Unmasked
“You have the luck of Croesus on stilts (as my Auntie Vi would have said) if you’ve had the sort of career, ups and downs, warts and all that I have in that wondrous little corner of show business called musical theatre.”One of the most successful and distinguished artists of our time, Andrew Lloyd Webber has reigned over the musical theatre world for nearly five decades. The winner of numerous awards, including multiple Tonys and an Oscar, Lloyd Webber has enchanted millions worldwide with his music and numerous hit shows, including Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera—Broadway’s longest running show—and most recently, School of Rock. In Unmasked, written in his own inimitable, quirky voice, the revered, award-winning composer takes stock of his achievements, the twists of fate and circumstance which brought him both success and disappointment, and the passions that inspire and sustain him.The son of a music professor and a piano teacher, Lloyd Webber reveals his artistic influences, from his idols Rodgers and Hammerstein and the perfection of South Pacific’s ‘Some Enchanted Evening,’ to the pop and rock music of the 1960s and Puccini’s Tosca, to P. G. Wodehouse and T. S. Eliot. Lloyd Webber recalls his bohemian London youth, reminiscing about the happiest place of his childhood, his homemade Harrington Pavilion—a make-believe world of musical theatre in which he created his earliest entertainments.A record of several exciting and turbulent decades of British and American musical theatre and the transformation of popular music itself, Unmasked is ultimately a chronicle of artistic creation. Lloyd Webber looks back at the development of some of his most famous works and illuminates his collaborations with luminaries such as Tim Rice, Robert Stigwood, Harold Prince, Cameron Mackintosh, and Trevor Nunn. Taking us behind the scenes of his productions, Lloyd Webber reveals fascinating details about each show, including the rich cast of characters involved with making them, and the creative and logistical challenges and artistic political battles that ensued.Lloyd Webber shares his recollections of the works that have become cultural touchstones for generations of fans: writings songs for a school production that would become his first hit, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat; finding the coterie of performers for his classic rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar; developing his first mega-hit, Evita, which would win seven Tonys Awards, including Best Musical; staking his reputation and fortune on the groundbreaking Cats; and making history with the dazzling The Phantom of the Opera.Reflecting a life that included many passions (from architecture to Turkish Swimming Cats), full of witty and revealing anecdotes, and featuring cameo appearances by numerous celebrities—Elaine Paige, Sarah Brightman, David Frost, Julie Covington, Judi Dench, Richard Branson, A.R. Rahman, Mandy Patinkin, Patti LuPone, Richard Rodgers, Norman Jewison, Milos Forman, Plácido Domingo, Barbra Streisand, Michael Crawford, Gillian Lynne, Betty Buckley, and more—Unmasked at last reveals the true face of the extraordinary man beneath the storied legend.
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
FIRST EDITION
© Andrew Lloyd Webber 2018
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Excerpts from ‘That’s My Story’ – Lyrics by Tim Rice, published by EMI Music Publishing Mills Music Limited and reproduced with the kind permission of Sir Tim Rice. Excerpts from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – Lyrics by Tim Rice © The Really Useful Group Limited. Excerpts from ‘Come Back Richard Your Country Needs You’ – Lyrics by Tim Rice, published by Novello and Company Ltd and reproduced with the kind permission of Sir Tim Rice. Excerpts from Jesus Christ Superstar – Lyrics by Tim Rice © The Really Useful Group Limited. Excerpts from Evita – Lyrics by Tim Rice © Evita Music Limited/Universal. Extracts taken from ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’, The Poems of T.S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems and ‘The Naming of Cats’, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot © Set Copyrights Ltd and reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber. Excerpts from Aspects of Love – Lyrics by Don Black & Charles Hart © The Really Useful Group Limited. Excerpts from The Phantom of the Opera – Lyrics by Charles Hart, Additional Lyrics by Richard Stilgoe © The Really Useful Group Limited.
Title page art courtesy of Bob King Creative Ltd.
While every effort has been made to obtain permission from the photographers and copyright holders of the pictures used in this book, the author and publishers apologise to anyone who has not been contacted in advance or credited.
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Source ISBN 9780008237592
Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008237622
Version 2018-07-09
For my fabulously un-PC Auntie Vi, most of whose
sayings I could not possibly share in 2018.
CONTENTS
4. A Whiter Shade of Something That Didn’t Taste Very Nice in the First Place
5. “Mr Lloyd Webber, Do You Like Cats?”
6. Enter Timothy Miles Bindon Rice
7. Teenage Operas, Pop Cantatas
8. Elvis with Mellotron and Tambourines
10. “Did Judas Iscariot Have God on His Side?”
11. Love Changes Everything, But . . .
14. A Bad Case of the Edward Woodwards
17. Driverless Juggernauts Hurtling Down a Hill
19. The Long Hot Summer and the Sound of a Paraguayan Harp
20. The Song that Cleared the Dance Floors
25. “This Artfully Produced Monument to Human Indecency”
26. Shaddap and Take That Look Off Your Face
28. “All the Characters Must Be Cats”
30. Body Stockings, Leg Warmers and Meat Cleavers
32. “The Most Obnoxious Form of ‘Music’ Ever Invented”
39. In Another Part of the West End Forest . . .
I have long resisted writing an autobiography. Autobiographies are by definition self-serving and mine is no exception. It is the result of my nearest and dearest, aided and abetted by the late great literary agent Ed Victor, moaning at me “to tell your story your way.” I meekly agreed, primarily to shut them up. Consequently this tome is not my fault.
I intended to write my memoirs in one volume and I have failed spectacularly. Even as things are you’ll find very little about my love of art which, along with architecture and musical theatre, is one of my great passions. I decided the saga of how I built my rather unfashionable Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian art collection belongs elsewhere. The dodgy art dealers who tried to screw me can sleep peacefully – at least for the moment.
This medium sized doorstop judders to a halt at the first night of The Phantom of the Opera. Quite how I have been able to be so verbose about the most boring person I have ever written about eludes me. At one point I had a stab at shoehorning my career highlights into a taut tight chapter, rather like Wagner brilliantly packs his top tunes into his operas’ overtures. This was a dismal failure. The only thing I have in common with Wagner is length.
