"READING MUSIC"
16th October 1999

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Michael reviewing the new book on Andrew Lloyd Webber: “Cats on a Chandelier” by Michael Coveney.

Interviewer:  Michael Ball, has anything changed your view of Andrew Lloyd Webber over the years?

Michael:  It certainly has.  I got to know Andrew through doing 'Phantom of the Opera' and doing 'Aspects', which was a very difficult period of his life.  The whole scenario with Sarah Brightman and Madeline coming onto the scene and that whole change.

Interviewer:  A whole lot of complication …

Michael:  Yeah.  A deeply unhappy man I think, when I first got to know him. His life has certainly become more stable, and a lot more gentle, for him.  He seems to be happier.

Interviewer: You mentioned 'Phantom' ofcourse and you mentioned 'Aspects' of course, because they were your own two connections with him, but 'Joseph and his Technicolor Dreamcoat',  'Cats', 'Starlight Express', 'Sunset Boulevard', 'Whistle Down The Wind' … plainly this man must be some kind of genius, but he's a very flawed genius too, isn't he?

Michael:  Yeah, I do think he's a genius!  Not just in his ability to write wonderful tunes.  I think that's part of it.  It's knowing who to get on board to help present those, how to present them, and how to keep them presented.  It's the whole package with Andrew.  And that's something that has developed.  You hear early on, it was definitely Tim Rice that was the frontman, the spokesman, the attractive bon-viveur.  And Andrew was very much the Backroom Boy.  But he learnt so quickly, how to give the sound bite, how to get a story into the paper to help promote a project or something.  That's one of the elements of his genius; he learns very quickly.

Interviewer:  I often think he's sort of the Woody Allen of the musical, of the stage musical, because he can do what he likes, even though a lot of other people don't like it, and get away with it.

Michael:  Yeah … I think he's far more popular than Woody Allen.  I mean, Woody Allen has a following that's quite small, but it's a core following. Andrew's is enormous, quite scary.

Interviewer:  Why is there such a lot of prejudice against him - is it jealousy?

Michael: Yeah, it's tall poppy syndrome, I'm quite sure.  It's also familiarity. Having been so succesful for so long with so many different projects, people assume he's almost invulnerable, so they may as well have a pop at it and won't approach any of the work that he does with an open mind.

Interviewer:  From your experience, has being a businessman clashed with his role as the creative genius?  I'll use that word once more.

Michael:  Yes, almost certainly yes.  He's able to distance himself from making purely artistic decisions to making business decisions, mix with the two and try to do the two.  It will undoubtedly influence the outcome of a show or anything he's doing.  No question.

Interviewer:  Some people can say that what he does is something of a circus. Let's hear "Oh what a circus" from ofcourse  'Evita'…

Michael:  Oh, WHATa link that! (laughs)

(‘Oh What A Circus’ is played)

Interviewer:  Michael Ball, let us come back to the man himself, you mentioned Tim Rice before.  Tim has obviously over the years changed HIS view of Andrew Lloyd Webber.  Owed a lot to him, and they owed a lot to eachother at the very beginning.  I suppose if you got him in a quiet room now he'd be even less polite than he is in his current biography, of Andrew Lloyd Webber.  What's behind that, do you think?

Michael:  One of the points that Michael Coveney makes in his book, is that the three core relationships Andrew has, and has had throughout his working career, are with Tim Rice, Trevor Nunn and Cameron Mackintosh.  And these relationships are almost like marriages. But they're not marriages - you don't stay together, then divorce and that's it. They're always back in each other's lives, one minute up, one minute down.  And you have to remember as well that these three also have worked together.  Tim and Cameron and Trevor and Cameron and Tim, and they've had their fallings out.  So this sort of quartet of 'artistic lovers' if you like, are forever falling in and out of love.  One thing that they DO all have, is enormous respect for each other.

Interviewer: You think so?

Michael:  Oh absolutely!  They couldn't not.  Andrew knows without Cameron he wouldn’t have had 'Cats' and 'Phantom'.  He knows that without Trevor he wouldn't have had 'Cats', wouldn't have had 'Aspects'.  Without Tim he probably wouldn't have had anything.  He wouldn't have started.  And they all know that as well, that without Andrew's superb talent they wouldn't be where they are, but there is a downside to it: having to deal with the mercurial moods, the strange going off on different tangents that is part of Andrew's character.  His need to discover, possess and control so many different aspects of his life and other interests.  You can't pin him down and they have totally different ways of doing their life.

Interviewer:  Michael Coveney obviously refers to the biggest charge of all against Andrew Lloyd Webber - that his music is very derivative, so some people say.  And he quotes examples of other composers',other songwriters' work you can hear in Andrew Lloyd Webber's work and says "'well, there's just so many notes and they're going to recur again".  And yet, come to 'Phantom', your big number in 'Phantom' … the opening bars are identical from the big song from 'Brigadoon'  (sings a few bars)

Michael:  Is it? (sings a few bars as well) There's an interesting chapter in the book about this.  They always say "where there's a hit, there's a rit".  All these different people are saying "I'm sorry-we claim WE wrote this before you'. There was one chap who said this about 'Phantom'. The 'Music of the Night song and he said "I sent this to Tim Rice and Elaine Paige, this song, you've obviously heard it, here's the date of when I sent it".  And that was a month later than he actually previewed the music at Sydmonton. There are only so many notes.  They are bound to be repeated and I think that Coveney makes that point very cleverly, that if you're surrounded by music, if melody is your life, if you're constantly trying to create these tunes in your head - things will overlap. 'Brigadoon' is probably taken from somewhere else, if you looked further back into musical history.  And it's there, and you can probably take it back to Purcell or something.

Interviewer:  Maybe it's all a question of Memory - another Andrew Lloyd Webber song:

(Memory is played)

Interviewer:  Michael Ball, let's talk about the business of making an Andrew Lloyd Webber show.  You  mentioned Sydmonton before, which is where he holds … the most incredible thing, once a year he does a public trial, well not a public trial but a trial for the people who count in these things.  And when we come back to 'Evita' … 'don't cry for me Argentina' released as a record before there was a show.  And there was 'Jesus Christ Superstar' which he released as a record and as a concert version long before it became a show.  Does that really work within the business?

Michael:  It's the best advantage you can have.  If you can get a public aware of music before a show opens, they want to go and hear the hit song.  That's why they'll buy a ticket.  They know they're going to like some of the music, they'll presume they'll like the show.  It happened with 'Aspects of love', 'Love Changes Everything' was the hit.  So box office receipts were increased.  That was something that I think happened by chance.  It happened because they were signed to record companies and writing, and they wanted to release this as a record.  And it wasn't until that was a hit that they became shows, with 'Superstar' and so on.  The whole process of taking a show from the page to the stage is different within every show that he's done, I'm quite sure.  The more control he's had, the more success he's had.  But when you think about 'Cats'- people take them for granted, 'Cats, oh yes absolutely well it's the longest running show, the most succesful show in history, made more money'.  He mortgaged his house to the hilt in order to do it.  Cameron took the biggest punt by putting it on.  They didn't know what they had. There was a bizarre show about cats with T.S Elliot's poems,  I wouldn't put a penny on it!  If I had I'd be rich, but the actual putting on of a show is another part of the business he gradually learnt, as well as being a tune-smith.

Interviewer:  If you look at what he did with Patti LuPone, fired her from 'Sunset Boulevard', Faye Dunaway, fired her from 'Sunset Boulevard' before she saw a member of the audience!  Gives the impression of him being a very cruel man, but I suppose on the other hand, he is taking a huge risk and is actually prepared to take that risk, to invest that sort of money and change a show halfway through.

Michael:  Yes, he's a very impetuous man.  He saw Patti doing Sydmonton and Meryl Streep's in the audience watching it, who was going to play the role, they thought she was up for it.  She gave the most extraordinary performance within that confine and being Andrew, that's the way he'll think, 'that can never be beaten, I want that on the stage'.  Now, it didn't work.  It wasn't quite the right casting.  And he was brave enough to say that.  His handling of people in those circumstances is questionable.  His motives are right, the social skills ought to be there, but they perhaps aren't …

Interviewer:  Is he a bit too clever by half, do you think?

Michael:  No, no!  He's impetuous and mercurial.  He will see something as being absolutely right, and if he finds out he's wrong later then he's absolutely wrong!

Interviewer:  But he can afford to be wrong, can't he?

Michael:  Yeah, bottom line is absolutely, he can.  But, having said which, with the Really Useful Company not making a huge profit and so on, he did have the courage to knock 'Whistle Down The Wind' on the head in Washington, rewrite it and put it on here and turn it into a modest hit.  That does take a lot of guts!

Interviewer:  And to choose Boyzone to sing for him in 'Whistle Down The Wind' is perhaps also another bright, clever, brave …

Michael:  A stroke of marketing genius if you ask me!

Interviewer:  Finally Michael, would you tell people to go and buy this book?

Michael:  Yeah, I think I would.  The strength of the book is the criticism of the shows.  The different styles, the different creative processes, all about the shows themselves.  As a study of Andrew's life it's fairly sketchy.  I don't think he knows Andrew any better than any of us do.  And I don't think anyone will.

(Boyzone sing ‘No Matter What’)