CHESS
Chess is a musical with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA, and with lyrics by Tim Rice. The story involves a politically driven, Cold War-era chess tournament between two men — an American grandmaster and a Soviet grandmaster — and their fight over a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other. Although the protagonists were not intended to represent any real individuals, the character of the American grandmaster (named Freddie Trumper in the stage version) was loosely based on Bobby Fischer, while elements of the story may have been inspired by the chess careers of Russian grandmasters Viktor Korchnoi and Anatoly Karpov. The concept album was released in the fall of 1984 while the show opened in London’s West End in 1986 where it played for three years. A much-altered U.S. version premiered on Broadway in 1988, but survived only for two months. (More from Wikipedia)
“Superstar”, with lead vocals by Murray Head, was released in late 1969 before the album Jesus Christ Superstar was even completed, much to the chagrin of MCA Records. (Head later recorded the main single from another Tim Rice production, Chess, called “One Night in Bangkok”, which came out in 1975).
(October 2014)
