Elaine Paige & Barbara Dickson, ‘I Know Him So Well’: Hits in a weird niche

Elaine Paige, Barbara Dickson
‘I Know Him So Well’

Highest UK Top 40 position:
Number One on February 3, 1985

1. Nothing is so good it lasts eternally

It was November 1969, and one of the world’s biggest record labels was in trouble.

Decca Records had begun life as an American subsidiary of Decca Records in Britain, but it World War II had forced them to become two separate (and competing) labels. In the following decade, Decca USA not only eclipsed Decca UK, but became one of the biggest music companies in the world, thanks to a glittering roster of stars like Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. For years, they could boast of having released the world’s best-selling record, Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’. British Decca, on the other hand, were known as the guys who said no to The Beatles.

By the late 1960s, the tables had turned. Acts like The Rolling Stones had put Decca UK on top of the Swinging Sixties. Decca USA, now a subsidiary of MCA records, were surviving on their back catalogue. Their only major pop act was The Who, and The Who had just released an experimental rock opera called Tommy that, while commerically successful, seemed like a one-off event.

Every week, the label’s senior managers gathered to listen to their upcoming releases, and all would hope to find that much-needed hit. On this particular morning in November, the team were mostly focusing on ‘When Julie Comes Around’ by The Cuff Links, a manufactured novelty act masterminded by the guy responsible for ‘Sugar, Sugar’ by The Archies. They played it, and it was fine, but obviously not something that would save the company.

As they were leaving, a VP from the London office stood up to talk about a project he’d been developing in England. This project was a gamble, he said, but with the right strategy it could become a monster hit. He played the song for the slightly bemused audience.

Bemusement turned to shock when they heard the lyrics. The song was scandalous, possibly blasphemous. “If we put this record out,” said one voice, “every churchman in the country will stone us.”

When the VP explained the full plan for this project, his colleagues must have thought he was trying to get himself fired, or possibly sectioned. The song they’d just heard was from a concept album like Tommy, but it wasn’t from a famous band like The Who. It wasn’t by any specific band or artist. The project would be more like an original cast recording of a stage musical—except it was a musical no one had ever seen. In fact, the musical wasn’t even finished, and the two young British songwriters behind it had never written a full musical.

To top it off, the album would be called Jesus Christ.

Either he was very convincing or Decca were desperate, because the project went ahead. Just before Christmas 1969, American radio stations received copies of a track called ‘Superstar’. The chorus went like this:

Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ
Who are you? What have you sacrificed?
Jesus Christ Superstar
Do you think you’re what they say you are?

2. Looking back I could have played it differently

Musical soundtracks have been the one of the best-selling types of LP since LPs became a thing.

Billboard began tracking US album sales in 1945, with Nat King Cole topping the first-ever chart. He was deposed three week later by Song Of Norway, an original cast recording of a minor operetta, and one of the year’s biggest successes was the original cast recording of Roger & Hammerstein’s Carousel on 78rpm discs, issued by Decca.

By the end of the decade, musical soundtracks reigned supreme. South Pacific spent 31 weeks at the top of the album charts in 1949, a record that’s only ever been beaten by Michael Jackson’s Thriller (37 weeks) and West Side Story (54 weeks).

The 1950s saw rock’n’roll emerge, which was good news for Decca, who were home to Buddy Holly and Bill Haley & His Comets. However, the album charts were still dominated by musicals, with monster hits like My Fair Lady, Oklahoma!, West Side Story, and The King and I. Decca also kept up in this area thanks to releases like Guys & Dolls.

Musicals presented one problem for record labels, which is that you were always stuck waiting for Broadway to produce a hit. Now, if you were a business genius record executive, you might think, “What if the labels develop and record original musicals?” It’s a good idea on paper, but in practice it is extremely difficult to create something that can match the success of West Side Story (or even Song Of Norway).

One of the most notable attempts to create an original musical in the studio was 1959’s The Letter, a schmaltzy two-hander drama starring Judy Garland (who sings her parts) and John Ireland (who speaks his). Despite this high-profile cast, The Letter failed to make a significant impression. Part of the problem is that nobody was sure how to market this LP, or even how to describe it. Billboard magazine reviewed it in their pop albums section, but described it as a “musical narrative”, a term that raises more questions than it answers.  

By the 1960s, musicals were beginning to decline in popularity, while pop music was devouring the charts. A funny thing happened, which is that pop groups started making increasingly theatrical albums, with songs unified by a single theme or concept. The Beach Boys did Pet Sounds, TheBeatles made Sgt Peppers, The Kinks told the story of the Village Green Preservation Society. In 1966, Keith West of the band Tomorrow started working on a project called A Teenage Opera, which led to one hit single (‘Grocer Jack’), although the complete opera wasn’t released until the 90s. Psychedelia band Pretty Things released S.F. Sorrow in 1968, which is one of the first albums with a single narrative. It’s often described as the first rock opera.

All of this laid the groundwork for The Who’s Tommy in 1969, an epic story of sex, drugs, cults, child abuse, and pinball. Tommy sold 500,000 copies in the first few months, and The Who immediately began negotiating adaptations for both stage and screen. All of this was good news for Decca, but Tommy was a one-off event and they didn’t have a sequel lined up.

This is, perhaps, why Decca chose to take a risk on the Jesus Christ project—it was the closest thing they had to Tommy 2. Even then, not everyone was convinced that it was worth the risk. The person who’d found Jesus Christ was an Irish producer named Brian Brolly. Everyone began referring to the project as “Brolly’s Folly”. But Brolly had unshakable faith in the two young men driving the project: a pair of songwriters named Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

3. Isn’t it madness

Andrew Lloyd Webber was specially commissioned to write Britain’s entry to Eurovision 2009, but it wasn’t his first brush with the competition. In 1969, he and Tim Rice wrote a song called ‘Try It And See’ which intended for Eurovision, but failed to even qualify for A Song For Europe.

(To be fair, 1969 was a competitive year. Elton John & Bernie Taupin also submitted a track which was selected for A Song For Europe, but they finished last. The UK’s entry ended up being ‘Boom Bang-a-Bang’, which helped Lulu ride to victory.)

Webber & Rice’s biggest achievement was Joseph & The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, which still wasn’t a full musical. A cast recording of Joseph appeared in 1968 to glowing reviews, although no one was quite sure how to describe it. The Times’ music critic described it as a “pop cantorio”.

What Webber & Rice did have was a flair for self-promotion. Early in 1969, began work on a musical about Jesus, and whispers began to spread about how this would be the most scandalous, sacrilegious show in history. The rumours grew arms and legs until, by May, the Evening Standard was printing stories about how the show would star John Lennon as Jesus and Yoko Ono as Mary Magdalene, and it would be performed in St Paul’s Cathedral.

None of this was remotely true, but it opened doors for Webber & Rice, and soon they were given the resources to start recording. ‘Superstar’ was the only finished song they had, so all resources went into that. Murray Head, who was having a successful West End in Hair, sang lead vocals, with The Trinidad Singers backing him up.

(Webber & Rice also hired some top-tier session musicians. The most important one—and the real star of the record—was Alan Spenner, who created the song’s ridiculously funky bassline. Webber & Rice owe a large part of their success to Spenner, who had an impressive career until his untimely death at the age of 43.)

When ‘Superstar’ finally appeared as a single, the backlash was instant. Hate mail arrived in such quantities that Tim Rice was able to wallpaper his bathroom with angry letters. An American pastor threatened to sue everyone involved (including The Trinidad Singers) for $10,000,000 each. BBC radio banned the record; the biggest radio station in Arkansas banned all Decca records. Other religious leaders were more supportive, and some praised the song for bringing the Gospel to young people.

‘Superstar’ itself wasn’t a huge hit, but it did earn a lot of attention, and that’s what Decca needed if Jesus Christ was going to succeed. The album had cost an unprecedented $60,000 to record, and they needed it to be bigger than Tommy, if not bigger.

October 27, 1970, was the release party for the LP, which was now called Jesus Christ Superstar. Decca’s PR team organized a launch at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York, partly hoping that this might result in some angry protests (it did). The actual performance would be quite basic, just the LP playing over speakers and a slideshow to explain the plot. Decca filled the church with flowers to make it feel more spectacular, causing Tim Rice to ask, “Is this going to be a wedding or a funeral?”

It seemed like it was going to be the latter. Most invitees failed to show up. Webber & Rice watched nervously as their LP echoed around a half-empty church. The few attendees left quickly afterwards—the church wouldn’t allow alcohol, so they couldn’t throw the traditional boozy post-launch party. The whole event seemed like a disaster.

But it wasn’t. Reviews started trickling out in the next few days, and each was more positive than the last. Newsweek said it was “nothing short of brilliant”. Rolling Stone called it “extraordinary”. Billboard said “it was destined to become one of the most talked about and provocative albums on the pop scene.” Time Magazine said:

“Tommy 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.”

Jesus Christ Superstar was a massive hit. It went gold even faster than Tommy, and ended up becoming best-selling album of 1971. To date, it has sold seven million copies. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice had finally cracked the code on producing a successful original album musical.

Or so it seemed.

4. He won’t be mine

It’s bizarre, in some ways, that Jesus Christ Superstar didn’t kick off a wave of original album musicals. The 1970s were the peak era of concept albums, from Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway to Frank Zappa’s Joe’s Garage. The time was right for people to create more LPs in the style of Jesus Christ Superstar—big musical stories with a full cast, ready to transfer at stage but capable existing as standalone LPs.

And yet, they didn’t. Decca never got a chance to repeat Superstar’s success, as they were folded into their parent company a few years later. None of the other record labels seemed willing to even try.

There’s really only one other example of a successful original album musical: Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds (starring Richard Burton and David Essex), which has sold 15 million copies since its release in 1978. Musical artists have created some concept albums that went on to inspire other media (most notably Pink Floyd’s The Wall) but the idea of recording a full-cast musical in the studio before it appears onstage is niche, to say the least. When it does happen, it tends to be small-scale demo projects intended to secure financing for the bigger show, as happened with things like Jekyll & Hyde, Hadestown and, indeed, the original concept album for Joseph & The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

Here’s an example of how hard it is to pull this off. Lin-Manuel Miranda is probably the biggest contemporary star of Broadway, thanks to Hamilton, which is the best-selling cast recording of all time. Love him or hate him, the guy has something of a Midas touch. In 2024, Miranda launched his newest project, which was an original album musical based on cult 70s movie, The Warriors. The project had some amazing talent behind it, including original cast members from Hamilton and rap legends like Nas and RZA. Lauryn Hill herself appeared in the cast, playing the role of doomed gang overlord Cyrus. Despite this, Warriors was a flop. Nearly six months after its release, most of the tracks have under one million streams on Spotify.

Even Rice & Webber found it hard to repeat the success of Jesus Christ Superstar. They tried again in 1976 with an album musical based on the life former Argentine First Lady, Eva Perón. While Evita did manage to produce a UK Number One single in the form of Julie Covington’s ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’, the album itself had a mediocre performance and barely registed in America.

Evita was the end of Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice’s working partnership, and the last time Webber attepted an original album musical. His next project, Cats, went straight to the stage and started the ongoing craze for spectacular Mega-Musicals.

Tim Rice, however, wanted to have one more crack at an album musical. Andrew Lloyd Webber was gone, but Rice had two new collaborators ready to get onboard: Benny and Bjorn from ABBA.

5. In the end he needs a little bit more than me

Rice had been brewing one idea for many years. Back in the 60s, before Superstar, he’d wanted to write something about the Cold War. He’d considered writing about JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis, but this seemed too big. Over time, he focused on a smaller subplot of the Cold War—the rivalry between chess grandmasters Bobby Fischer and Anatoly Karpov.

If anyone was in a position to write songs about the Cold War, it was Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus. ABBA’s final years before their 1982 split had been one of pop music’s bitterest conflicts, filled with lies, jealousy and betrayal. They were in the perfect headspace to work on Chess.

All of the stops were pulled out for Chess. Benny and Bjorn worked exclusively on the project throughout 1983, bringing in some of the best musical collaborators to help create a piece worthy of their reputations. Lots of Tim Rice’s old pals got involved too, including Murray Head from the original Jesus Christ Superstar LP, Barbara Dickson, who sand on the Evita album, and Elaine Paige, who brought Eva Peron on the West End.

Chess appeared in November 1984 and was supported by a series of spectacular live performances in London, Paris, Hamburg and Stockholm, featuring the album cast and a full orchestra. The first single from the album, ‘One Night In Bangkok’, was a pretty sizable hit.

The album was not. It reached Number 84 in the UK charts, did slightly better in Europe, and was largely ignored in the States.

Things picked up in 1985 when Barbara Dickson and Elain Paige’s duet, ‘I Know Him So Well’, hit Number One in the UK and became one of that year’s bestselling singles. In fact, ‘I Know Him So Well’ is probably the biggest song to emerge from an original album musical, having massively outperformed things like ‘Superstar’ and ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’.

And yet, it wasn’t enough to rescue Chess.

The album did okay-ish after ‘I Know Him So Well’, reaching Number 10 in the UK and making the Top 50 in the States, but it was nowhere close to Jesus Christ Superstar levels of success, and certainly not what ABBA were used to. The stage version finally appeared in 1986, but this only seemed to make things worse, as most audiences found the story completely incomprehensible. The show was popular enough and ran for three years, but was dwarfed by other West End hits that emerged around this time, like Les Miserables, Miss Saigon and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s massive The Phantom of the Opera.

New dialogue was written for the Broadway transfer, making the show much longer but hopefully easier to follow. The new-look Chess 2.0 opened in New York in April 1988…and closed in June 1988 after fewer than 100 performances. To put that in a very annyoing context, The Phantom of the Opera went to Broadway a few months earlier, in January 1988 and closed in April 2023.

Maybe the moral of the story here is that Andrew Lloyd Webber is a unique genius, and only he knows how to make a successful original album musical (well, him and Jeff Wayne). If that were true though, Evita would have sold millions of copies and Cats might have appeared on vinyl before it appeared on Broadway.  

It’s more accurate, perhaps, to say that original album musicals are just a terrible idea. There are too many factors at play: there’s no existing audience; the recording budget is off the scale; the market for musicals is dwindling; the market for original LPs is dwindling even faster. You can pull them off as small-scale, proof-of-concept projects, but you’re not going to sell millions of records.

Jesus Christ Superstar, then, stands out as a freak event in pop music history. There’s no way to repeat it, even if you’re ABBA, and even if you have a song as strong as ‘I Know Him So Well’.

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