By the late sixties, American musician and composer Jeff Wayne already had a West End score on his resumé. A native of Queens, New York, Wayne relocated to London after working on his father’s musical version of Charles Dickens’s A Tale Of Two Cities. But his regular gig was composing music for TV commercials and shows. Using an old-fashioned Moviola (a professional film editing machine eventually rendered obsolete by the VCR then digital tech), he matched his compositions to the rhythm and flow of raw footage sent by ad agencies. Working on a new TV commercial for Lego in 1968, Wayne studied the film of the now ubiquitous plastic construction toy to compose a suitable tune.
“It was a very acoustic, near-Simon And Garfunkel melody,” he says of the playfully whimsical Bookends-style folk-pop tune that perfectly captures the zeitgeist of the era. Even now it sounds ideal for a children’s toy advert. But despite using the same tune, it’s a million miles from the ballad conveying tragedy wrought by a Martian invasion of Earth that eventually became Forever Autumn.
