The Search for the Radio Times Lord of the Rings Art

In 1980/81 I worked and lived on an RSPB nature reserve, where in the winter evenings I listened to the BBC radio serial of Lord of the Rings in our cabin. Volunteers, hippies and punks gathered round the wireless to listen to Tolkien's tale.

It was a really wonderful production and fitted right into my Middle Earth craze at the time. I loved it.

I've loved all things Tolkien forever and remember seeing the amazing artwork connected to that BBC radio play, in particular this fantastic golden illustration on the big BBC box-set of cassette tapes that were released, one I still hope to own one day.

But here's a blog entry from Brian Sibley about searching for and eventually owning something much more unique, the actual original BBC and Radio Times artwork itself!

His story of how he tracked it down from the Radio Times is a truly fascinating tale. 

I hope you enjoy it on Brian's blog. I sure did.

https://briansibleysblog.blogspot.com/2021/02/cover-story-lord-of-rings-on-radio.html?m=1 

Things of Power

I was in two minds about The Rings of Power on Amazon. Episode 1 was an ice-breaker I guess. We had come to expect so much after Peter Jackson's two terrific trilogies.

As I've watched the next few episodes shown so far I have begun to enjoy RoP very much and now look forward to Fridays when it airs!

Wanting more Middle Earth, I've re-watched the Hobbit trilogy with the Missus. With the Hobbit set far in the future from Rings of Power you can still see the various pieces forming and moving round the table of Tolkien's earlier world.

I wonder if there'll be any toys?

I've also seen terrible reviews of Rings of Power too. Panning it. What do you think so far readers?

I Have The Power!

The Power of the Rings is Amazon's new big bash at serializing Tolkien.

It comes as another platform launches House of the Dragon so the battle for our fantasy subs is on.

As I have Prime I have seen the first two episodes of Power.

Like anything new about something you've grown up with it's always going to be odd to start with.

In screen terms for me The Power of the Rings is a prequel to Peter Jackson's definitive Lord of the Rings film trilogy from years ago. In that sense it's like A Phantom Menace et al after the glory of the first three Star Wars films. It was never going to be easy.

In literary terms I assume Power is Tolkein's Silmarillion and other older tales prior to The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings but I'm only guessing. Despite the Silmarillion being on my bookshelf for 45 years I've never read it. I did try as a teenager but found the style a bit stiff. I regret not going back to it when I was young.

I will wait until I've seen The Power of the Rings in full before I decide what I think. It comes out an episode or two at a time at the moment.

At a cost of purportedly a billion dollars the stakes are high for fantasy like this. I wonder if Peter Jackson is watching? 

Are you readers?

TREE AND LEAF

Maths today involved Stem and Leaf tables. The name reminded me completely of an old tome I have from my teenage years, Tree and Leaf.

Tree and Leaf is one of the lesser known tales from JRR Tolkien. Like Tom Bombadil and Farmer Giles of Ham it forms part of the wider Middle Earth mythos.

I think my paperback copy was published by Unwin. I imagine I got it at Sweetens bookshop in Preston in the late Seventies, along with the other stories I mentioned.

My copies of Lord of the Rings are battered things now. Three paperbacks I adored back then and read them ferociously wherever and whenever I could, even at my first job of paid work! I hid the book in the top drawer of my desk and pretending to scribble I had a sneaky read!

My Missus' late Grandma bought me a paperback copy of The Hobbit in 1980 for Christmas too and somewhere I've a biography by a chap called Humphries. The paperback Silmarillion too.

I still have some of the Athena Lord of the Rings posters, which are quite collectable now. Alas my beloved Athena woodblock picture of Gandalf has gone to Mordor as has my Bo Hanssen album inspired by the book.

With the school holidays looming I plan to re-read Tree and Leaf in the sunshine of the garden and like Bilbo at Rivendell relive those glory days of my youth and my absolute love of Tolkien back then.

Have you read Tree and Leaf readers? 

TOLKIEN'S HOUSE

I read today that JRR Tolkien's Oxford home, where he wrote Lord of the Rings, is up for sale.

It's on the market at £4.5million.

Various celebs and actors who starred in LOTR are clubbing together to create the start of a crowdfund to buy the place.

Their vision is to create a Tolkien centre for the study of his work and vision in the very place he penned them.

What do you think?

SPECTRUM HOBBIT

 

On one of my many missions into the depths of my our attic I found this I'd stashed away.

Its an old video cassette game for the 48K Spectrum. I picked it up years and years ago for the Hobbit connection and the artwork, which I really like.

Sadly the video game side of it completely goes over my head as the craze just passed me by. I've never played a Spectrum or any other computer game.

Have you ever played the Hobbit readers?

HORDE OF THE RINGS

Further finds from past moonbase squirreling include this box set of The Hobbit cassette tapes. Its a BBC audio book from back in the day, when cassettes were king.

It's its stablemate, the BBC radio-play of The Lord of the Rings from 1980 that I remember the most. It was a highlight of a winter evening in the volunteers' cabin down the Ouse Washes bird reserve, when I was a volunteer warden. There was no TV so the radio was important to me and my fellow wardens after a hard day's graft in the wet fen.

The BBC released the radio play as a 13 audio cassette box set, which had this really startling cover. I never got this but I did hear it on the wireless after all.

I can imagine Tolkein stuff being very collectable. Do you collect JRR?

BARBARA REMINGTON'S WORM

I saw this modern magazine cover online - above - Locus - and was immediately reminded of a an old paperback I've had in my book collection for decades. Since my late teens in fact.

The Worm Ouroboros

by E.R.Eddison

This wonderful cover with the encircling 'worm' was by artist Barbara Remington.

You will instantly recognise her style when you see it.

She did many Ballantine Books covers including Tolkien's Lord of the Rings like this one,

Amazingly Remington hadn't read the trilogy before she illustrated the covers!

Having said that, I still haven't read the Worm Ouroboros!

Have you any of Barbara Remington's cover art?

A GLIMPSE OF MIDDLE EARTH

I drew this on a stone in 1980.

LET THE FRAY BEGIN: MY TOP 5 HERALDIC ROCK SONGS

Continuing my theme of Seventies hard rock music I would like to share my love of a particular sub-genre, what you might call heraldic rock. This music is steeped in images from the worlds of myth and legend and in particular the paraphernalia of battles. Another name might be chivalric or battle rock.

Many rock bands crafted fine heraldic tracks and in particular songs about battles. These were often fused with a love of Tolkien, Knights, swords and sorcery, which were so popular in the Seventies.

Probably the greatest exponents of this were Wishbone Ash, whose dual guitar technique and sense of Arthurian legend, gave us most likely the single most heraldic of all Seventies rock albums, Argus, from which I have picked a track in my top 5 below.

So, without so much as a change of armour, I give you my top five heraldic rock tracks courtesy of You Tube [apologies for the pesky ads]:

5. Achilles Last Stand by Led Zep 1976

Although the title concerns Achilles, the famous soldier hero of the Trojan War, the song itself isn't directly to do with his battles. However, because the track is so musically dramatic I always imagine a battle scene of legend so it's included. At over 10 minutes its the first of several long players! [this slot could easily have been No Quarter by Zep 1973 as well]. Monumental.

4. Battle of Evermore by Led Zep 1971

One of several Zep tracks inspired by Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, this is by far the most acoustic of my top 5. With classic lines like "I'm waiting for the angels of Avalon, waiting for the eastern glow" and "the drums will shake the castle walls, the ringwraiths ride in black", its guaranteed to get you reaching for your sandals and spiraling your broadsword in figures of eight! Mordorian!

3. Wake Up [Set Your Sights] by Uriah Heep 1970

One of my all time favourite rock tracks from one of my all time favourite albums, Very 'eavy, Very 'umble by the utterly brilliant Uriah Heep, named after a character in Dickens' David Copperfield. Wake Up may not be about a battle but the line "Oh God, stop this killing, said a young man before he died" is sang so emotionally that it sounds like the plea of dying soldiers everywhere. Goosepimpling!

2. By Tor and the Snow Dog by Rush 1975

Things are hotting up now as we reach the summit. By Tor and the Snow Dog vied for the top spot when I started compiling this list as it is quite simply brilliant. From Rush's awesome Fly By Night album, By Tor described, both lyrically and musically, the battle between a huge mythical owl, By Tor, and a snow dog, which I have always taken to mean a white wolf. The song not only introduces us to fantastic words like "The Tobes of Hades", which when I was 15 I'd never heard of, but pits electric guitars against each other like no other track ever had or ever will. The growls and shrieks spilling from Lee's and Lifeson's frets are simply unforgettable. Magnificent!

1. Throw Down The Sword by Wishbone Ash 1972

And now to the top spot. Throw Down The Sword is classic Wishbone Ash and a swash of heraldic rock par excellence and perhaps THE defining moment of the sub-genre. In fact the whole of the album it appears on, Argus, could itself easily be seen as its crowning moment. With its cover image of an ancient helmeted warrior staring into the distance, Argus embodies that Seventies fascination with classical myth and legend, which bloomed at the tail-end of hippiedom. 

Throw Down The Sword is an elegiac cry for peace and pacifism, perfectly tapping into the decade's zeitgeist when counter-culture ruled and CND sponsored the Glastonbury main stage! Not to be confused with chucking out your Project SWORD toys [a bit like Brains in Thunderbird 6!], Throw Down the Sword inspired me to write my own Arthurian eulogy England is Sinking it Seems in 1978 and Sword is THE song I would like to sing onstage with the Ash! Here are the lyrics:

Throw down the sword,

The fight is done and over,

Neither lost, neither won.

To cast away the fury of the battle

And turn my weary eyes for home.

There were times when I stood at death's own door

Only hoping for an answer.

Throw down the sword,

And leave the glory

A story time can never change.

To walk the road, the load I have to carry

A journey's end, a wounded soul.

There were times when I stood at death's own door

Only searching for an answer.

*

Honorable mentions should also go to Queen's Ogre Battle and side 1 of Rush's concept album 2112.

What would your suggestions be readers?

SWORD OF THE RINGS

I am going through a second major Tolkien phase at the mo. The first was in my teens in the Seventies and the passion has never left me. 

Forty years ago when I was a teenager the only real way to experience the Tolkien was to read his books. There were a few records and radio recordings and a few collectables too. Later there were three animated films. Back then I was so smitten with it all my mates even nicknamed me Gandalf!

Now there's live action Jackson films galore and a whole shire full of precious merchandise. It seems odd to collect Tolkien at all, seeing as his books were largely about the perils of possession. But he did too good a job and the lure of the ring is too great to resist!

Tolkien collectables warrant a blog in their own right - there probably are orcs of them online. I'll stick to what I know and add a little elven spice to Project SWORD and co this year as I rediscover Middle Earth for the second time.

So, for my return I shall call myself - Gandalf the Silver [Surfer]! ha ha!

Anyone else like Tolkien readers?