in world history from 1877 to 2005. Wayne created and produced eight half-hour episodes and scored its music. The series' executive producer was Damian Collier.
Wayne is currently working on a musical adaptation of Jack London's novel, The Call of the Wild, but has said that it is unlikely that he will complete it until the War of the Worlds live stage production has finished. .
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