Whistle Down the Wind (CD - 1999)

Principal cast: Marcus Lovett (The Man); Lottie Mayor (Swallow); Dean Collison (Amos); Veronica Hart (Candy); James Graeme (Boone).

Producers: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Nigel Wright.

Recorded at Whitfield Street Studios, London, England and Skratch Studios, Surrey, England.

Includes a 40 page booklet with complete lyrics.

Personnel: Chris Howard, Jean Reeve, Giovanni Spano, Carol Duffy, Phylicia Dyers, William Parker , John Turner , Adam Coleman, Jason McCann, Dean Collinson, Craig Parkinson, Vikki Coote, Hannah Cooper, Reg Eppey, Sara West, Ashley Andrews, Walter Herron Reynolds III, Zalika Henry, Paul Lowe, Anthony Cable, Jason Green, Jim Graeme, Tony Stansfiled, Laurel Ford, Nicolas Colicos, Marcus Lovett, Danielle Calvert, James Muir, Tosh Wanogo Maud, Lee Honey Jones, Ricki Cuttell, Dean Clish, Rohan Tickell, Veronica Hart, Rosalind James, Lottie Mayor, Jack Shalloo, Sam Gillam, Rhys Maxwell, Michael Samuels, James Nesbitt, Louise Claire Marshall, Mark Powell, Gerard Bentall (vocals); Andrew Holdsworth (guitar, banjo); Fridrik Karlsson (guitar); Dermot Crehan (violin, electric violin); Lorraine McAslan, Oliver Lewis (violin); Justin Pearson (cello); Andrew Findon (flute, piccolo, tenor saxophone); Jamie Talbot (clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone); Dave Lee (horns); Peter Adams (piano, keyboards); Katherine Rockhill, Matthew Hill (keyboards); Ralph Salmins (drums, percussion); Lee McCutcheon (programming).

Recording information: Skratch Studios, Surrey, England; Whitfield Street Studios, London, England.

Directors: Gale Edwards; Paul Garrington.

Photographers: Ivan Kyncl; Sasha Gusov.

The cover of the original London cast album of Whistle Down the Wind bears the names of its composer and lyricist in equal-size type above the title: Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Steinman. This marks the first time since Lloyd Webber's partnership with Tim Rice dissolved that a lyricist has been given equal billing on a musical with one of his scores, and perhaps not coincidentally, it's his best score in a long time. Steinman, most widely known for his writing and production work with Meat Loaf, puts his stamp on this music, not only in the forceful, rhythmic lyrics, but seemingly, on the music as well. It's easy, listening to such songs as "Tire Tracks and Broken Hearts," "A Kiss Is a Terrible Thing to Waste," and "Off Ramp Exit to Paradise," to imagine Meat Loaf or another big-voiced Steinman client singing them. In part, this is because Whistle Down the Wind is Lloyd Webber's most rock-oriented score since Jesus Christ Superstar. It's a shame that the composer has spent so much of his career writing watered-down opera pastiches since he's much more assured writing rock-styled music and '50s-ish pop melodies like the title tune here. Effective as the music is, however, Whistle Down the Wind remains an odd subject for a musical, which may help explain why it had trouble succeeding on-stage, with a nine-week 1996-1997 Washington, D.C., run closed down and a Broadway opening canceled before the show was retooled and began a long run in London on July 1, 1998. Based on a novel about a group of children in Lancashire who come to believe that an escaped convict hiding in their barn is Jesus Christ, it is essentially a character study with a spiritual tone and as such needs a delicate treatment like the one it got in director Bryan Forbes' 1961 film starring Hayley Mills and Alan Bates. Unaccountably, the setting has been relocated to rural Louisiana, and since the cast album is a two-CD set containing the complete version, the listener must sit through a lot of dialogue spoken by British actors, many of them children, trying unconvincingly to sound like American Southerners and playing out the unlikely plot. Lloyd Webber is such a mogul that the album has been released on his own label, which gives him the power to put it out in this format, but he would be far better served by a single-disc highlights album that collected all the best songs -- those already mentioned plus "When Children Rule the World" and "No Matter What" -- and left the story to the stage. ~ William Ruhlmann

The cover of the original London cast album of Whistle Down the Wind bears the names of its composer and lyricist in equal-size type above the title: Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jim Steinman. This marks the first time since Lloyd Webber's partnership with Tim Rice dissolved that a lyricist has been given equal billing on a musical with one of his scores, and perhaps not coincidentally, it's his best score in a long time. Steinman, most widely known for his writing and production work with Meat Loaf, puts his stamp on this music, not only in the forceful, rhythmic lyrics, but seemingly, on the music as well. It's easy, listening to such songs as "Tire Tracks and Broken Hearts," "A Kiss Is a Terrible Thing to Waste," and "Off Ramp Exit to Paradise," to imagine Meat Loaf or another big-voiced Steinman client singing them. In part, this is because Whistle Down the Wind is Lloyd Webber's most rock-oriented score since Jesus Christ Superstar. Based on a novel about a group of children in Lancashire who come to believe that an escaped convict hiding in their barn is Jesus Christ, Whistle Down the Wind is essentially a character study with a spiritual tone. ~ William Ruhlmann minimize