Jeff Wayne’s life was invaded by Martians in the 1970s and the results were astronomical.

The composer released his musical version of The War of the Worlds 35 years ago and it blasted through the charts all over the globe.

And although the 70-year-old has announced the final arena tour of his H. G. Wells adaptation he is not saying goodbye to tentacles and heat rays just yet.

Jeff has secret plans to take The War of the Worlds in a ‘completely different direction’.

He said: “I’m very excited about where we’ll be taking it but the other part of me is the guy on stage conducting his own work.

“So it will be with a heavy heart because it has been an emotional and exciting period in my career and I’ve worked with so many amazing, talented people.”

It all started when Jeff’s dad, Jerry, handed him the Victorian sci-fi novel just before he went on tour with David Essex.

He instantly saw the potential and spent three months tracking down the agents representing H. G. Wells’ estate.

Jeff, whose album was given two Ivor Novello awards by Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Alfred Hitchcock, added: “They didn’t really know much about me as a musician.

“But the convincing factor was that I was the only one who had ever come along who wanted to keep it true to what the story was about which was a dark, Victorian tale against the backdrop of an alien invasion.

“Although H.G. Wells created this incredible story of imagination and vision he was really writing more of a social and political commentary and taking a pop at the expanding British Empire.

“His Martians with their tentacles was an analogy for the tentacles of power.”

The next step was to find a star.

Richard Burton was performing in a play called Equus in New York at the time and when Jeff passed him a script at the stage door he could not believe what happened next.

Jeff said: “Two or three days later I had a call from Richard’s manager saying he read the script, loves the whole idea of what you’re doing.

“His exact words were: ‘Count him in dear boy’. We struck a deal over the phone and that was it.

“I was dumbstruck. I wasn’t expecting any reaction much less something so immediate and positive.”

Richard died in 1984 long before the start of The War of the Worlds arena tours in 2006.

But that did not stop Jeff bringing the actor ‘back to life’ when a virtual Richard Burton was projected as a hologram.

Richard’s wife Sally wept as she watched the performance in Australia the following year.

Jeff added: “We caught up afterwards and she told me that she hadn’t listened to The War of the Worlds since Richard’s passing because it was too emotional.

“She didn’t know how she was going to react seeing, but also hearing, him in this performance but she was very moved by it.”

The War of the Worlds will come to Manchester Arena on November 30.

It is the eighth tour and the sixth in the UK and by the time it finishes more than one million people will have seen the sci-fi spectacle.

Jeff, who is also a keen tennis player, said: “It reaches the heart, it reaches the mind and we’re also reaching every age imaginable which I never would have thought when we started doing it.

“I look back now and we’ve even had 300 club versions done and if you stack them up and played them all it covers every beat and groove of club music that’s ever been done.”

Even Glastonbury Festival has had the H.G. Wells treatment when Pendulum performed The Eve of the War.

Jeff added: “We supplied the animation which included some of Richard Burton’s original visuals from our first tours and there were 70,000 or 80,000 people with their lighters all in time to the music.

“I never dreamed of that kind of acceptance. It’s reached a lot of different people in a lot of different ways.”

Among those who were inspired by The War of the Worlds musical was Star Wars actor Liam Neeson.

He followed in Richard Burton’s shoes by becoming the holographic journalist in 2012.

Jeff, who worked with Antony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta Jones on a musical version of Spartacus, said: “He told me part of his interest was the fact he bought the album on cassette when it first came out.

“Also as a new kid on the block at the start of his acting career one of the first things he did was a mini TV series and its star was Richard Burton.

“He used to stand on set and watch Richard work and listen to his voice so it was that connection.

“I think the baton has been passed to someone successfully with great merit and I’m thrilled that he now resides on a little hard disc and we take him out on every tour.”