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Interview with Ted Neeley by David Bell for UnRated Film, Movies and Hollywood.

Ted Neeley isn’t just any musical theater superstar. He is THE superstar, originally cast as the title character in the 1973 classic film, Jesus Christ Superstar. The film celebrates its 45th anniversary in 2018, it’s all still surreal for the man with the golden throat.

“It’s overwhelmingly wonderful,” says Neeley, who is still performing the very role that catapulted him to superstardom almost five decades ago. “This movie has some sort of an impact on people, a spiritual impact. And they connect me to that. They’ll come to me and say, ‘you’re my Jesus.’ And instantly I say ‘I’m a screaming, rock and roll drummer from Texas who got lucky, I’m not Jesus, It’s okay.’ But the way they react to it, it’s a life-changing experience and this is all these years later.”

Neeley is referring to his humble beginnings in Ranger, Texas, a town of less than 2500 inhabitants located west of Dallas. “I had a rock and roll band when I was nine years old, well, if you could call it a band, we were just a bunch of kids farting around and stuff, you know? We were good enough as singers, but we were terrible musicians. But we all could copy people, singing, we were good enough that we were invited to play for every function in our hometown. So the bottom line is I had been singing all my life, and I just wanted to be a singer. I was playing drums and I was a screaming rock and roll drummer in a silly band. And so if we heard a song, one of us would sing it, you know?”

Known for his exceptionally wide vocal range (including those stratospheric high notes in “Gethsemane” that we all try to hit), Neeley has never actually had any formal vocal training.

“No I didn’t have any training. I was born and raised in a tiny town in Texas. There was no such thing as vocal coach. But I’d been singing since I was born,” says Neeley. “And so we were impersonating all the singers we heard. It wasn’t that any of us had any training, we just had an ability to sing. So those of us that could hit the high notes would do those, and the other four guys would do the parts of the bass or whatever.”

Neeley’s band eventually took their vocal prowess on the road, playing sets of cover songs in small clubs in California. At this point, Neeley was already showing his tenacity that would eventually lead him to be cast in the role of a lifetime. Of those early club gigs, Neeley stated, “People would come to the club any club we were in and they’d hear a song they liked on the radio and we’d play it. And if we didn’t know we said ‘well we’ll learn it and come back tomorrow.’ And so we were impersonating all the singers we heard.”

As Neeley developed his vocal style, people began to take notice. In 1965, Neeley and his band, The Teddy Neeley Five signed their first record deal with Capitol records. Four years later, Neeley was starring in the lead role of Claude in the Los Angeles and New York productions of Hair, where he worked with director Tommy O’Horgan. When O’Horgan was tasked with staging Jesus Christ Superstar for the first time on Broadway, Neeley got the call. But it was during his run as the title role in The Who’s Tommy that Neeley first crossed paths with director Norman Jewish (Fiddler on the Roof, F.I.S.T.) , who was in town auditioning actors for the Superstar film.

“I had read an article in the Hollywood Reporter that Norman Jewison was in town auditioning for the film Superstar. And I said oh my god, I gotta fix this. I didn’t have an agent or a manager, and I knew I had to get in touch with him. So I called the director’s guild in Hollywood and got his agent’s number at William Morris. Called William Morris, the agent talked to me nicely and I just said I’d like to invite Mr. Jewison–and I explained the circumstances that I couldn’t get out to go see him–to see this show and maybe he can consider that my audition.”

To Neeley’s surprise, Jewison agreed. “[The agency] called me back and said ‘yea, when would you like him to come?’ and I said ‘I don’t care, he can come anytime he wants. I just don’t want to know he’s in the audience because I’m going to freak.” As promised, he never told Neeley when he was coming. So imagine Jewison’s surprise when he attended a random evening performance of Tommy, only to find Neeley’s understudy performing the role.

“And as it turned out, Tommy was a very physical piece,” says Neeley. “They built the stage to look like a pinball machine basically. And they wanted me in that particular piece. So the choreographer decided that since I wasn’t a dancer, I could be the pinball. Literally. And I was bonked and pitched and thrown into the air. And some of the dancers in the show were like Schwarzenegger, but they could dance. Well one of those nights, one of the guys who was a muscle guy had been hurt the night before. His understudy was pitching and catching me, and we both misjudged one of those tosses, and I hit the floor and was knocked out cold.” As a result, Neeley was ordered by doctors to forego the evening performance.

“And that was the only performance I missed in the whole run of the show, and that was the show Norman Jewison came to see. And so he saw my understudy go on. And I didn’t find that out until the next day. From the agent, he says ‘where the hell were you last night? Norman came and you weren’t there,’” says Neeley. After explaining the situation to the agency, Neeley pushed for another meeting with Jewison to plead his case and at least apologize for the snafu. Jewison agreed to meet Neeley for lunch at a local diner near his hotel.

Neeley was ecstatic, but anxious. As he recalls, “I realized suddenly, ‘Oh my god, I’m gonna go talk to Norman Jewison about doing Jesus and I’m doing Tommy and I look like I’m 16 and I don’t have any facial hair.’ So I called a buddy of mine and said ‘can you come over here man and make me look like Jesus?’ And so came and he put the wig on me and he did the facial hair and all that.”

So there’s Ted Neeley, dressed like Jesus, sitting in a coffee shop. Waiting for Norman Jewison. But when Jewison finally arrived, he informed Neeley that he had already cast all the principal parts for the film.

“And my heart just fell out of my pants,” says Neeley. Ever the determined rock star, Neeley instinctively offered to pay for a screen test to audition for Jewison.

“With that he almost fell out of his chair laughing,” exclaims Neeley. “He said, ‘Do you have any idea how much a screen test cost?’ I said, ‘I don’t even know what it is, I just heard the term.’’ Jewison said he’d be in touch, and with that he was off to London to continue working on the casting process for the film, and Neeley was left wondering what might have been. As Neeley remembers, “I thought it was his very gentle way of telling me to get out of his face, so to speak.”

Three weeks later, Neeley got a call from Jewison, asking him to come to London to audition for the role of Jesus in the movie. As he recalls, one of Neeley’s first questions for him was, “Do you have anybody in mind for the role of Judas?” Neeley suggested his long-time friend and co-star Carl Anderson also be screen tested for that role, seeing as how they were both just weeks away from opening night of the first American tour of Superstar.

According to Neeley, upon their arrival in London Jewison exhibited his wry sense of humor by greeting both men and saying, “Carl the reason both of you are here is because this guy (pointing at me) won’t leave me alone. So I had to bring you here so he could get out of my face.”

Besides illustrating Neeley’s persistence, the story of the audition also displayed the depth of his friendship with Anderson, which is what ultimately landed him the role of Jesus. After he and Anderson were officially cast and filming began, they asked Jewison why he chose them to play the iconic parts.

“And he [Jewison] said, ‘Honestly, after we did all those screen tests, I was sitting down watching them, and there was something I saw in the two of you that I didn’t see in anyone else. There was an honest, human friendship…That’s exactly what I wanted to show in the film. And it’s not that the actors couldn’t create it, but you guys already had it. So it was a big plus for me as a director. AND it didn’t hurt that much that both of you could sing fairly well.’ So that’s how I got into the film, by accident. Literally, by accident.”

Ted Neeley of Jesus Christ Superstar

45 years later, Neeley is still performing the role live onstage around the world, with his latest adventure taking him through Europe.

“It started in 2014 in Rome. And I was contacted by the director/producer of the show itself, a man named Massimo Romeo Piparo who has a theater called Il Sistina in Rome, and it’s just a few blocks from the Sistine Chapel and it’s a magnificent live theater. And Carl was doing the show back in the 90s, and I was supposed to be there with Carl but I was involved with another project and we were creating a whole other show called Rasputin, and I couldn’t get away from that. Anyway, long story short I couldn’t go be with Carl which I will never forgive myself because that would have been an experience unheard of. But this man called and said ‘Ted we’re doing a fortieth anniversary special production of Superstar and I would love for you to come and play the role of Jesus. He said I’ll need you for a four-week rehearsal and a six-week run.’ And that was the plan. A Six week run in Rome. And we just entered our fifth year. Continuous. And that whole first year was in Rome. “

The show continued to tour through Italy, and eventually landed in the Netherlands. Neeley remembers the producer of that show warning that the reaction of people in Holland would be much more subdued than what he experienced in Italy.

But that wasn’t the case.

“Opening night, they wouldn’t let us off the stage,” says Neeley. “They were freaking out, screaming. Like they were watching Metallica play. And it’s been that way ever since, everywhere we’ve gone. And just recently we were in Spain and the same thing happened…and I can’t believe this, but it’s true. There were men falling on their knees crying and kissing my knees in the streets in Barcelona.”

And according to Neeley, this train isn’t running out of track anytime soon, as there is talk of taking the tour to the southern hemisphere.

“And now the people in Madrid—who took us to Madrid and Barcelona—they want to take us to South America. This show, exactly as it is. So if it weren’t for the men in Italy calling me and asking if I’d be in the twentieth anniversary [in the early 1990s], chances are I wouldn’t be doing any of this. See, because Europe now has a whole rebirth of the essence of the film. And this director says he’s the biggest fan of this film, so he pays tribute to the film in every possible way. It’s not like stealing the idea and doing something else with it. He gives you the essence of the film live on stage. And it’s the first time I’ve ever been in a live production of this show where we have the band on stage. So it’s really a rock opera.”

As for the film, its ongoing popularity is evident through its continuous annual airings on Easter, on channels like Turner Movie Classics, and in the sold-out sing-a-long screenings of the movie, led by Neeley himself. The next stop on that tour will be this weekend at the Hollywood Boulevard theater in Woodridge, Illinois from June 8th-10th. Neeley and long-time manager Frank Munoz co-created the tour after demand skyrocketed following the first screening at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood five years ago.

“It’s been something I’ve wanted to do forever but I wasn’t able to get any interest from universal nor the theaters I had spoken with. They all loved the movie but they all think ‘well there wouldn’t be anybody interested’ until Frank and I sat and started talking.”

As Munoz recalls, the theaters were initially hesitant that the show would sell, and so they asked them to do a double bill with Monty Python’s Life of Brian. With Superstar slated as the opener, the screening at the Castro Theater in San Francisco drew 750 attendees, almost all of whom left before Life of Brian even started just to stand in line and meet the man who played Jesus. It was at that moment that they realized they had caught lightning in a bottle.

“So Ted and I kept looking at each other going ‘well there’s something to this’ and lo and behold here we are five years later and we’ve done about close to 160 screenings around, across the country,” according to Munoz. “We’ve been everywhere from Seattle, San Diego, to Florida, to Massachusetts and everywhere in between. And the demand for us to keep coming back and playing this film is overwhelming, So that’s why we do it.”

Over the years, various other cast members have made appearances at the screenings, including Yvonne Elliman—who played Mary Magdalene—and the late Barry Dennen, who originated the role of Pontius Pilate. And because Dennen was a Chicago native, Neeley and Munoz have a special tribute planned for him.

“At the Hollywood Boulevard they have these little display cases and stuff of Hollywood memorabilia and stuff like that. So…we’re going to do a little display of Barry. Because of his connection to Chicago. And that’s going to be the first night, Friday [July 8]. Again, paying tribute to him. And Barry was at our first screening, in the Chinese Theatre,” declares Munoz.

In addition to the tribute, merchandise specifically related to him will be sold during the tour at Dennen’s request.

“He wanted the fans to have access to his merchandise—signed 8x10s, autographs. We are doing something called ‘The Barry Fund.’ And any merch that we sell of Barry’s goes into this fund, “says Munoz. “And his final resting place is in the Hollywood Forever cemetery. He’s literally two feet away from the original Toto, right near Mickey Rooney, right across from the resting place of Joey Ramone and Chris Cornell. It couldn’t be a better spot for him. And we do flowers every month. And we post it on Ted’s Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. And we get flowers from that fund. And we salute Barry every month. And we’re going to do that until the merch runs out. That’s how we pay tribute.”

As Neeley reflects on the film’s impact on people like Barry Dennen and the late Carl Anderson, he also acknowledges the role it played in forging his path as well.

“It’s overwhelmingly wonderful. And, if that’s not enough, when we were in Israel making the film, I met the woman who would be my wife. She’s a dancer in the film.” Neeley continues, “It gave me a life, it gave me a family, it gave me a future. It gave me recognition worldwide. And I could maybe understand it conceptually if it were a couple years after the film came out. But this. This is a lifetime since that film came out.”

Ted Neeley attributes his success to “being in the right place at the right time.” He credits very little to his own determination and drive. Perhaps a less humble assertion is that he puts himself in the right place at the right time. And this weekend, he is putting himself at the Hollywood Boulevard Cinema in Woodridge, Illinois for the opportunity of a lifetime: a chance to sing the score of one of the greatest musicals ever written, alongside a screaming rock and roll drummer from Texas.