Of course, religious sorts had kittens over the whole thing from the start. Devout Christians howled in protest at Webber and Rice's blasphemous gospel, which puts Judas squarely at center stage and doesn't include the Resurrection. (Which is, after all, sort of the point of Christianity.) When the show opened on Broadway in 1971, religious groups protested en masse. A pamphlet put out by the Faith Free Presbyterian Church in Greenville, S.C., cautions the faithful to keep their distance from JCS:

"'Jesus Christ Superstar' is a conscious blasphemy against Christ ... If you do not wish to fill your mind with Satan's evil misrepresentation of the Son of God, you should avoid 'Jesus Christ Superstar' ... Tim Rice plainly stated that he did not believe that Jesus Christ was God ... His opera constantly drives home this denial of the Son of God. He has Mary Magdalene say, 'He's a man, he's just a man.'"

Ironically, it was that very possibility that led me and so many others to delve deeper into the scriptures. That, and the fact that Jesus was not merely a man but, you know, a total fox.

Sadly, my quest to have the Lamb of God for a boyfriend was never fulfilled, although I spent much of my teens hooking up with one scruffy longhair after another. None of them ever measured up to my first glimpse of Neeley's Jesus, although more than a few whined just as convincingly as Neeley does when He's asking God why He has to go through all this passion-play stuff anyway. Of course, my loser boyfriends were usually whining for blow jobs. But still.

As I've made abundantly clear, my personal JCS obsession has lasted for years. On a tipsy evening during a girly weekend getaway last year, I popped my own copy of the 1973 film into the VCR and, God help me, lectured to my bemused friends about recurring musical themes, pausing the video at key moments to pontificate.

I told them about how, in the early '90s, when a stage revival featuring some of the movie's cast was making its way around the country, I talked some editor or another into letting me do a story when the road show came through San Francisco. Of course it was all just an excuse to meet Jesus and Judas in person.

I ended up spending an enchanted hour alone in a room with Neeley and Anderson, drinking hotel coffee, nibbling stale breakfast rolls and babbling fan-girl nonsense. While my tapes of that conversation have gone missing -- for the best, no doubt -- I vividly recall that Neeley was wearing a deep-blue silk shirt with the top two buttons undone. A tuft of chest hair peeked out. I wanted to touch him but restrained myself, just barely. I told him how he'd made me feel sitting there alone in the dark when I was 12. He laughed, flashing blinding white teeth, looking all Jesus-y.

"I wish I could have come right down off that screen and sat next to you in the dark," he said soulfully. I swooned.

OK, I didn't actually swoon. But still. Holy shit. The Son of God was flirting with me.

In 1995, a group of Atlanta musicians got together to do a few performances of "Jesus Christ Superstar" both in their hometown and in Austin during the annual South by Southwest Music Conference. Of course I had to go, even though I didn't really have an assignment, as I'd just quit my job as music editor of an alternative San Francisco newspaper after it had been bought by an evil chain. But I wasn't going to miss the Indigo Girls doing JCS, damn it, so I cashed in some frequent-flier miles and headed off to Texas.

Ever the groupie, I talked to the project's organizer, Michael Lorant of the band Big Fish Ensemble, before I saw the show. He told me that he'd been into JCS since he was a little kid. In fact, as a Jew, it taught him everything he knew about Christianity. "I always identified with Judas," he confided. "Jesus, not so much."

The subsequent album -- "Jesus Christ Superstar: A Resurrection" -- which featured the Indigo Girls' Amy Ray in the part of Jesus and her bandmate Emily Saliers as Mary Magdalene, got decent reviews and raised money for gun-control issues, but for Lorant, who played Judas, the project was never about fame or fortune.

"Judas spoke out to me as very Jewish. He was misunderstood, a tragic character who didn't get a fair shake in history," Lorant said. "He did what he thought was for everyone's good, turning in someone he loved."

That night at the Austin Music Hall, a thousand of us watched, enraptured, as Lorant opened the show, taking his turn as Judas. This time out, Judas had long sidelocks and a yarmulke. And the part of Jesus, of course, was played by a lesbian folk singer in carpenter's garb, complete with tool belt.

As usual, I found myself half in love with her. Once they'd crucified her, just as they always do, and Ray came back out on stage for the bang-up climax, now dressed in blinding white overalls, I swooned all over again.

Call it my own version of a messiah complex, but there's something about me and the Son of Man. Even when He's a girl.

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