The musical Jesus Christ Superstar contains a single song not composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It’s called King Herod’s Song; the music is actually an older song called Try It And See. When was this song first published or recorded? How do the original lyrics go? To my ears it sounds like the song might be very old (1920s?).
“Try It and See” was composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1967 as an early version for what later became “King Herod’s Song.” You can hear a clip from the original version here. (On Disc 5, song #6.)
The Rik Mayall version in the most recent film version may be where the 1920s associations come from.
Andrew Lloyd Webber did write the music, you heretic 
The lyrics can be found on the tiretracks site. Click on “Song List.”
So help me, I want to see the Jack Black performance, which I guess wowed the L.A. charity staging of JCS.
I’d always been told that the song had to keep the name ‘Try It And See’ even though that title had no relationship with the lyrics in JCS, due to ‘copyright issues’. But… why?
I can see that - I think Jack Black would make a natural Herod with that song.
Well, I’ve just spent two hours watching the whole 2000 production for the first time one clip at a time on YouTube. Gotta get the DVD.
Way better than the theatrical movie, IMO, even without the Israeli settings. (I couldn’t stand Josh Mostel’s take on Herod- way too flamingly gay [Herod was a notorious lecher even in the Bible] and just too flippant- Mayall makes him debauched and ominous.)
Herod aside- I otherwise couldn’t stand the new version & wasn’t totally crazy except in a nostalgic sense for the old movie.
BUT, except for the unfortunate “What’s the Buzz?”, those songs will last forever!
The problem is Mayall can’t sing.
Are you kidding? That song has the best bassline of them all (at least, in the original studio recording). Listen to that song again with the bass turned up and tell me you’re not absolutely mesmerized.
I agree. I like Mayall’s acting choices, I just don’t like his voice, and his “fake it” singing is worse (even) than Mostel’s.
Pretty much everything else, however, I lurved in this version. Simon just blew me away (I read he later did the Judas role onstage in the show that this video became). I really felt more sympathy for this Judas than any other I’ve seen, stage or screen - I really felt like he was almost more in synch with the “point” of Jesus’s message than…well than Jesus himself, by this point! And of course more than the other disciples. His expressions during Simon Zealots’ number in particular - he was so WTF (as well as, “dammit, haven’t we gotten past this?”) at the violence, I really clicked with him. Just his whole, “We’ve got a good product here, we just need to refine the marketing and keep our heads low and not get killed so we can spread the word and make the world a better place,” attitude just really comes across here. This isn’t a man set out to destroy a man, but to save a movement.
It appears that a version of this tune with different lyrics was performed by Rita Pavone in 1969…a year before Jesus Christ Superstar was released. You can hear the original lyrics on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqnW-EHiTiM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9ALiADrJro
here you go