Andrew Lloyd Webber Biography
Summary
"Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber" (born 22 March 1948) is a highly successful English composer of musical theatre, and also the elder brother of cellist Julian Lloyd Webber.
Lloyd Webber has enjoyed great popular success, with several musicals that have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 13 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. He has also gained a number of honours, including a knighthood in 1992 followed by a peerage, three Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Oscar, an International Emmy, six Olivier Awards, a Golden Globe, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006. Several of his songs, notably 'I Don't Know How to Love Him' from "Jesus Christ Superstar", 'Don't Cry for Me, Argentina' from "Evita", 'Memory' from "Cats", and 'The Music of the Night' from "The Phantom of the Opera" have been widely recorded and were hits outside of their parent musicals. His company, the Really Useful Group, is one of the largest theatre operators in London.
Producers in several parts of the UK have staged productions, including national tours, of Lloyd Webber's musicals under licence from the Really Useful Group.
Personal history
Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber was born in South Kensington in London, England, the son of Jean Hermione (Johnstone), a violinist and pianist, and William Lloyd Webber, a composer. His younger brother, Julian Lloyd Webber is a cellist. As a child, he could not bear noises made by others. At the age of three, when brought to his first day of pre-school at a school where his mother worked, he covered his ears when other children produced sounds with musical instruments. Andrew began writing his own music at a young age. He wrote his first published suite of six pieces at the age of nine. He also put on 'productions' with Julian and his Aunt Viola in his toy theatre (which he built at the suggestion of Viola). Later, he would be the owner of a number of West End theatres, including the Palace. His Aunt Viola, an actress, took Lloyd Webber to see many of her shows and through the stage-door into the world of the theatre.
Lloyd Webber was a Queen's Scholar at Westminster School and studied history for a time at Magdalen College, Oxford, although he abandoned the course to pursue his interest in musical theatre.
His first wife was Sarah Hugill. They married on 24 July 1972 and had two children, Imogen (born 31 March 1977) and Nicholas (born 2 July 1979). Lloyd Webber and Hugill were divorced in 1983, and he married singer/dancer Sarah Brightman on 22 March 1984. He cast Brightman as Christine, the lead role in his musical, "The Phantom of the Opera". They divorced in 1990 but remained friends.
He married his third wife, Madeleine Gurdon, on 9 February 1991, and they had three more children: David (born 3 May 1992), William (born 24 August 1993), and Isabella (born 30 April 1996).
Knighted in 1992, he was created a life peer in 1997 as "Baron Lloyd-Webber", of Sydmonton in the County of Hampshire (his title is hyphenated but his surname is not). In 2006, Sunday Times Rich List ranked him the 87th richest Briton with an estimated £700 million. His wealth increased to £750 million in 2007, but in the Sunday Times Rich List 2007 he slipped to the 95th richest British person. He also owns much of Watership Down, the down made famous by Richard Adams's novel of the same name. Politically, he has supported the UK's Conservative Party, allowing his song "Take That Look Off Your Face" to be used on a party promotional film seen by an estimated 1 million people in 80 cinemas before the 2005 UK General Election to accompany pictures of the country's Prime Minister Tony Blair allegedly 'smirking, the party said. (... more)
Lord Lloyd-Webber is an art collector with a passion for Victorian art. An exhibition of works from his collection was presented at the Royal Academy in 2003 under the title "Pre-Raphaelite and Other Masters - The Andrew Lloyd Webber Collection". He is also a devoted supporter of Leyton Orient Football Club.
Professional career
Early years
Andrew Lloyd Webber's first major collaboration with lyricist Tim Rice was "The Likes of Us", a musical based on the true story of Thomas John Barnardo. It was not performed, however, until as recently as 2005 when a production was staged at Lloyd Webber's Sydmonton Festival. Stylistically, "The Likes of Us" is fashioned after the Broadway musical of the 40's and 50's; it opens with a traditional overture comprising a medley of tunes from the show, and the score reflects some of Lloyd Webber's early influences, particularly Richard Rodgers, Frederick Loewe, and Lionel Bart. In this respect, it is markedly different from the composer's later work which tends to be either predominantly or wholly through-composed and closer in form to opera than to the Broadway musical.
Around this time, Lloyd Webber and Rice also wrote a number of individual pop songs that were recorded as singles for record labels. Wes Sands, Ross Hannaman, Paul Raven and Gary Bond are among the many artists to have recorded early Lloyd Webber/Rice tunes. A selection of these early recordings were re-released on the 5-CD compilation, "Andrew Lloyd Webber: Now And Forever" (2003).
In 1967, Lloyd Webber and Rice wrote a song for the Eurovision Song Contest called 'Try it and see', which was unsuccessful. The tune of this song eventually became the tune for 'King Herods Song' in the musical "Jesus Christ Superstar".
In 1968, Lloyd Webber and Rice were commissioned to write a piece for Colet Court which resulted in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat", a retelling of the biblical story of Joseph in which Lloyd Webber and Rice humorously pastiche a number of musical styles such as Calypso and country music. The musical follows the light-hearted, irreverent tone of "The Likes of Us" but is more modern in style, with a closer affinity to contemporary pop music than its predecessor and reflecting a wider range of musical styles. Andrew Lloyd Webber, who is a devoted admirer of Elvis Presley, based the character of Pharaoh on the singer, who in turn recorded "It's Easy For You", one of Webber's compositions during his last session on 29 October 1976 , and featured as the last track on the "Moody Blue" album. "Joseph" began life as a short cantata that gained some recognition on its second staging with a favourable review in "The Times". For its subsequent performances, the show underwent a number of revisions by Lloyd Webber and Rice with the inclusion of additional songs that expanded the musical to a more substantial length. This culminated in a two hour long production being staged in the West End on the back of the success of their third musical, "Jesus Christ Superstar" (1970).
"Jesus Christ Superstar" had been released as a concept album starring Ian Gillan prior to being staged in the West End at the Lyceum Theatre. The musical is based on the last days in the life of Jesus Christ. While Joseph was intended as a light-hearted family show, the music in Jesus Christ Superstar is at times dark and unsettling, particularly in the scenes that deal with the crucifixion, the plotting priests and the conflict between Jesus and Judas. The rock idiom is used as a thematic device in "Jesus Christ Superstar" and the musical was billed as a Rock Opera in much the same way as "Tommy" by The Who had been before it. However, some of the music is inherently classical in style, particularly the instrumental passages such as John Nineteen: Forty-One and the more avant-garde music that accompanies the crucifixion scene.
The planned follow up to "Jesus Christ Superstar" was a musical comedy based on the Jeeves and Wooster novels by P. G. Wodehouse. Tim Rice was uncertain about this venture, partly because of his concern that he might not be able to do justice to the novels that he and Lloyd Webber so admired (Rice, 1999). After doing some initial work on the lyrics, he pulled out of the project and Lloyd Webber subsequently wrote the musical with Alan Ayckbourn who provided the book and lyrics. The musical, "Jeeves", failed to make any impact at the box office and closed after a short run of only three weeks. Many years later Lloyd Webber and Ayckbourn revisited this project, producing a thoroughly reworked and more successful version of the musical entitled "By Jeeves" (1996). Only two of the songs from the original production remained ('Half a Moment' and 'Banjo Boy').
Mid-1970s onwards
Lloyd Webber collaborated with Rice once again to write "Evita" (1976 in London/1979 in U.S.), a musical based on the life of Eva Peron. As with Jesus Christ Superstar, the musical was released first as a concept album and featured Julie Covington singing the part of Eva Peron.
The song 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina' became a hit single and the musical was staged at the Prince Edward Theatre in a production directed by Harold Prince and starring Elaine Paige in the title role. Much of the music in "Evita" is classical in style, the opening featuring a choral piece ('Requiem for Evita') as well as a choral interlude in 'Oh What a Circus.' There are a number of instrumental passages throughout the musical such as the orchestral version of the 'Lament' and the introduction to 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina,' all of which form an integral part of the framework of the composition. There is, however, quite an eclectic use of styles in "Evita", with some gentle ballads such as 'High Flying, Adored' and 'Another Suitcase In Another Hall', and the rhythmic, Latinate styles prominent in pieces such as 'Buenos Aires', 'And the Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)' as well as the slower 'On This Night of A Thousand Stars'. There is some rock music that can be heard briefly in 'Oh What A Circus', 'Peron's Latest Flame' and 'The Lady's Got Potential' (a rock song that was cut from the original production but reinstated for the 1996 film with revised lyrics by Tim Rice). "Evita" was a highly successful show that ran for ten years in the West End. It transferred to Broadway in 1979. Rice and Lloyd Webber parted ways soon after "Evita".
Lloyd Webber then embarked on a solo project, the Variations (album), with his cellist brother Julian Lloyd Webber based on the 24th Caprice by Paganini. It was a massive hit in the United Kingdom reaching number two in the pop album chart (1978). The main theme is still used as the theme tune for London Weekend Television's long-running South Bank Show.
1980s
Andrew Lloyd Webber embarked on his next project without a lyricist, turning instead to the poetry of T. S. Eliot. "Cats (1981)" is a dance musical based on Eliot's "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" (1939), which the composer recalled as having been a childhood favourite. The songs of the musical comprise Eliot's verse set to music by the composer, the principal exception being the most famous song from the musical, 'Memory', for which the lyrics were written by Trevor Nunn after an Eliot poem entitled 'Rhapsody on a Windy Night'. Also, a brief song entitled 'The Moments of Happiness' was taken from a passage in Eliot's Four Quartets. An unusual musical in terms of its construction, the overture incorporates a fugue and there are occasions when the music accompanies spoken verse. The set, consisting of an oversized junk yard, remains the same throughout the show without any scene changes. Lloyd Webber's eclecticism is very strong here; musical genres range from classical to pop, music hall, jazz and electroacoustic music as well as hymn-like songs such as 'The Addressing of Cats,' which Old Deuteronomy sings. Cats was originally intended to be a song cycle but when Valerie Eliot provided some fragments of unpublished poetry by her late husband that included a character named Grizabella who is shunned by the tribe as well as the concept of a rebirth for a chosen Cat at the Jellicle Ball, it was apparent that there might be a story that could provide a possible framework for a musical. It was to become the longest running musical on Broadway, spanning a reign of eighteen years which later would be broken by another Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.
"Starlight Express", a musical also directed by Trevor Nunn, is similar in its theatrical concept to "Cats" in that it also features dancers in costume representing non-human characters. However, unlike "Cats", the music is mostly in the realm of disco and pop with one or two pastiche songs such as the Country and Western styled 'U.N.C.O.U.P.L.E.D'. In some ways this musical could be seen as more of a return to the style of Joseph, although the latter was more varied in its use of musical styles and influences. "Starlight Express" was a commercial hit but received negative reviews from the critics. It enjoyed a record run in the West End, but ran for less than three years on Broadway.
Lloyd Webber wrote a Requiem Mass which premiered in New York on 25 February 1985 at St Thomas Church. This composition had been inspired by an article he had read about the plight of Cambodian orphans. It was dedicated to his father, William Lloyd Webber, who had died in 1982. Although this might seem like a surprising shift in direction from the modern musical, church music had been a part of the composer's upbringing and Lloyd Webber had on a number of occasions written sacred music for the annual Sydmonton festival (Snelson, 2004). Lloyd Webber received a Grammy Award in 1986 for Requiem in the category of best classical composition. Perhaps surprisingly given the classical nature of the work, the "Pie Jesu" from Requiem achieved a high placing on the UK pop charts.
In 1986, Lloyd Webber premiered his next musical, "The Phantom of the Opera", inspired by the 1911 Gaston Leroux novel. He wrote the part of Christine for his then wife, Sarah Brightman, who played the role in the original London and Broadway productions alongside Michael Crawford as the Phantom. The production was directed by Harold Prince, who had also earlier directed Evita. Charles Hart wrote the lyrics for the musical with some additional material provided by Richard Stilgoe and Lloyd Webber co-wrote the musical's book with Stilgoe. Lloyd Webber's score is sometimes operatic in style but he maintains the form and structure of a musical throughout. The fully-fledged operatic writing is reserved principally for the subsidiary characters such as the theatre managers, Andre and Fimil, and their Prima Donna, Carlotta. Fittingly, it is also used to provide the content of the fictional `operas' that are taking place within the show itself. Here, Lloyd Webber affectionately pastiches various styles from the grand operas of Meyerbeer through to Mozart and even Gilbert and Sullivan
Credit
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article about Andrew Lloyd Webber.
