Great Performances: Cats - Behind the Scenes

Whatever else he achieves, Lloyd Webber will assuredly be recognized as one of the great musical theater geniuses of the twentieth century, alongside Ivor Novello and Noel Coward in Britain, and Richard Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim in America.
As with all great figures, controversy rages around him, and he has never been as loved by the critics as he is by the people. In his case, the public persona has interfered with a just assessment of the work. But, as his brother Julian says, many of the best passages in Andrew's writing live in songs that aren't the well-worn musical hits that everyone knows.
On the other hand, such beautiful songs as "Close Every Door To Me" from "Joseph," "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from "Superstar," "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina" from "Evita," "Memory" from "Cats," "Love Changes Everything" from "Aspects of Love," and "No Matter What" from "Whistle" will be played and loved for as long as show tunes survive and the great onward march of musical theater continues.

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		A Life's Work By Michael Coveney

The little boy with the big brown eyes became the most famous British musical theater composer of the 20th century.

He played the piano, he blew the French horn, he wrote his own tunes from the age of six.

Pursued by demons, and possessed by the promise of fame, he struck out from an intensely musical upbringing into the wide green pastures of showbusiness glory.



	In the dressing room.

His father was a failed composer but distinguished musician, his mother a dedicated and socially eccentric teacher, his brother, Julian, a future star of the world classical music stage as a virtuoso cellist.

Andrew Lloyd Webber, as thoroughly English as Vaughan Williams, Edward Elgar and Benjamin Britten, would rewrite the agenda for British popular music in the latter half of the twentieth century.

And he changed the theater forever.

Lloyd Webber was born on March 22, 1948, in London, England, and attended the nearby Westminster School, where he was an outstanding pupil. He always wrote music in preference to doing his piano practice, and was soon writing school revues and songs. His favorite Aunt Vi took him to West End shows, and he and his brother Julian built their own model theater at home.

He now stands at the apex of his fame, the most celebrated composer of musical theater in the world and the most successful of the century. He has achieved this through a combination of talent, hard work, and sheer determination. From his teens, he had a passion for Giacomo Puccini and Richard Rodgers and wanted to emulate his heroes by writing music for the theater.

The great popular, sentimental musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein -- "Oklahoma!," "South Pacific," "The King and I," "The Sound of Music" -- are much more his style than the intellectual brilliance of the other great musical theater composer of our day, Stephen Sondheim -- who was born in 1930 but shares the same birthdate.

And yet Lloyd Webber is perhaps most renowned for mixing a classical style with pop and rock idioms. The melodic, exuberant fun of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" was followed by the rock opera "Jesus Christ Superstar" and the Latin American rock classic "Evita."



	A "cat" strikes a pose.

Both "Superstar" and "Evita" were at the forefront of music-making of the day in the jazz, rock, and pop classical fields. And both were about mythic crowd-pleasers who died at the age of 33. The synthesizers and jazz rhythms of "Evita" carried over into "Cats," the turning point in Lloyd Webber's career. "Cats" became a hit first on both sides of the Atlantic, and then throughout other countries in Western Europe and the rest of the world.

Lloyd Webber and his first wife, Sarah Hugill, had two children, Nicholas and Imogen. His second wife, Sarah Brightman, had been in "Cats," and she became his muse for "Phantom of the Opera." By the time "Phantom" opened in 1986, Lloyd Webber had consolidated his reputation with "Song and Dance," his moving "Requiem," and the rock and roller-skating, crowd-pleasing "Starlight Express."

Just as "Cats" established Lloyd Webber as an independent artist and theatrical superstar in his own right, so "Phantom" was soon recognized as one of the outstanding romantic operas of its time. In the American director Hal Prince's staging, it was a lush feast for the eye, but not a gratuitous spectacle. The famous chandelier came crashing down, but the most memorable moments were musical: the Phantom abducts Christine to his lair and invades her soul with the corrupting poison of the music of the night.

The composer's volatile, creative temperament was reflected not only in his personal life -- the helter skelter relationship with Sarah Brightman was eventually exchanged for the stabilizing marriage with Madeleine Gurdon, a renowned horse-rider -- but also in his business affairs.


	His Really Useful Company was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1986 but bought back by Lloyd Webber a few years later after big international magnates like Robert Maxwell and Robert Holmes a Court looked to increase their interests. Their take-over bids were unsuccessful, and Lloyd Webber continued creative operations with "Aspects of Love" in 1983, a charming bohemian operetta that contains some of his most wistful and ambitious music. Then came "Sunset Boulevard," a faithful version of the famous Billy Wilder movie, with book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton.



	The now-famous dancing eyes.

And as if coming full circle from "Jesus Christ Superstar," his 1998 musical, "Whistle Down the Wind," is about the elusive nature of faith: the plot revolves around a criminal on the run who is mistaken for the reborn Christ by a group of small children. Lloyd Webber again extends his range of musical style in "Whistle," working with lyricist Jim Steinman to create a score that mixes elements of rock, blues, jazz, and melodic pop.

Religious music has always played a big part in Lloyd Webber's life. His father composed church music, and as a scholar at Westminster he heard many great performances in the Abbey. Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem" made a big impression on him. His own "Requiem" was written after the death of his father, and partly in response to the political unrest in Northern Ireland. Amazingly, his "Pie Jesu" from the "Requiem" became a popular hit. Another of his enduring works is the "Variations on a Theme of Paganini," which contains some of his liveliest writing.

Always restless and ambitious, Lloyd Webber has reached the age of fifty with no sign of slowing down. He plans to write books about architecture and his world-famous collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and is planning at least two future musicals. One of these could be a sequel to "Phantom of the Opera"; another might be a stage version of A STAR IS BORN, the Judy Garland movie, which he would produce rather than write.



	Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1981.

His method of working is a mixture of composing songs in a vacuum while striving to clamp them to the right dramatic moment. Essentially, he writes tunes and stores them in his memory bank for weeks, months, or even years, waiting for just the right piece and just the right place to create the maximum theatrical impact.

Lloyd Webber now has a second family with Madeleine which includes three young children, Alastair, William, and Isabella, who enjoy country life at Sydmonton and at Kiltinan Castle in Ireland. He also keeps an apartment in Trump Tower in New York and a villa in the South of France. As ever, he enjoys good food and wine, and now writes a weekly column called "Matters of Taste" for the Daily Telegraph.