By Geordie Greig, Editor Of The Mail On Sunday
PUBLISHED: 09:15 AEDT, 18 February 2018 | UPDATED: 11:05 AEDT, 18 February 2018
Andrew Lloyd Webber knows a thing or two about theatrical surprises but when Frankie Howerd gave him a lovebite he was caught completely unawares. ‘It did rather take my breath away,’ he says, sitting quietly in the foyer cafe of one of his London theatres.
The Grand Old Man of Musical Theatre nonchalantly delivers this first extraordinary revelation while discussing his memoir, Unmasked, which he insists he never really wanted to write. ‘I didn’t want to hurt anybody, but I wanted to be truthful. I particularly didn’t want to write anything that was dissing people, but wanted it to be relatively amusing.’
Well, his encounter with the former Carry On star more than ticks those boxes: ‘Frankie just lunged, bit me on my neck and said, “Take that home to your wife.” ’
For almost 50 years he has kept secret this #MeToo moment.
‘I was 23 and Jesus Christ Superstar was about to happen in London and I didn’t want to be remembered then as the man who complained about Frankie Howerd. So I said nothing. In the end I just thought he was a sad old man.’
On the cusp of turning 70, Lloyd Webber could not be more cheerful or optimistic as he relays this startling encounter. But he also reveals darker moments in his past: he has contemplated killing himself at least three times, most recently just three years ago.
Crippling health difficulties – prostate cancer followed by agonising back pain – took him to the very edge of endurance. ‘It was absolute agony and utterly despairing,’ he recalls. ‘I did think of suicide. It was so painful and I couldn’t sleep and you go on thinking about it.
‘You have all those ridiculous painkillers and none of them working and you just think, “I shall take the whole lot of them.” ’
It was a bleak temptation he had not experienced since his troubled teenage years.
As a very young boy at Westminster junior school, and uncertain of his place in the world, he had feared that he might never succeed as a songwriter. ‘I got quite depressed; it’s something that possibly affects artists. It was one of those moments where I thought everything had got on top of me. These things are illogical,’ he recalls.
He stole Veganin painkiller tablets from his parents’ bathroom cupboard, withdrew all £7 of his Post Office savings and bought aspirin from two different chemists, plus a bottle of Lucozade, and set off for what he planned to be a terminal journey on the London Underground.
‘I felt very alone at the time. It was pretty much at the end of the line, quite literally because I went to the end of the Central Line, but then took a bus to Lavenham,’ he says.
Miraculously, when he got out at Lavenham station, he was overawed by the beauty of the Suffolk market town (architecture remains a passion) and wandered around dazzled. ‘It sorted me out and I simply got on the train back. It was probably all started by the combination of not really feeling happy at home, wanting to get away from school … all that sort of thing,’ he said.
His second suicidal episode was in the 1960s when he failed the basic army test in the school corps and was accused of ‘sowing seeds of mutiny’. His troop commander punished him by stopping him going to a breakthrough appointment to have a song recorded, and Lloyd Webber plunged into despair again. This time he took an overdose of aspirin. ‘I woke to find a doctor’s face pressed close to mine, demanding what the hell I was doing frightening my parents like this.’
Such melancholic moments seem at odds with the most successful composer alive, whose success has brought him a string of West End theatres, the finest pre-Raphaelite collection in Britain, a glorious estate on the Hampshire/Berkshire border, and a back catalogue of songs to which the whole world taps their feet. On the whole, like his memoir, Lloyd Webber talks in fast, open bursts. Unmasked records a colourful London childhood with his bohemian family, most notably his ‘fabulously un-PC’ Auntie Vi, to whom the book is dedicated. An actress and a cook, she wrote the first gay recipe book – one chapter headed ‘Too many c*cks spoil the breath’.
She was a friend of Tony Hancock, who Andrew met while the comedian was trying to teach his parrot to say “F*** Mrs Warren” to the cleaner he despised. ‘A perfect introduction to the theatre really,’ he suggests.
The journey to stardom is lightly told – writing the main Superstar song on the back of a napkin after sharing his parents’ home with a monkey called Mimi (who hated him). He also partly credits the genesis of Cats to his ‘walking South Kensington with a Siamese cat called Perseus on a lead’.
He even takes some of the blame for being persecuted at school. ‘Considering I was smaller than the other boys, useless at sport, still played classical music and was the school swot, it’s not surprising I was bullied.’ He hints, too, at a relationship with his headmaster that would raise more than a few eyebrows in our hyper-aware age, and not only because it began over a shared bottle of claret, though that was deemed unusual even at that time. ‘I valued my time with him, even if it did sometimes mean sitting very close to him on his sofa.’
Indeed he credits another inappropriate incident – this time with a stranger on the Underground – with kick-starting his entire musical career. ‘On the morning in question a saddo tried to fondle me undercover of the tight standing crush on the Underground train.
‘I was too shocked to make a fuss. But I was furious, so furious that it gave me an idea that may be was big enough to call an epiphany.’ His reaction was to charge into the school and play six short piano pieces teasingly dedicated to the masters, causing amusement and uproar among the boys.
‘I was no longer the little school swot. I was Andrew, and I had become Andrew through music.’
The book describes the genesis of many of his best-loved works – Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Evita, Starlight Express – but this first volume stops after Phantom in 1986. Lucky for some, he thinks: ‘So the dodgy art dealers who tried to screw me can sleep peacefully.’
He remains ambivalent about his memoir and its repercussions. ‘I always want to do new work and not look back.’ But it was a cathartic process, none the less.
‘I kept asking questions of myself and I’ve never really done that before.’ That includes discussing the creative tension with his collaborator Tim Rice, who he teases for his unstoppable wandering eye for girls. ‘There have been quite a lot in his life and a few children as well, not that I can say that I haven’t any!’ (He has five children and has had three wives).
They met when Lloyd Webber was at school, with Rice being five years older. Just as Paul McCartney wanted his name before John Lennon so, we learn, did Rice with Lloyd Webber. ‘The fact is Lloyd Webber and Rice is easier to say than Rice and Lloyd Webber. Just as Sullivan and Gilbert would have sounded awful!’
And their tensions? ‘I think he will say that I was a nagging perfectionist and worried too much about the sound – a worrier by nature – and Tim was sometimes too much of an easy-going guy. He wouldn’t know what I was worrying about.’
Such perfectionism could lead to pique, and the composer is frank about his temper and tirades. ‘I’ve learnt to tame it now, but I always used to get very concerned in those days that theatre sound was terrible and orchestral playing wasn’t as good as it is now. When I started out there was some pretty ropey playing and pretty second-division players. I’d scream and say, “Look, we’ve got to make this better.” ’
But that was all then. Now, he is something of a changed man. For a start he has become teetotal and sold off an astonishing wine cellar.
He realised he was drinking too much and, four years ago, stopped completely. He shed two stone and now feels ‘101 per cent better, firing on all cylinders. The funny thing is that wine now tastes toxic like acid to me. I can’t touch it.’ The bags under his eyes disappeared and he embraced a new fitness regime, swimming almost daily.
His cancer scare was undoubtedly a traumatic experience that has made him a fervent advocate for all men to have prostate checks – one saved his life.
Almost as a joke he had kept an old set of blood tests, as he was amused that his liver was shown to be perfect even though he was then a heavy drinker. ‘I kept it by my bed with the intention of framing it and giving it to Madeleine [his third wife] for her birthday!
‘I had another blood test and I was flicking through to make sure everything’s normal and I looked at the prostate measurement and noticed that in eight months it had gone up staggeringly – like from two point something to six point six. It was 300 per cent up. I had a biopsy and it was cancerous. It was all a close thing as it was very virulent. They advised me to get it whipped out as soon as possible.’
The operation literally saved his life as the cancer had not yet burst beyond the prostate. ‘Prove the wretched cancer has not moved out of that prescribed area and then it is eminently solvable.’
It was just as he had turned a corner that he endured the appalling back pain which prompted those suicidal thoughts to return.
He believes that a chiropractor had stuck a needle in his side which nicked a vein that gave him sciatic symptoms. He had an operation on his back which he did not feel he had needed and his back prolapsed.
‘Then I ran into this extraordinary osteopath and he said I’m 99 per cent certain that I can get you back to 95 per cent and within three months he did,’ he says. ‘Very much thanks to Madeleine discovering what the cause of the whole thing was, it was sorted. She is absolutely a rock to everything in my life, and now hugely involved with the business.’
He is honest enough to admit he hasn’t always been a good or faithful husband. Andrew deals head-on with leaving his first wife, Sarah, with whom he had fallen in love when she was 17, marrying her when she was 18.
With success and money came temptation. An affair with a female teacher at his old school ‘was a distinct improvement on the master who had taken a shine to me’ but left him ‘devastated’ with guilt.
Not so devastated that he didn’t begin a subsequent affair with the soprano Sarah Brightman. Their relationship, he reveals, was sealed on a trip to Italy.
‘I loved the vicarious thrill I got from the waiters in our deserted hotel and of course I loved the sex,’ he writes candidly. In a bid to keep the marriage going, his wife even offered to turn a blind eye to the infidelity, but it was not to be. ‘I’m not the sort of person who can duck and dive,’ explains Lloyd Webber. ‘Besides, I was head over heels in love’.
It was the passages about his relationship with his first wife, Sarah, that he found hardest to write about. ‘There were several moments when I wondered whether to go on with this book and dealing with Sarah was one of them because I didn’t want to do anything that hurt her.’
As for Brightman, he is still misty-eyed about her voice. ‘There is something wonderfully fragile about it. Actually it’s very robust and an unusual musical instrument.
‘I find there are certain things of mine that she’s sung that nobody has done any better. Like a lot of performers she is really a gypsy, she likes going from place to place. I don’t think she wants to settle down. She is a slightly restless soul who is possibly always looking for something else to try.’
Certainly, their marriage was not without its well-publicised complications – including Brightman’s affair with a keyboard player. ‘We both realised as we became older that our life together would have been very difficult; she never could have coped with the kind of life that really began with Cats. She would say that now to anybody.’
In the end, though, it was Lloyd Webber who brought his second marriage to a close, having fallen in love with Madeleine Gurdon, a professional horsewoman.
‘A friend brought her round to Sydmonton [his country estate] which is how we met. I was asked to a huge amount of dinners and used to take Madeleine with me.
‘People started asking, “Who is this girl?” and I grew keener on her and she with me.’
She has been his wife for the past 27 years, bringing him a fulfilment he had almost forgotten existed.
‘When I met Madeleine it was almost like getting my life back; a door has been unlocked back into a world that I’d perhaps missed in the previous years – people outside the theatre. There is a world outside the Tony Awards and I think that’s what Madeleine brings to me.’
His life is blessed and he says he knows it. But if he had not hit the musical jackpot in the theatre? ‘I don’t think I would even have been number four in the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra because I don’t think I would have been good enough to get there.
‘I would be more likely playing in some bar somewhere.’
Unmasked by Andrew Lloyd Webber is published by HarperCollins on March 8 priced at £20. Offer price £16 (20 per cent discount) until March 25. Pre-order at www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640, p&p is free on orders over £15.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5404041/Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-reveals-planned-kill-himself.html
Friday, March 9, 2018
Monday, February 8, 2016
Robert Englund - Phantom of Manhattan
Okay. I know you’re dying to tell me. What was it about?
Well, the sequel took place in the buried train graveyards beneath the “Belle Époque” superstructure of the original subways that the sand hogs built many, many layers below the current subways of New York. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the urban legend of the “mole people”… You’ll see it occasionally on LAW AND ORDER or a NEW YORK CSI, but there are people that live beneath the warming grates and the subway vents of New York. There’s entire little societies down there. And in the sequel, they have me, the Phantom, having come from Europe and living down there, and composing down there in an old robber baron’s train car. And he’s served by all these homeless kids. Think “Fagin” in OLIVER TWIST. So, my children will go up and work this surface, and I would stay below, and occasionally foray into the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan. And once, while I’m going up, I hear a voice in the subway. Where the street performer’s play on the subway platform, I hear this voice. And, here’s the hitch, it’s a blind girl. The new Christine is blind. She’s Italian. Her name is Christina. Her father, think Gepetto in PINOCHHIO, even though it’s contemporary, we make him a new Italian immigrant to Am erica, perhaps Siciliano, and he accompanies her on violin, which is echoes of Claude Rains. Her voice is the perfect instrument for the opera I’m working on. Plus she’s blind, she doesn’t know what I look like. She just hears my soothing voice. So I school her and coach her. Well, she still has to play on the subways to make ends meet. Her father is killed by skinheads. I avenge her father… There you go. There you get your splatter quotient there… And then, at a decadent opera party that uses the subway trains for an opening night gala, they pull her station and they hear her singing. They discover her. She’s brought into the professional world of opera, and so my opera will never be made. Also, concurrently, they discover a physician who can correct her sight with laser surgery, so now she can see again. So now the third act is, Will the Phantom kill her? Will he kill the surgeon who restored her sight? Will he thwart her debut at the New York City Opera? Or, as it turns out, you see me sitting there in my box seat, with my face sewn together, and I listen to her perform, and that’s enough for me. And the last image is me walking down 5th Avenue in the snow with my footprints trailing. And I lift a manhole cover and go back underneath.
Wow. Can I see that movie now, please?
Exactly! And that’s what attracted me to do the film! I had a contract for a two picture deal! And that was going to be the backside. That’s why the Phantom that we did ended contemporarily in New York. So that we could bridge that. And yeah, it was a great script. Better than the first one. Phenomenal script. It had violence and sex and all of this wonderful Chaplinesque quality with the blind girl and her father. Just unfortunate that we never got that made.
Such a shame.
Interview at the link: http://www.upcominghorrormovies.com/shock/c13.php
Well, the sequel took place in the buried train graveyards beneath the “Belle Époque” superstructure of the original subways that the sand hogs built many, many layers below the current subways of New York. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the urban legend of the “mole people”… You’ll see it occasionally on LAW AND ORDER or a NEW YORK CSI, but there are people that live beneath the warming grates and the subway vents of New York. There’s entire little societies down there. And in the sequel, they have me, the Phantom, having come from Europe and living down there, and composing down there in an old robber baron’s train car. And he’s served by all these homeless kids. Think “Fagin” in OLIVER TWIST. So, my children will go up and work this surface, and I would stay below, and occasionally foray into the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan. And once, while I’m going up, I hear a voice in the subway. Where the street performer’s play on the subway platform, I hear this voice. And, here’s the hitch, it’s a blind girl. The new Christine is blind. She’s Italian. Her name is Christina. Her father, think Gepetto in PINOCHHIO, even though it’s contemporary, we make him a new Italian immigrant to Am erica, perhaps Siciliano, and he accompanies her on violin, which is echoes of Claude Rains. Her voice is the perfect instrument for the opera I’m working on. Plus she’s blind, she doesn’t know what I look like. She just hears my soothing voice. So I school her and coach her. Well, she still has to play on the subways to make ends meet. Her father is killed by skinheads. I avenge her father… There you go. There you get your splatter quotient there… And then, at a decadent opera party that uses the subway trains for an opening night gala, they pull her station and they hear her singing. They discover her. She’s brought into the professional world of opera, and so my opera will never be made. Also, concurrently, they discover a physician who can correct her sight with laser surgery, so now she can see again. So now the third act is, Will the Phantom kill her? Will he kill the surgeon who restored her sight? Will he thwart her debut at the New York City Opera? Or, as it turns out, you see me sitting there in my box seat, with my face sewn together, and I listen to her perform, and that’s enough for me. And the last image is me walking down 5th Avenue in the snow with my footprints trailing. And I lift a manhole cover and go back underneath.
Wow. Can I see that movie now, please?
Exactly! And that’s what attracted me to do the film! I had a contract for a two picture deal! And that was going to be the backside. That’s why the Phantom that we did ended contemporarily in New York. So that we could bridge that. And yeah, it was a great script. Better than the first one. Phenomenal script. It had violence and sex and all of this wonderful Chaplinesque quality with the blind girl and her father. Just unfortunate that we never got that made.
Such a shame.
Interview at the link: http://www.upcominghorrormovies.com/shock/c13.php
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Batman Triumphant
Proposals for fifth film
Batman Triumphant
During the filming of Batman & Robin, Warner Bros. was impressed with the dailies, prompting them to immediately hire Joel Schumacher to reprise his directing duties for a third film. Writer Akiva Goldsman, who worked on Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, turned down the chance to write the script.[36] In late 1996, Warner Bros. and Schumacher hired Mark Protosevich to write the script for a fifth Batman film. A projected mid-1999 release date was announced.[42] Titled Batman Triumphant, Protosevich's script had the Scarecrow as the main villain and the Joker would return as a hallucination in Batman's mind caused by the Scarecrow's fear toxin. Harley Quinn appeared as a supporting character, written as the Joker's daughter trying to kill Batman to avenge her father's death.[43] George Clooney, Chris O'Donnell and Alicia Silverstone were set to reprise the roles of Batman, Robin, and Batgirl.[44] Schumacher had also approached Nicolas Cage for the role of Scarecrow.[45] However, when Batman & Robin received negative reviews and failed to outgross any of its predecessors, Warner Bros. was unsure of their plans for Batman Triumphant. The studio decided it was best to consider a live-action Batman Beyond film and an adaptation of Frank Miller's Batman: Year One. Warner Bros. would then greenlight whichever idea suited them the most.[46] Schumacher felt he "owe[d] the Batman culture a real Batman movie. I would go back to the basics and make a dark portrayal of the Dark Knight."[47] He approached Warner Bros. to do Batman: Year One in mid-1998.[47]
Batman Triumphant
During the filming of Batman & Robin, Warner Bros. was impressed with the dailies, prompting them to immediately hire Joel Schumacher to reprise his directing duties for a third film. Writer Akiva Goldsman, who worked on Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, turned down the chance to write the script.[36] In late 1996, Warner Bros. and Schumacher hired Mark Protosevich to write the script for a fifth Batman film. A projected mid-1999 release date was announced.[42] Titled Batman Triumphant, Protosevich's script had the Scarecrow as the main villain and the Joker would return as a hallucination in Batman's mind caused by the Scarecrow's fear toxin. Harley Quinn appeared as a supporting character, written as the Joker's daughter trying to kill Batman to avenge her father's death.[43] George Clooney, Chris O'Donnell and Alicia Silverstone were set to reprise the roles of Batman, Robin, and Batgirl.[44] Schumacher had also approached Nicolas Cage for the role of Scarecrow.[45] However, when Batman & Robin received negative reviews and failed to outgross any of its predecessors, Warner Bros. was unsure of their plans for Batman Triumphant. The studio decided it was best to consider a live-action Batman Beyond film and an adaptation of Frank Miller's Batman: Year One. Warner Bros. would then greenlight whichever idea suited them the most.[46] Schumacher felt he "owe[d] the Batman culture a real Batman movie. I would go back to the basics and make a dark portrayal of the Dark Knight."[47] He approached Warner Bros. to do Batman: Year One in mid-1998.[47]
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Rocky Horror sequel set for London
Rocky Horror sequel set for London
27 November 2014 Last updated at 16:06
Richard O’Brien is to turn his flop sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show into a stage production in London.
Shock Treatment, originally filmed in 1981, was a satire of celebrity, with Rocky Horror characters Brad and Janet trapped in a sinister TV game show.
It was a commercial disaster - The Washington Post called it “ludicrous” - and it never gained a general release.
O’Brien has reworked the story for its stage debut, which will take place at London’s King’s Head Theatre in April.
“Shock Treatment has been waiting patiently in the wings for a stage premiere since the film was released in 1981,” said O’Brien.
“Just as Rocky began life upstairs at the Royal Court, it seems a perfect fit for Shock Treatment to start its stage life in the effervescent atmosphere of the astounding King’s Head Theatre.”
Before its DVD release in 2006, very few people had seen Shock Treatment. One exception was the BBC’s Mark Kermode, who called it the “perfect cult movie”.
“It’s arguable the soundtrack album is better than Rocky Horror,” he said.
“It’s also packed with cameo roles from people on the rise - not just Ruby Wax but Rik Mayall, long before he found big screen fame in Drop Dead Fred.
“But the best thing about Shock Treatment is it eerily predicts the rise of reality television,” he added.
Kermode’s opinion was in the minority, however. US reviewers lamented the loss of Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon, who played Brad and Janet in the original. and branded the film “tiresome” and “junk”.
“It’s a lesson for film-makers: You can’t force a cult film, they just happen,” wrote The Washington Post’s reviewer, Rita Kempley.
Shock Treatment is preceded at the King’s Head Theatre by the 21st anniversary revival of Trainspotting, which was first seen at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.
Other highlights of the theatre’s new season include a new play by Richard Cameron, The Flannelettes, and a revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore.
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30232106
27 November 2014 Last updated at 16:06
Richard O’Brien is to turn his flop sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show into a stage production in London.
Shock Treatment, originally filmed in 1981, was a satire of celebrity, with Rocky Horror characters Brad and Janet trapped in a sinister TV game show.
It was a commercial disaster - The Washington Post called it “ludicrous” - and it never gained a general release.
O’Brien has reworked the story for its stage debut, which will take place at London’s King’s Head Theatre in April.
“Shock Treatment has been waiting patiently in the wings for a stage premiere since the film was released in 1981,” said O’Brien.
“Just as Rocky began life upstairs at the Royal Court, it seems a perfect fit for Shock Treatment to start its stage life in the effervescent atmosphere of the astounding King’s Head Theatre.”
Before its DVD release in 2006, very few people had seen Shock Treatment. One exception was the BBC’s Mark Kermode, who called it the “perfect cult movie”.
“It’s arguable the soundtrack album is better than Rocky Horror,” he said.
“It’s also packed with cameo roles from people on the rise - not just Ruby Wax but Rik Mayall, long before he found big screen fame in Drop Dead Fred.
“But the best thing about Shock Treatment is it eerily predicts the rise of reality television,” he added.
Kermode’s opinion was in the minority, however. US reviewers lamented the loss of Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon, who played Brad and Janet in the original. and branded the film “tiresome” and “junk”.
“It’s a lesson for film-makers: You can’t force a cult film, they just happen,” wrote The Washington Post’s reviewer, Rita Kempley.
Shock Treatment is preceded at the King’s Head Theatre by the 21st anniversary revival of Trainspotting, which was first seen at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.
Other highlights of the theatre’s new season include a new play by Richard Cameron, The Flannelettes, and a revival of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore.
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30232106
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Andrew Lloyd Webber may head for Broadway after Stephen Ward flop
Andrew Lloyd Webber says he would prefer to produce School of Rock on Broadway because "it's much easier to cast children in New York than it is here"
By Anita Singh, Arts and Entertainment Editor
7:00AM BST 15 May 2014
Andrew Lloyd Webber may launch his next musical, School of Rock, on Broadway rather than in the West End because the US has more relaxed rules on child performers.
It would be the first time in more than 40 years that the impresario has chosen to premiere a show on Broadway.
Lord Lloyd Webber is working on a stage adaptation of the Jack Black film about a substitute teacher who turns his young charges into a rock band.
Britain’s stringent laws on child performers, which restrict working hours and necessitate the hiring of three or four actors for one role, would make the casting process something of a headache.
As a result, Lord Lloyd Webber said it was a “strong possibility” that US audiences will get first look at the show if it goes ahead – the first time that has happened since Jesus Christ Superstar in 1971.
“It’s much easier to cast children in New York than it is here,” said the impresario, adding that the “American subject” matter made Broadway feel a natural fit.
“You don’t have to do all this triple casting, you can cast them as if they’re adults and then you can have them for a six-month or a year contract if you want to, without these endless changes.
“And with a show that is so dependent on the children really being able to play, I think that’s important.”
Lord Lloyd Webber acquired the stage rights to the show and recently took delivery of the script. The children’s stories will play a greater role than they did in the film, which concentrated on Jack Black’s character.
“It has to be a bit more rounded. I’d quite like to know more about the children and their parents than I do from the film,” he said.
He plans to spend the summer working on the songs before deciding if the show will definitely go ahead. If it does, it will open at 2016 at the earliest.
Some of the original songs from the film will be retained but 'you can’t do heavy metal for hours and hours in the theatre – everyone would be screaming. So they have to be theatrical songs too. And we’ve obviously got to use the iconic songs from the original show. It would be a shame not to do a Stevie Nicks song.”
He added the proviso that the show is not a dead cert. "I may just pass on it if I feel it isn't working," he said.
Lord Lloyd Webber also discussed his last musical, Stephen Ward, which closed after a disappointing four-month run.
He blamed the failure on the serious subject matter and suggested that one of his biggest hits, Evita, might not be so well received in the current climate.
“The truth is that at the moment the public is going for feelgood shows,” he said.
“I sometimes wonder whether a musical about the wife of an Argentine dictator, with a song that was six minutes long and accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, would have made number one in the charts now. And I think probably not.
“Everything, in the end, is about zeitgeist.”
Lord Lloyd Webber was speaking at the Royal College of Music, where he was presented with an honorary doctorate by the Prince of Wales.
Asked about Gary Barlow's tax woes, he pointed out that the Take That star is "a musician, not an accountant'. He also offered up a tale of his own tax history.
"The only tax scheme I ever got involved with was years ago when income tax was at 98%, and the only thing you could possibly do was to go into forestry. Forestry was a tremendous thing.
"I was quite pleased with my forest, which was up in Glamorganshire somewhere. Then I got a call when we were in the middle of doing Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, and it was the Army. And I thought, 'Why would I want to talk to the Army?'
"'And they said, 'Well, your forest is on fire.' So I'd have been better off keeping the 2% that was allowed."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/10831455/Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-may-head-for-Broadway-after-Stephen-Ward-flop.html
By Anita Singh, Arts and Entertainment Editor
7:00AM BST 15 May 2014
Andrew Lloyd Webber may launch his next musical, School of Rock, on Broadway rather than in the West End because the US has more relaxed rules on child performers.
It would be the first time in more than 40 years that the impresario has chosen to premiere a show on Broadway.
Lord Lloyd Webber is working on a stage adaptation of the Jack Black film about a substitute teacher who turns his young charges into a rock band.
Britain’s stringent laws on child performers, which restrict working hours and necessitate the hiring of three or four actors for one role, would make the casting process something of a headache.
As a result, Lord Lloyd Webber said it was a “strong possibility” that US audiences will get first look at the show if it goes ahead – the first time that has happened since Jesus Christ Superstar in 1971.
“It’s much easier to cast children in New York than it is here,” said the impresario, adding that the “American subject” matter made Broadway feel a natural fit.
“You don’t have to do all this triple casting, you can cast them as if they’re adults and then you can have them for a six-month or a year contract if you want to, without these endless changes.
“And with a show that is so dependent on the children really being able to play, I think that’s important.”
Lord Lloyd Webber acquired the stage rights to the show and recently took delivery of the script. The children’s stories will play a greater role than they did in the film, which concentrated on Jack Black’s character.
“It has to be a bit more rounded. I’d quite like to know more about the children and their parents than I do from the film,” he said.
He plans to spend the summer working on the songs before deciding if the show will definitely go ahead. If it does, it will open at 2016 at the earliest.
Some of the original songs from the film will be retained but 'you can’t do heavy metal for hours and hours in the theatre – everyone would be screaming. So they have to be theatrical songs too. And we’ve obviously got to use the iconic songs from the original show. It would be a shame not to do a Stevie Nicks song.”
He added the proviso that the show is not a dead cert. "I may just pass on it if I feel it isn't working," he said.
Lord Lloyd Webber also discussed his last musical, Stephen Ward, which closed after a disappointing four-month run.
He blamed the failure on the serious subject matter and suggested that one of his biggest hits, Evita, might not be so well received in the current climate.
“The truth is that at the moment the public is going for feelgood shows,” he said.
“I sometimes wonder whether a musical about the wife of an Argentine dictator, with a song that was six minutes long and accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, would have made number one in the charts now. And I think probably not.
“Everything, in the end, is about zeitgeist.”
Lord Lloyd Webber was speaking at the Royal College of Music, where he was presented with an honorary doctorate by the Prince of Wales.
Asked about Gary Barlow's tax woes, he pointed out that the Take That star is "a musician, not an accountant'. He also offered up a tale of his own tax history.
"The only tax scheme I ever got involved with was years ago when income tax was at 98%, and the only thing you could possibly do was to go into forestry. Forestry was a tremendous thing.
"I was quite pleased with my forest, which was up in Glamorganshire somewhere. Then I got a call when we were in the middle of doing Don’t Cry For Me Argentina, and it was the Army. And I thought, 'Why would I want to talk to the Army?'
"'And they said, 'Well, your forest is on fire.' So I'd have been better off keeping the 2% that was allowed."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/10831455/Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-may-head-for-Broadway-after-Stephen-Ward-flop.html
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Michael Cohl, Former Live Nation Chairmain, on 'Spider-Man' in Vegas, 'Ghostbusters' and More
By Karen Bliss, Toronto | March 27, 2013 12:28 PM EDT
It’s all about family entertainment now for Michael Cohl, the concert tour impresario who has overseen worldwide tours by the Rolling Stones, U2, Michael Jackson, and more. During a 50-minute one-on-one interview at Toronto’s Canadian Music Week with Celebrity Access’ Larry LeBlanc, the former chairman of Live Nation and current founder of S2BN Entertainment capped it off by chatting about the once ill-fated "Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark" and plugging his new productions and his son’s band.
“We’re working on 'Transformers' and 'Ghostbusters,' just a whole lot of other things,” he says, later adding Broadway shows of "Bat Out Of Hell" and the "Blues Brothers" to the list. “We think there’s a whole opportunity to create new platforms of shows for the baby boomers, grandparents and their kids and their grand kids. But as far as Live Nation goes, I’m getting along great with [Mike] Rapino and Arthur [Fogel]. We had a two-year scrap and we’re best buddies." He mentioned he has re-signed as a consultant for five more years.
S2BN, a diversified international family show and event entertainment company, is also bringing "Spider-Man" to Las Vegas. Next, Cohl says, it will be an arena show. “We know what to do. We’ve got a redesign ready and I think it can be a much better show in an arena. It can be pretty crazy with all that space. It should’ve been an arena show from the beginning. The space in the theatre in this [stretched his arm modestly] and the space in an arena is this [widens his arms].”
“It’s the worst project I’ve ever got involved in and the greatest triumph of my entire career,” Cohl said of "Spider-Man" on Broadway, a show he took over when it had run out of money and opened $55 million in the hole, “without an ending,” no less, which he later came up with, he says. “We’re at three [years] for 'Spider-Man' and we will definitely get five years out of it. Who knows, we could be there for 15.”
Talking about loving the production side because you are “integral to the creation of the piece itself as opposed to taking a piece that someone else brings you,” he said, “The way I described it to my kids was if you want to get into show biz, you might consider -- and none of them has taken me up on it -- if you’re not going to be the guy onstage, which Liam [Cohl] is in a great new band called The Treasures -- look out April 2 Universal -- I have the next best job and if you want to be in entertainment, be in show business. That’s what attracts me to it.”
At the Dakota Tavern, during the music festival portion of CMW, The Treasures made an impression with its 40-minute set: a strong image (most of the guys in tasteful embroidered cowboy shirts) and cool alt-country sound in the vein of The Band, Allman Brothers Band and Flying Burrito Brothers. Their agent, Adam Countryman, from The Agency Group, said Michael Cohl approached TAG president Ralph James a couple of years ago about helping the band out.
“We met them through Eli [Cohl, The Treasures’ manager] and his family. Liam plays in the band,” Countryman told Billboard at the venue. “They came to us really young; they had maybe played 10 shows. It must have been two years ago. We started going out to see them and every time we saw them they got better and better. They’ve gone away to Nashville and they’ve recorded in LA.”
The Treasures -- vocalist-guitarist Duncan Davies, lead singer-acoustic guitarist Michael Poskanzer, pedal steel-dobro player Michael Eckert, drummer-singer Galen Pelley and Liam on bass -- release their debut album, Bring The Night Home, on April 2, distributed by Universal Music Canada.
“It’s been a long time for the record,” says Countryman. “They re-recorded a little bit, but they spent a lot of time, as this is their first release, to make sure it worked out well. Being a young band they’ve really developed over the last two years so I think they wanted more time to let that new sound work its way into the album.”
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/global/1554528/michael-cohl-former-live-nation-chairmain-on-spider-man-in-vegas
It’s all about family entertainment now for Michael Cohl, the concert tour impresario who has overseen worldwide tours by the Rolling Stones, U2, Michael Jackson, and more. During a 50-minute one-on-one interview at Toronto’s Canadian Music Week with Celebrity Access’ Larry LeBlanc, the former chairman of Live Nation and current founder of S2BN Entertainment capped it off by chatting about the once ill-fated "Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark" and plugging his new productions and his son’s band.
“We’re working on 'Transformers' and 'Ghostbusters,' just a whole lot of other things,” he says, later adding Broadway shows of "Bat Out Of Hell" and the "Blues Brothers" to the list. “We think there’s a whole opportunity to create new platforms of shows for the baby boomers, grandparents and their kids and their grand kids. But as far as Live Nation goes, I’m getting along great with [Mike] Rapino and Arthur [Fogel]. We had a two-year scrap and we’re best buddies." He mentioned he has re-signed as a consultant for five more years.
S2BN, a diversified international family show and event entertainment company, is also bringing "Spider-Man" to Las Vegas. Next, Cohl says, it will be an arena show. “We know what to do. We’ve got a redesign ready and I think it can be a much better show in an arena. It can be pretty crazy with all that space. It should’ve been an arena show from the beginning. The space in the theatre in this [stretched his arm modestly] and the space in an arena is this [widens his arms].”
“It’s the worst project I’ve ever got involved in and the greatest triumph of my entire career,” Cohl said of "Spider-Man" on Broadway, a show he took over when it had run out of money and opened $55 million in the hole, “without an ending,” no less, which he later came up with, he says. “We’re at three [years] for 'Spider-Man' and we will definitely get five years out of it. Who knows, we could be there for 15.”
Talking about loving the production side because you are “integral to the creation of the piece itself as opposed to taking a piece that someone else brings you,” he said, “The way I described it to my kids was if you want to get into show biz, you might consider -- and none of them has taken me up on it -- if you’re not going to be the guy onstage, which Liam [Cohl] is in a great new band called The Treasures -- look out April 2 Universal -- I have the next best job and if you want to be in entertainment, be in show business. That’s what attracts me to it.”
At the Dakota Tavern, during the music festival portion of CMW, The Treasures made an impression with its 40-minute set: a strong image (most of the guys in tasteful embroidered cowboy shirts) and cool alt-country sound in the vein of The Band, Allman Brothers Band and Flying Burrito Brothers. Their agent, Adam Countryman, from The Agency Group, said Michael Cohl approached TAG president Ralph James a couple of years ago about helping the band out.
“We met them through Eli [Cohl, The Treasures’ manager] and his family. Liam plays in the band,” Countryman told Billboard at the venue. “They came to us really young; they had maybe played 10 shows. It must have been two years ago. We started going out to see them and every time we saw them they got better and better. They’ve gone away to Nashville and they’ve recorded in LA.”
The Treasures -- vocalist-guitarist Duncan Davies, lead singer-acoustic guitarist Michael Poskanzer, pedal steel-dobro player Michael Eckert, drummer-singer Galen Pelley and Liam on bass -- release their debut album, Bring The Night Home, on April 2, distributed by Universal Music Canada.
“It’s been a long time for the record,” says Countryman. “They re-recorded a little bit, but they spent a lot of time, as this is their first release, to make sure it worked out well. Being a young band they’ve really developed over the last two years so I think they wanted more time to let that new sound work its way into the album.”
http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/global/1554528/michael-cohl-former-live-nation-chairmain-on-spider-man-in-vegas
Friday, March 29, 2013
Andrew Lloyd Webber: 'My greatest regret'
Andrew Lloyd Webber: 'My greatest regret'
Andrew Lloyd Webber looks back on 40 years in show business in conversation with Charles Spencer.
By Charles Spencer
4:05PM GMT 26 Mar 2013
Things have been unusually quiet on Planet Lloyd Webber in recent months. He has been laid up with back problems – now on the mend – but the Lord, as Graham Norton called him on those telly talent shows, is now back with a vengeance. On Easter Sunday ITV is broadcasting a 90 minute special celebrating his continuous run of hits in the West End over the past 40 years. There hasn’t been a single week since Jesus Christ Superstar opened without at least one Lloyd Webber show in London, and at one point he had five playing simultaneously.
Michael Ball hosts the extravaganza, and as well as Lloyd Webber, those taking part include Michael Caine, Il Divo, Nicole Scherzinger, Melanie C, Tim Minchin and the egregious Simon Cowell. Classical guitarist Milos Karadaglic will also perform a number from Lloyd Webber’s eagerly awaited new musical, Stephen Ward, about the Profumo affair, that heady mix of politics, spies and good-time girls that engulfed the Macmillan Government in the early Sixties. It reunites him with lyricist Don Black and writer Christopher Hampton for the first time since Sunset Boulevard and is planned to open early next year.
CS: How have you seen the West End change in the last 40 years?
ALW: In the last few years, everything seems to have gone slightly away from music and more towards the comedy musicals, the Hairsprays and the Book of Mormons. I just don’t know if there’s a public for something now which is much more serious and is old fashioned in the sense that it is melodic.
CS: Does that make you feel out of place?
ALW: Somewhat, yes, because I’m quite frankly proud of the fact that there have only been three of my musicals that have not had a top three hit. It’s very difficult to get a hit song from a show nowadays. The songs are what I think musicals are about in the end. Of course they can be about something else and they can be fun and they can be, you know period and whatever, but for me, songs are what I do. I find it much more difficult not to write tunes than to write them.
CS: Have you ever been stumped for a tune?
ALW: I’ve sometimes found that they’ve taken a while, but then you get the ones where its so obvious that you think 'that must have been done before’ so you go through agonies and get musicologists and people to look at them.
CS: You’re currently working on a musical about Stephen Ward, the society osteopath at the centre of the Profumo Affair. What will that be like?
ALW: Well because of the period and everything, the Stephen Ward show is going to feature much more of my other side. This is going to be the antithesis of 'Love Never Dies’ or 'Phantom’
CS: What drew you to the story, apart from the sex, vice and sleaze?
ALW: I didn’t really know much about the character of Stephen Ward, apart from the fact that he was the one who was convicted, but then I happened to read an interview with him from 1962 which said he was a bore about the Cold War.
And then I read the Ludovic Kennedy book about the trial. He called it 'The Martyrdom of Dr Stephen Ward’ and so I thought 'this is getting very very interesting’.
CS: The lyrics are by Christopher Hampton and the book by Don Black, whom you worked with on Sunset Boulevard.
ALW: Yes, we talked over dinner and we concluded how extraordinary this man Stephen Ward was, probably the most sought after dinner guest in London, the world’s top osteopath and a man who knew absolutely everybody from Kennedy to Gandhi to Churchill and was great friends with Prince Philip.
The thing that really made Christopher think 'yes it’s a stage show’ is that Ward ended up as a waxwork at the chamber of horrors in Madame Tussauds. Next to the acid bath murderer.
Funnily enough Sarah Brightman [Lloyd Webber’s ex-wife] told me her mother Paula was one of the girls in Murray’s Cabaret Club [where Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies worked]. I remember Sarah telling me this hysterical story about when she was about five or six years old, they were all asked at her school to bring pictures of what their parents did at work and she brought in a picture of her mum with the dancers of Murray’s Club which would have been with Mandy and Christine.
CS: What do you think when you look back over your career?
ALW: What strikes me is that there’s a very fine line between success and failure. Just one ingredient can make the difference.
A really good example of that is design and 'Love Never Dies.’ The London production didn’t have any consistency of style, so it would go from say art nouveau to art deco to straightforward, old-fashioned Broadway showbiz. The Australian production [which has been very successful] had its own language. It was more like Maria Bjornson’s original design for Phantom or the original design for Evita, it was at one with the piece.
Another example is Harold Prince [the great Broadway producer]. He wanted to direct Jesus Christ Superstar and I never got the telegram because I was in America and so it went to my father’s college of music and I never got it. I often think how different my career would have been if Harold Prince had directed it on Broadway.
I remember the telegram to this day. It was: 'I am the producer of Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof and West Side Story and I’d like to do Jesus Christ Superstar,’ signed Harold Prince. I thought 'I know who you are!’ Instead the production was the most vulgar horror.
CS: Do you have any lasting regrets?
ALW: The regrets in the theatre have always been the shows that you know ought to have worked but for one reason or another haven’t. One of the things I am doing at the moment, slowly, is I’m going over, say The Woman in White which has a large plotting problem in it, and getting my musicals into as good a shape as they possibly can be in my view. Then if somebody wants to do them, I can say 'look there’s a better version’ . It’s amazing thought how many people do want to have a go at some of these old shows, some of the ones that haven’t worked so well.
I suppose if I had one real regret its that I would have loved to have had a long term writing partner like [Richard] Rodgers had with either Hart or Hammerstein. I was really hoping that the Tim Rice relationship would have gone on but my dad was the one who first pointed out to me that he thought it was unlikely.
I suppose the difference is that I’m obsessed with theatre and for Tim it’s something that he does enjoy doing, is very good at but it isn’t his whole life like it is with me.
The natural rhythm of our partnership fell apart because I never could figure out quite how dramatically you did the story of Chess, which was his baby, so he went off and did it with Bjorn [Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, of Abba] . Bloody good songs it had in it, too. Of course then Cats happened [a musical to poems by TS Eliot] and that by definition didn’t need a lyricist.
That, I think, would be the biggest regret. I’m one of those people who likes the security of working with people they have worked with before, which is why I’m excited about working with Chris and Don again.
CS: What will be in the TV show on Sunday?
ALW: Nicole Scherzinger’s going to do 'Don’t cry for me Argentina’ which is going to be interesting because she’s really a musical theatre actress, and I’m going to be intrigued to see what she makes of it. I’ve been through it with her and she really thinks about what she’s saying, which is awkward in the case of 'Don’t cry for me Argentina’ because, when she asks me questions about it, it doesn’t really mean anything.
Because it was originally called 'It’s only your lover returning’, 'the truth is I never left you’ makes a great deal of sense. But the title got altered at the last minute and it’s one of those examples of, you know, you don’t ask, you don’t explain. So when she said immediately 'I’m trying to make sense of this’, I said 'actually don’t.’
'Andrew Lloyd Webber: 40 Musical Years’ will be shown on ITV on Easter Sunday
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/9955003/Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-My-greatest-regret.html
Andrew Lloyd Webber looks back on 40 years in show business in conversation with Charles Spencer.
By Charles Spencer
4:05PM GMT 26 Mar 2013
Things have been unusually quiet on Planet Lloyd Webber in recent months. He has been laid up with back problems – now on the mend – but the Lord, as Graham Norton called him on those telly talent shows, is now back with a vengeance. On Easter Sunday ITV is broadcasting a 90 minute special celebrating his continuous run of hits in the West End over the past 40 years. There hasn’t been a single week since Jesus Christ Superstar opened without at least one Lloyd Webber show in London, and at one point he had five playing simultaneously.
Michael Ball hosts the extravaganza, and as well as Lloyd Webber, those taking part include Michael Caine, Il Divo, Nicole Scherzinger, Melanie C, Tim Minchin and the egregious Simon Cowell. Classical guitarist Milos Karadaglic will also perform a number from Lloyd Webber’s eagerly awaited new musical, Stephen Ward, about the Profumo affair, that heady mix of politics, spies and good-time girls that engulfed the Macmillan Government in the early Sixties. It reunites him with lyricist Don Black and writer Christopher Hampton for the first time since Sunset Boulevard and is planned to open early next year.
CS: How have you seen the West End change in the last 40 years?
ALW: In the last few years, everything seems to have gone slightly away from music and more towards the comedy musicals, the Hairsprays and the Book of Mormons. I just don’t know if there’s a public for something now which is much more serious and is old fashioned in the sense that it is melodic.
CS: Does that make you feel out of place?
ALW: Somewhat, yes, because I’m quite frankly proud of the fact that there have only been three of my musicals that have not had a top three hit. It’s very difficult to get a hit song from a show nowadays. The songs are what I think musicals are about in the end. Of course they can be about something else and they can be fun and they can be, you know period and whatever, but for me, songs are what I do. I find it much more difficult not to write tunes than to write them.
CS: Have you ever been stumped for a tune?
ALW: I’ve sometimes found that they’ve taken a while, but then you get the ones where its so obvious that you think 'that must have been done before’ so you go through agonies and get musicologists and people to look at them.
CS: You’re currently working on a musical about Stephen Ward, the society osteopath at the centre of the Profumo Affair. What will that be like?
ALW: Well because of the period and everything, the Stephen Ward show is going to feature much more of my other side. This is going to be the antithesis of 'Love Never Dies’ or 'Phantom’
CS: What drew you to the story, apart from the sex, vice and sleaze?
ALW: I didn’t really know much about the character of Stephen Ward, apart from the fact that he was the one who was convicted, but then I happened to read an interview with him from 1962 which said he was a bore about the Cold War.
And then I read the Ludovic Kennedy book about the trial. He called it 'The Martyrdom of Dr Stephen Ward’ and so I thought 'this is getting very very interesting’.
CS: The lyrics are by Christopher Hampton and the book by Don Black, whom you worked with on Sunset Boulevard.
ALW: Yes, we talked over dinner and we concluded how extraordinary this man Stephen Ward was, probably the most sought after dinner guest in London, the world’s top osteopath and a man who knew absolutely everybody from Kennedy to Gandhi to Churchill and was great friends with Prince Philip.
The thing that really made Christopher think 'yes it’s a stage show’ is that Ward ended up as a waxwork at the chamber of horrors in Madame Tussauds. Next to the acid bath murderer.
Funnily enough Sarah Brightman [Lloyd Webber’s ex-wife] told me her mother Paula was one of the girls in Murray’s Cabaret Club [where Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies worked]. I remember Sarah telling me this hysterical story about when she was about five or six years old, they were all asked at her school to bring pictures of what their parents did at work and she brought in a picture of her mum with the dancers of Murray’s Club which would have been with Mandy and Christine.
CS: What do you think when you look back over your career?
ALW: What strikes me is that there’s a very fine line between success and failure. Just one ingredient can make the difference.
A really good example of that is design and 'Love Never Dies.’ The London production didn’t have any consistency of style, so it would go from say art nouveau to art deco to straightforward, old-fashioned Broadway showbiz. The Australian production [which has been very successful] had its own language. It was more like Maria Bjornson’s original design for Phantom or the original design for Evita, it was at one with the piece.
Another example is Harold Prince [the great Broadway producer]. He wanted to direct Jesus Christ Superstar and I never got the telegram because I was in America and so it went to my father’s college of music and I never got it. I often think how different my career would have been if Harold Prince had directed it on Broadway.
I remember the telegram to this day. It was: 'I am the producer of Cabaret, Fiddler on the Roof and West Side Story and I’d like to do Jesus Christ Superstar,’ signed Harold Prince. I thought 'I know who you are!’ Instead the production was the most vulgar horror.
CS: Do you have any lasting regrets?
ALW: The regrets in the theatre have always been the shows that you know ought to have worked but for one reason or another haven’t. One of the things I am doing at the moment, slowly, is I’m going over, say The Woman in White which has a large plotting problem in it, and getting my musicals into as good a shape as they possibly can be in my view. Then if somebody wants to do them, I can say 'look there’s a better version’ . It’s amazing thought how many people do want to have a go at some of these old shows, some of the ones that haven’t worked so well.
I suppose if I had one real regret its that I would have loved to have had a long term writing partner like [Richard] Rodgers had with either Hart or Hammerstein. I was really hoping that the Tim Rice relationship would have gone on but my dad was the one who first pointed out to me that he thought it was unlikely.
I suppose the difference is that I’m obsessed with theatre and for Tim it’s something that he does enjoy doing, is very good at but it isn’t his whole life like it is with me.
The natural rhythm of our partnership fell apart because I never could figure out quite how dramatically you did the story of Chess, which was his baby, so he went off and did it with Bjorn [Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, of Abba] . Bloody good songs it had in it, too. Of course then Cats happened [a musical to poems by TS Eliot] and that by definition didn’t need a lyricist.
That, I think, would be the biggest regret. I’m one of those people who likes the security of working with people they have worked with before, which is why I’m excited about working with Chris and Don again.
CS: What will be in the TV show on Sunday?
ALW: Nicole Scherzinger’s going to do 'Don’t cry for me Argentina’ which is going to be interesting because she’s really a musical theatre actress, and I’m going to be intrigued to see what she makes of it. I’ve been through it with her and she really thinks about what she’s saying, which is awkward in the case of 'Don’t cry for me Argentina’ because, when she asks me questions about it, it doesn’t really mean anything.
Because it was originally called 'It’s only your lover returning’, 'the truth is I never left you’ makes a great deal of sense. But the title got altered at the last minute and it’s one of those examples of, you know, you don’t ask, you don’t explain. So when she said immediately 'I’m trying to make sense of this’, I said 'actually don’t.’
'Andrew Lloyd Webber: 40 Musical Years’ will be shown on ITV on Easter Sunday
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-features/9955003/Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-My-greatest-regret.html
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