For those not familiar with the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, it was a pretty ground breaking piece of work that was a big favourite of mine growing up on a Canadian military base in Germany in the 70's.
There were 2 versions of the opera that came out near the same time in the early 70's - one the official movie track and another version featuring a number of well known musicians at the time including Deep Purple's Ian Gillan. I didn't mind the movie track version but I was hugely impressed with the Ian Gillan version (sang as Jesus) - his voice to me is just absolutely perfect - far better, in my view, than any of the Deep Purple albums for which I also was a big fan.
A couple of years ago, I came across an album by Vanden Plas in which they sang a cover of one of the songs - a very good version - that led me go back to find the older Ian Gillan version and realized that, in spite of the 20 years, I found the opera to be as good as I remember.
Recently I came across another JCS cover tune by Queensrhyche - unfortunately I wasn't overwhelmed by the cover tune (nor by their other covers on the album). After coming across a number of references in metal music, I am starting to realize that the opera seems to still be inspiring to a number of metal bands particularly in Europe.
I am wondering if anyone knows of any more covers out there and if its been more of an inspiration than I thought?
(Note: This is not a post concerning religious music or such - as an evolution ecologist, I am ........)