The Arrest Lyrics — Jesus Christ Superstar

Song Overview

Review and Highlights

Quick summary

• Role and moment: The Garden scene detonates into a full-cast sequence: Jesus, Peter, priests, and a crowd that behaves like tabloid press.
• Where it lives: Core Act II number in Jesus Christ Superstar, heard widely through the 1973 film soundtrack and its 1998 reissue.
• What makes it tick: A collage of motifs, including a callback to "What's the Buzz," welded to a chant that marches the plot forward.
• Why it matters: It is the hinge from private devotion to public procedure - faith meets paperwork, and nobody leaves clean.

Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) - film soundtrack - not. Garden of Gethsemane sequence, around 1:06:15 in the film: Judas identifies Jesus with a kiss, Peter panics, Jesus shuts down the violence, and the crowd swarms in with jeering questions before the priests formalize the charge. The placement matters because it turns a spiritual climax into a media scrum, then into custody - a brutal, modern-feeling chain reaction.

Creation History

Webber and Rice write this cue like a director cutting between cameras. Instead of one melody developing politely, you get blocks: a sharp line from Jesus, a frantic reprise from the disciples, then a chorus that sounds like reporters who learned cruelty from a headline. The 1973 film soundtrack is a fresh studio recording separate from the earlier concept-album era, and the arranging hand of Andre Previn keeps the chaos legible: the pulse stays steady while the voices fight for the foreground. According to Billboard magazine coverage of catalog performance, the film soundtrack has remained a recurring chart presence across decades, which helps explain why this particular sequence is lodged in pop memory even among people who have never set foot in a theater.

Song Meaning and Annotations

Plot

The scene begins with the betrayal: Jesus calls out the kiss for what it is. Peter and the apostles tumble into panic, repeating the old catchphrase as if muscle memory can stop a squad. Jesus refuses the fight and tells Peter to go back to ordinary life. Then the crowd surges, turning the capture into sport: rapid-fire questions, mock bravado, and a forced march to the priests. Caiaphas pushes the core accusation, Jesus answers with a legalistic mirror, and Annas snaps the trap shut. The chorus ends the scene with its destination: Pilate.

Song Meaning

This number is a study in how power prefers theater. The authorities do not merely arrest a man; they stage a moment the public can retell. The crowd does not merely witness; it performs, demanding sound bites and mistakes. Even Peter, in his good intentions, falls into the same logic: he wants an action scene, a sword swing, something that looks like heroism. Jesus counters with a line that lands like a verdict: "Put away your sword." The meaning is not subtle - violence is the easy language in a crisis, and the show is daring you to notice how quickly everyone reaches for it.

Annotations

No formal annotations were provided for this track in the supplied notes, so here is the practical reading I have carried through many productions: the cue is built from three competing grammars of authority.

Put away your sword

That is a boundary, not a pep talk. The line rejects the comforting fantasy that righteous intent can sanitize harm. In performance, it works best as calm control, not pleading - a leader stopping a spiral before it becomes the story.

Tell me, Christ, how you feel tonight

The crowd speaks like a bad interview. This is the show at its most contemporary: public suffering turned into content. The questions are not seeking truth; they are setting up a narrative that makes the arrest feel deserved.

That's what you say

A brilliant little courtroom dodge. Jesus does not hand the priesthood a slogan they can quote as confession. He returns the claim to the interrogator, forcing the charge to stay on their lips, not his.

Genre fusion, rhythm, and staging tricks

It is tagged as rock for a reason: the groove is blunt, forward, and unsentimental. But it is also pure music-theater craft. Motifs reappear like recurring characters, and the crowd chant is written for bodies as much as for voices. The cue often plays with spatial sound - soldiers and ensemble closing in from multiple angles - so diction becomes part of the staging. If the consonants blur, the scene loses its sense of a net tightening.

Technical Information

• Artist: Jesus Christ Superstar Cast
• Featured: Ted Neeley, Bob Bingham, Kurt Yaghjian, Paul Thomas (billing varies by platform)
• Composer: Andrew Lloyd Webber
• Lyricist: Tim Rice
• Producer: Film soundtrack production credit line varies by edition; music direction credited to Andre Previn in major discographic references
• Release Date: June 26, 1973 (film soundtrack album date on major platforms); March 24, 1998 (25th anniversary reissue)
• Genre: Rock
• Instruments: Rock rhythm section, orchestra, massed vocals, spoken-sung passages
• Label: MCA (original release history); Verve/Universal catalog on some modern listings
• Mood: Tense, kinetic, accusatory
• Length: 3:16 (common streaming listings)
• Track #: 17 (common soundtrack sequencing)
• Language: English
• Album (if any): Jesus Christ Superstar: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
• Music style: Rock-opera montage with chant sections and motif callbacks
• Poetic meter: Mixed, with rapid question-and-answer blocks and repeated chant refrains

Questions and Answers

Who wrote this number?

Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and words by Tim Rice.

Why does the cue feel like several scenes stitched together?

Because it is. The writing treats the arrest as a montage: betrayal, disciple panic, crowd interrogation, and priestly procedure, all in one continuous rush.

What is the job of the "What's the Buzz" callback?

It is memory as pressure. The disciples reach for a familiar hook like a security blanket, and the show lets you hear how thin it sounds in a real crisis.

Why does Jesus refuse Peter's impulse to fight?

In dramatic terms, it removes the option of a heroic escape. The story must move from devotion to consequence, and the refusal makes that transition unavoidable.

What is the crowd doing, exactly?

They are treating the capture like entertainment: questions framed as accusations, jokes framed as certainty, and chants framed as justice.

What is the sharpest line for performance?

"That's what you say" because it is controlled and legally tricky, a refusal to give the interrogators clean quotation material.

Is this number more rock or more theater?

Both. The groove and bite are rock, but the architecture is theater: motifs, chorus function, and a plot machine that never stops turning.

Why is it effective even without a big melody?

Because the hook is action. The chant patterns and repeated questions create momentum, and momentum becomes the earworm.

Which characters carry the vocal weight?

Jesus and Judas anchor the dramatic spine, Peter supplies panic energy, and Caiaphas and Annas land the procedural finality. The ensemble is the engine.

Why does the cue end by naming Pilate?

It points the audience to the next arena of power. The arrest is not the climax; it is the handoff from street noise to state authority.

Awards and Chart Positions

This track was not issued as a conventional single, so its public milestones ride on the releases and productions around it. In the UK, the 1973 film soundtrack album charted on the Official Albums Chart with a documented peak of 23. In the US, the same album reached a Billboard chart peak reported in discographic summaries. The film also attracted major awards attention: as stated on Oscars.org, it received an Academy Awards nomination in the adaptation scoring category, and BAFTA lists the film as the winner of its Soundtrack award.

How to Sing The Arrest

This is ensemble stamina disguised as plot. You are switching gears constantly: intimate dialogue, shouted chorus, clipped questions, then priestly authority. Streaming metric sites commonly list the tempo around 88 BPM in 4/4, which is useful as a rehearsal anchor even if each production nudges it for staging.

• Tempo and feel (listing estimate): about 88 BPM, straight 4/4, with chant sections that must lock like a drumline.
• Key (listing estimate): often listed as G minor.
• Role map: Jesus and Judas are typically cast as rock tenors, Caiaphas as a bass, Annas as a rock baritone, Peter as a baritone (licensing vocal-requirement summaries).

1. Tempo: Start with a click at 88 BPM and rehearse the chant in monotone on one pitch. If the rhythm is not airtight, nothing else will feel safe.
2. Diction: Treat the crowd questions like percussion. Consonants are the groove. Keep the vowels short so the text stays intelligible at speed.
3. Breathing: Mark group breaths for the ensemble. Stagger-breathe the long chant blocks so the sound never collapses.
4. Flow and rhythm: For Peter and the apostles, keep the reprise lines light and urgent, not heavy. Panic is fast, not loud.
5. Accents: Save weight for structural words: "fight," "trial," "evidence," "Pilate." Those are plot signposts.
6. Blending: The crowd must sound like one organism. Match vowels across the section. If one singer goes too pretty, the chant turns into choir.
7. Mic technique: If amplified, keep the crowd close to the mic but controlled. The danger is distortion on repeated shouts, which can turn menace into mush.
8. Pitfalls: Do not rush the "procedure" moments with Caiaphas and Annas. The contrast is the point: chaos, then cold formality.
9. Practice materials: Drill the crowd text as spoken rhythm, then add pitch. Record a rehearsal take and listen for smeared consonants and mismatched vowels.

Additional Info

What I admire here is the cruelty of the craft: it is written to feel unstoppable. Even the crowd's humor lands like a weapon, because it steals dignity while pretending to ask for comment. Discography trails show how often productions return to this exact architecture. You can hear it in the 1996 London cast recording (later issued in remastered form), and you can hear it again in the 2018 live television staging, where the cue functions as a live-broadcast stress test: multiple principals, dense ensemble writing, and no room for drift. There are also language and regional catalog traces. A discography reference for the 1973 film soundtrack notes alternate-language title variants in its track listing, which underlines how portable the scene is: the mechanism of capture, mockery, and procedure translates too easily.

Key Contributors

Sources: Universal Music Group YouTube topic upload, Apple Music album and track listings, Spotify track listing, Official Charts Company album stats page, Oscars ceremony page (1974), BAFTA Soundtrack award page, AllMusic 25th anniversary reissue page, Billboard chart-beat report (August 6, 2025), StageAgent character range pages, Andrew Lloyd Webber Show Licensing cast requirements