By Michael Coveney

The Last Supper, from "Jesus Christ Superstar."

The medieval mystery plays had shown the human side of the Passion. The more ambivalent, sexual connotations of "Superstar" were touched on in Nikos Kazantzakis's sensational 1955 novel, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (filmed many years later by Martin Scorsese with Willam Dafoe and Harvey Keitel as Jesus and Judas respectively), and in Pasolini's breathtaking 1964 black-and-white film THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW.

"Superstar" might well have been breaking down barriers, but it was also tuning into the zeitgeist. Even so, the album was not initially successful in Britain. "It was a stiff," says Andrew, and when he and Tim received a call summoning them to New York to promote the album, he had no idea what to expect. When they stepped off the plane on their second visit to New York to promote the album, in 1970, they were suddenly famous.

After Jesus' arrest, the crowd calls for his death.

They made a whistle-stop tour of major cities, including Los Angeles, CA, and Montreal, Quebec, where they participated in question and answer sessions on their rock opera. But Robert Stigwood, Lloyd Webber recalls, was the only producer sensible enough to send a car around and take them to dinner. They were delivered to Stigwood's New York apartment and ended up as part of his empire.

When Rice and Lloyd Webber arrived, another guest, who was secretly negotiating with Stigwood to join his company, was watching with interest from the sidelines. This was Peter Brown, close associate of the Beatles and their late manager Brian Epstein.

Brown was English suavity personified in New York, though his origins had been ordinary. A boyhood friend of Brian Epstein in Liverpool, he had become Epstein's personal assistant and a close confidant of the Beatles. Rice was impressed by Brown's presence at the meeting because of his Beatles' connections (Brown was particularly close to John Lennon), Lloyd Webber not at all.

Still, the deal went through. Stigwood recognized, says Brown, that the smart thing to do was not to pursue the theatrical rights on SUPERSTAR, but to seek the management rights.

Peter (Calvin Cornwall) confronts Judas (Pradon).

Thus, in an exchange for shares in an unweaned company and a cash advance against future royalties, Stigwood bought a 51% interest in Rice and Lloyd Webber, and the rights to 25% of their earnings over the next eight years. By making deals with himself as the management, he also in effect owned all rights to stage and film production of their works in the English-speaking world.

At the time, this must have seemed like a gamble, but it paid off handsomely. The SUPERSTAR album met with an ecstatic reception. TIME magazine identified a quasi-religious revival in pop music (citing Simon and Garfunkel's BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER and the Beatles' LET IT BE) and hailed SUPERSTAR as a modern day passion play that may enrage the devout, but ought to intrigue and perhaps inspire the agnostic young.

Concert performances were by now springing up all over America, and in February, 1971 -- as the album hit the top of the U.S. charts -- Rice and Lloyd Webber, with David Land, returned to New York to discuss strategies. Stigwood was tracking down these unlicensed performances and wiping them out with legal action. The rewards, as he owned the grand rights, would justify the costs.

It was Peter Brown's job to police the pirate productions, often with difficulty, as local judges were often disinclined to act against their neighborhood schools, even though money was changing hands at the door. One of the solutions Stigwood came up with was a tactic to dominate this market by putting out his own concert version, like a rock-and-roll tour.

The trial of Jesus (Carter) by Pontius Pilate (Fred Johanson).

Rice always preferred that concert tour version to any later stage production, but being on the road with his partner, he found, was a bit like travelling with a maiden aunt. "Of course, Andrew was married, and I wouldn't say that I was carrying on like Led Zeppelin. But if I went to a show on the road in America, or subsequently in Germany, there were always lots of lovely actresses hanging around, and it wasn't too difficult to have a nice evening and not check into your hotel!"

A few years ago, at a musical theater conference convened by the playwright David Edgar at Birmingham University, I inadvertently referred to the show as "Jesus Christ Superstore."

The critic Mark Steyn later observed that even Cameron Mackintosh would draw the line at such a concept, even though he "made a multi-million dollar marketing phenomenon out of that starving urchin girl from 'Les Mis,' and scored the third biggest-selling perfume in America with Esprit de Phantom (you too can have the sophisticated fragrance of a hideous misfit who lives in the Paris sewers)."

The crucifixion.

Steyn may well be right that "Superstar" laid the foundation for the global marketing of musicals that characterized the 1980s. But Lloyd Webber's first reaction to the Broadway production was to return to basics, strip away the veneer, and insist on an austere London production more suited to the rawness and simplicity of the work itself. And this fine new film version continues in that "back to basics" spirit.

Julian Lloyd Webber remembers the first opening night of "Superstar" in London for something his now world-famous brother said after a relative declared, "You must feel you've really done it now, Andrew." Andrew replied, "I shall never think that I've done it unless I can go into the record stores and see the shelves packed with the Greatest Hits of Andrew Lloyd Webber, like Richard Rodgers."

Julian knew his brother well, but even he was struck with the way he said this without a trace of emotion. "Writing one hit show for him [Andrew], if that's what it was going to be, wasn't going to mean very much. He wanted, even then, to be the best there had ever been."