An album of covers from the musical was released, however, and the song “No Matter What,” recorded by Boyzone, went on to become an international smash. None of these works were hits, and Whistle was a downright disaster, having its Broadway run canceled before it began after a dismal opening in Washington, D.C.
The 1990s saw the release of various Lloyd Webber productions, including Sunset Boulevard (1994), a film version of Cats (1998) and Whistle Down the Wind (1998). It celebrated its 10,000th performance on Broadway on February 11, 2012. Phantom debuted in London in 1986, and has gone on to be the longest-running Broadway show in history. Lloyd Webber’s next hit, and his biggest to date, was The Phantom of the Opera, based on the French novel Le Fantôme de l’Opéra by Gaston Leroux. Starlight Express followed Cats, and while it didn’t wow the critics, it has remained popular with audiences and is still staged in various venues. Eliot.Ĭats opened in London in 1981 and became the longest-running musical in the city’s history, running for 21 years. First up was Cats, based on the poetry of T.S. The 1980s saw the end of the Rice-Lloyd Webber collaboration, but it also marked Lloyd Webber’s blockbuster era. The song “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” was a hit, propelling the popularity of the musical, which hit the London stage in 1978. Lloyd Webber next teamed up with British playwright Alan Ayckbourn on Jeeves (1974), which found little success, and so in 1976, Rice and Lloyd Webber reunited to create Evita as a concept album. Jesus began the Lloyd Webber-Rice tradition of recording an album’s worth of music first and then producing the play from it. Sticking with a biblical theme, the pair’s next project was Jesus Christ Superstar (1971), presenting pop music in classical operatic form. With each performance, Joseph got bigger and better, ending up with a two-hour run time. The play debuted on March 1, 1968, and was an immediate success. They were soon commissioned to write a religious concert, and over the next two months, the pair crafted a 20-minute “pop-cantata” version of what would one day become Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, a retelling of the biblical story of Joseph. In 1965, Lloyd Webber and Rice began working on their first musical, The Likes of Us, which didn’t reach the stage at the time. Tim Rice.” Lloyd Webber found something in that letter that interested him, and thus began the long collaboration of Rice and Lloyd Webber. It read, in full: “Dearest Andrew, I’ve been told you’re looking for a ‘with it’ writer of lyrics for your songs, and as I’ve been writing pop songs for a while and particularly enjoy writing the lyrics, I wonder if you consider it worth your while meeting me. That same year, when he was 17 years old, Lloyd Webber received a letter from 21-year-old law student Tim Rice. However, his true calling pulled him in another direction, and he dropped out in the winter of 1965 to study at the Royal College of Music and explore his interest in musical theater. A true prodigy, early in life Lloyd Webber played the piano, the violin (at age 3) and the French horn, and began writing his own music (at age 6).įollowing his childhood dream of becoming England’s chief inspector of ancient monuments, in 1965, Lloyd Webber entered Westminster School as a Queen’s Scholar and began a course in history at Magdalen College, Oxford. Lloyd Webber comes from a musical family: his father was the director of the London College of Music, his mother was a piano teacher and his younger brother, Julian, is a renowned cellist. Early YearsĪndrew Lloyd Webber was born on March 22, 1948, in London. He also formed the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation and his theater production company, the Really Useful Group, is one of the largest operating in London. Along the way, he has collected a variety of honors, including knighthood, seven Tony Awards, three Grammy Awards, an Oscar and Kennedy Center recognition. Andrew Lloyd Webber has created some of the most recognizable Broadway music of all time, from productions of Cats and Evita to The Phantom of the Opera.
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