I don’t exactly understand how Iron Man became the dominant superhero of our era, but the truth is, Spider-Man’s the greatest character that the Marvel people ever came up with, isn’t he? There’s a reason that the Tobey Maguire series of Spider-Man movies kicked off what has now become a glut of expensive movies about muscled mutants and extraterrestrials wearing colorful bodysuits battling one another for the fate of the city/world/universe/whatever.

There’s a reason we’ve had three movie versions of Spider-Man in just under two decades. Spider-Man was the first truly relatable superhero, because Peter Parker was an angsty kid growing up on the boulevards of Queens, learning to harness his phenomenal powers for good. Didn’t we all feel like our superpowers were a burden, once upon a time?

That’s what made Spider-Man the core character of the Marvel universe, and that’s the thing that drew Bono and the Edge and Julie Taymor to even consider putting together a Broadway musical about the webbed wonder (Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark) a decade ago, a production that was headline fodder for months for the many injuries that the cast members kept suffering.

Amazingly, that was not the first ambitious musical telling of the Spider-Man story. In 1975 Lifesong Records released Spider-Man: Rock Reflections of a Superhero, which told the moderately stressed-out story of Peter Parker and his tussles with Dr. Octopus, known as “Doc Ock” to you and me.

The music is credited to a band with the bland name of Hero, which in fact was a version of Crack the Sky, a West Virginia-based prog rock band that also made a splash on Lifesong Records the same year. 

One of the best things about the album is the back cover, which explains that many of our favorite Marvel pals are actually producing the music, with a lineup as follows: Black Panther on electric guitar, the Incredible Hulk on the drums, Power Man on bass, the Silver Surfer on keyboards, Captain America on “percussion” (polite term for tambourine), Thor on the trumpet, “Conan and the Barbarians” handling strings, and the Fantastic Four doing background vocals. Oh yeah, and the Falcon doing handclaps. Can’t forget the Falcon’s handclaps.
 

 
The best and most rocking song on the album is the opener, “High Wire,” which among other things addresses Peter’s frustration that “super-strength and fame ain’t all that they’re cracked up to be/‘Cause the only one that they don’t help is me.” As is almost necessary in the rock opera idiom, there’s not a little borrowing from the musical theater and especially 1950s doowop, and much of the album has its roots in folk.

Oh, and if you have issues with Stan Lee’s palpable overexposure—at the age of 94!—be aware that the album features several narrated bits read aloud by Lee, and they’re pretty bad.

How many musical treatments of the Iron Man story have they released by now? Oh, is it “none”? Spidey’s got two and counting…...

Due to YouTube’s recent re-design, there no longer seems to be an easy way to embed playlists, but you can access this playlist with the full album. Here’s the opening track, “High Wire”:

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘I thee web’: Spider-Man and Mary Jane get married at Shea Stadium, 1987
If Wes Anderson directed Spider-Man…