‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ at 50: What Was the Buzz?
The New York Times
The rock opera, with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice, opened on Broadway on Oct. 12, 1971, to protests, an irate composer — and sold-out shows.
It was the spring of 1970, and Yvonne Elliman, an 18-year-old singer and guitarist from Hawaii, had just finished performing at a London nightclub when a breathless young man rushed the stage.
“You’re my Mary Magdalene!” a wide-eyed, 22-year-old Andrew Lloyd Webber announced.
“I thought he meant the mother of God,” Elliman, now 69, said in a recent phone conversation, explaining that she had been unfamiliar with the biblical story. “He was like, ‘No, no, no, no, it’s not the mother, it’s the whore.’”
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