Interviewer: So around about 1994, Frank Rich said that Beauty and the Beast was the best musical of the year, but of course it wasn’t a Broadway show, it was an animated feature. So these animated features you’ve worked on, to what extent do they draw on Broadway tradition and Broadway techniques?
Tim Rice: I find Frank Rich a very unpleasant man, and normally I would disagree with everything he said, but I think he was right when he said that the score of Beauty and the Beast was very Broadway, and of course the original score of beauty was Alan Menken with wonderful lyrics by Howard Ashman, and I was lucky enough to come in to the theatrical version of the show, and the fact that beauty has worked so well in the theater, even with my lyrics, proves that the school really is a great Broadway score. So for once and only once Frank Rich was right. But I’ve never really thought of anything I’ve written, and of course I don’t do any of the tunes, I’ve thought of it as Broadway or not Broadway or rock, it’s just stuff I like.
Interviewer: How did Beauty and the Beast come to Broadway? Do you think that it was sort of an inevitable thing?
Tim Rice: I just think the massive success of the cartoon film and of the score, and the fact that so many people did say, gee, this is better than a lot of Broadway scores, gave some heavy honchos at Disney the idea that maybe it would work on stage as well. And it’s slightly the wrong way around. I mean, normally you get a show and then a film. But nowadays you often get films and then shows, and I don’t think it really matters. And to be quite honest, I didn’t think it would work initially. I thought, well, the film was so good, and maybe you’re going to stretch it too much. And of course, the great Howard wasn’t there. So I wasn’t absolutely convinced, but as soon as I got working on it, and I was asked to do it, I was very fortunate to be asked to it, but I’d done some stuff with Alan Menken on the cartoon of Aladdin. So as soon I got into it, I thought hang on, this is gonna be quite good. And it worked very well indeed, particularly in America.
Interviewer: What was your role in Lion King, and how did that make its way to Broadway?
Tim Rice: Well Lion King, I was signed up by Disney to do some words for songs in a film that was then called King of the Jungle, it was only a working title, but I think it was ditched quite rightly because A, there’s no jungle in it, and B, it sounds like it’s Jungle Book 2. And I was asked to do songs, which I was very keen to do, as I didn’t have much else to do at the time, and I was also asked, which was a big plus, to provide. Or not to provide, but to suggest somebody to write the music. And they said, you can’t have Alan Menken, because Alan’s doing Aladdin for us, and he’s very busy. But anybody else? And I said, anybody, and they said anybody, and I said Elton John. I said you won’t get him. And they say, yes we will. And Elton ran me up and said, what’s all this Lion King or King of the Jungle stuff? What’s all these King of The Jungle? And I say, well, it’s a great idea. It’s a cartoon for Disney, and it could easily be very good. And he said, well, I’d love to do it, but the deal’s no good. And I thought, well I told him so. And then his manager rang me up three or four days later and said, when do we start? So he’s probably got a better deal than me. Very annoying. But I think that was the best thing I did for Disney was to suggest Elton.
Interviewer: And then when did it, when you did the animated feature where you’re already thinking like, this is probably gonna go to Broadway.
Tim Rice: No, last thing on my mind. Because when we were working on The Lion King, Beauty hadn’t even… I mean, when I first began working on the Lion King… Film of beauty hadn’t even come out, it was just about to come out so it wasn’t until the success of beauty on stage that Disney thought hang on maybe Lion King and again I thought this is crazy how can you do that on stage but it worked
Interviewer: When did you first sort of meet Joey Taymor and get a sense that this show was gonna be, that Lion King was gonna be something really spectacular?
Tim Rice: Well, Lion King opened, if I remember rightly, in 1997 on Broadway, so I must have met Julie Tamer about a year before, and she came steaming in with all her thoughts and fine, you know. I’ve long since learned to let directors get on with it, unless it’s completely your show, in which case you try and get them fired.
Interviewer: Both she and Michael Eisner talk about, well I guess generally this happens, but the opening number of the show, people just get very emotional in the audience. Why do you think that is?
Tim Rice: Well, it’s a very spectacular opening. It’s brilliantly staged and it works. I mean, it just is a very entertaining 10 minutes. I mean I think there’s some other things in the show that work quite well as well, but that really is a pretty spectacular opening, so anybody who hasn’t seen it, I would advise them not to be late. It’s just very clever. It’s wonderful staging and. It just gets everybody in the theater involved straight away, because a lot of the action takes place in the theater itself, in the auditorium, rather than just on stage.
Interviewer: What’s the song Circle of Life about?
Tim Rice: The Circle of Life, well, it’s about the Circle of life. It’s just about, gosh, well I could get very heavy and boring about this, but it’s sort of, it’s saying that there’s a lot of luck around and what goes around comes around. It’s whatever you want to see in it. I mean, it probably a bit sadder and a bit more cynical than people realize. In my view it is. I mean there’s lines like, and some of us are left with the scars and all that, which nobody ever notices those lines, I don’t think, because they don’t want to. But at the same time, I hope it’s an uplifting song. I mean, certainly in the movie, and indeed in the stage show, it’s very uplifting and positive. But there’s a dark side as well. And I think that’s, if you want to look for meanings in it, but, you know, you can find there’s some slightly pessimistic moments in it as well, but primarily it’s a song celebrating the, if you like, eternity. It goes on and on, things come around. At least they are for the moment, whether in 2,000 years’ time. They’ll still be going round, who knows?
Interviewer: One of the things that we’re focusing on the show is the producer in this episode. I’m just wondering if you would care to sort of give us your thoughts on Cameron McIntosh. Why has he been so successful?
Tim Rice: Because he’s worked with brilliant composers. Writers are the key to everything. Very, very few great shows are badly written. I think it’s the key to all musical theater is the writing, the story, perhaps the most important thing of all, and then the score, and the actors, the performers. Those are far more important than anything else. What else is there, you might say? Well, there’s the director, there is the producer, there the set designer, choreographer, they’re all very important, they’ve all got to be good, or ideally, but one of them could not be hot and it might still work, whereas I think what Cameron’s done brilliantly. Is choose the right pieces in the first place, and that’s easier said than done. He’s chosen the right talents to work with.
Interviewer: Do you think he sort of looks for projects that have a global appeal, or is it just what he loves?
Tim Rice: Well, I’m sure he looks for projects that have a global appeal, and we all do, really. I mean, most people won’t admit that, but even the most intellectual director and the most artistic, cerebral guy is actually hoping to make his millions somewhere. But if you’re lucky, like me and I suspect Cameron, what you genuinely like turns out to be what a lot of other people like. I mean I’ve never had yet to really get heavily involved with something I don’t like. I mean I’ve done one or two things which have been slight pot-boilers over the years but basically the projects that I’ve been most enthusiastic about are projects that are about to be interrupted. Cameron McIntosh is a great producer I think primarily because he chooses the right people to work with and that may sound glib but that’s the hard part, getting the right team together and I think the key to any team are the writers, the story and the And performers. Those are the three things. If you get one of them wrong, you could well be in trouble.
Interviewer: Which brings us to Andrew Lloyd Webber. What is his genius? What makes him such a great composer?
Tim Rice: He works with brilliant lyricists. Well, he’s got a great sense of the theater. He’s always been very enthusiastic about it. He’s never had any doubts about his own abilities. He’s got it great gift to write a very nice tune. Lots of great tunes. On the whole, chosen good subjects or had them chosen for him. He’s, again, I mean, if you choose a pretty creaky idea, however brilliant your music, you’re struggling. And one or two of his shows, I don’t think have been the most brilliant ideas. I mean his talent is still there, but that’s the key thing that you have to get right from day one is to choose a wonderful subject.
Interviewer: What was his impact on Broadway, just in a big historical sense?
Tim Rice: Well, the first time Andrew hit Broadway was with Jesus Christ Superstar which I had a small involvement with and frankly that wasn’t very well received. The record had been a huge hit but Broadway didn’t really get it. The younger people wouldn’t be seen dead in Broadway in those days, in the audience, the rock fans and the older people weren’t used to rock and it was too loud. So Superstar didn’t really make Andrew or me. I think of Vita was the one that really got Broadway thinking, well, maybe these guys are going to be around a bit. Well, even Vita got appalling reviews, by and large. But it then won all the awards, which just made me think what hypocrites a lot of these critics were. Well, I think he was successful initially, because his shows tended to be better than any others around. I mean, the public just liked them. It’s rather hard to say why. But I think in the case of Superstar. And Evita, they were great stories. And I think with Evita he was, I think that’s my favorite of all his scores, tune-wise. It just is a brilliant score I think from start to finish. And it seemed to strike some sort of nerve with the public. I mean the most popular one of all I guess is Phantom of the Opera. It’s very, very, romantic. I mean he’s not ashamed to be romantic and he’s aiming, not deliberately, he happens to be part of. He’s aiming at a fairly wide audience, whereas so many other musicals these days tend to be terribly sort of restricted in their vision and they’re trying to be very sophisticated or aiming at only a small market or whatever. I mean, I think what we did all those years ago with Superstar Navito was actually to bring a new audience of youngish and indeed very young people Broadway, who perhaps thought that if they liked rock music, they couldn’t like Broadway. And it was a kind of marriage between two of them. I mean, Superstar, if Superstar had not been a gramophone record in the first instance, it would have been a very different piece. We tried to get it sold as a show. We failed, because in this business, as in every business, nobody knows anything. And nobody wanted to deal with a show about religion or Jesus. So we had to do it on record because the only people who showed any interest were a record company. By doing it on a record we ditched the book, because you can’t have a book on a record, it gets boring hearing it over and over again, and turned it into an opera, which is a brilliant move. We also made it more rocky because our first outlet for the show was going to be radio, and that was a brilliant movie. We also make it shorter because vinyl has a limitation, even a double album, which it was, you couldn’t get more than about eighty two minutes of music. Superstar became rockier, shorter, and had no chat. Three elements, plus it was a great story, and had a terrific title. And all those elements, plus great tunes, of course, all those other elements, many of which we stumbled upon rather than planned, turned it into a big hit that gave it a new audience. Ironically, it was not a big on Broadway. It was a medium-sized hit. But the record made a huge impact, and the show in other versions, the same score. Was huge all over the world and to this day it’s still being performed. And there’s always three or four hundred productions done every year.
Interviewer: And what would you say to someone who might say that rock does not belong on the Broadway stage?
Tim Rice: Well, it’s ludicrous, isn’t it? I mean, I would have some sympathy with, I mean loud, massive stadium rock, of course, is best in a stadium. And a lot of rock music has become very theatrical, but just as theater has borrowed from rock in pieces like Superstar Navita, and well, hair actually is the one that should get most of the credit. But, well, I think rock has a place on Broadway stage, but just as theater has. Taken in rock, so rock is taken in theater and most of the big rock bands going out now will have a very theatrical side to their show, which is great. Obviously a theater, most Broadway theaters are very small compared with the average rock stadium, so you can’t get too big or too noisy, but I think elements of rock, which I’ve certainly used in most of shows I’ve been involved with, have to be considered because rock music Certainly the most important new music of the last half of the twentieth century and far more people like rock music than Broadway music.
Interviewer: Were you and Andrew consciously trying to reach out to a new audience with Superstar?
Tim Rice: I don’t think we were, no. We didn’t really quite know what we were doing, which is often a big plus when you’re working on a show, because you aren’t really aware of all the rules. Andrew was more aware of the rules than I was, because he was very interested in theater and had been to see all the shows, and I think it was a combination of the fact that I was much more into rock than he was at that point, although he was not uninterested and was a great fan of Elvis onwards. But I think his traditional approach, coupled with my slightly ignorant approach, made a wonderful combination. I mean, Superstar was different musically, and really for the reasons I’ve laid out, that it started out as a record, but we were hailed as marketing geniuses, what a bright idea doing a record first, but really did it because nobody wanted to do the show. And of course, once the record was a number one, then everybody wanted to the show, but it was a bit late by then.
Interviewer: What about Katz? When he was first getting started on Katz, were you still in touch with him and what did you think of the idea?
Tim Rice: Well, I thought first, there ain’t much for me to do in this one. It wasn’t an idea that particularly appealed to me, but obviously, as a lyricist, as the bloke who writes words, there’s not much I can do with somebody else’s words. I quite liked the poems, I though they were okay. The show was a phenomenal success. I don’t think it’s aimed particularly at my sort of… I mean, it’s a very good show. I’ve never actually seen it properly the whole way through. I’ve seen bits of it. And, you know, it was one of those shows that is gonna be around for a long, long time. It really has been. I mean it was his big breakthrough, really. It was the one that established him, I think, as a force in his own right.
Interviewer: A lot of people will sort of dismiss some of his work, at least, as just spectacle.
Tim Rice: Oh, I don’t think that’s true. I think that that’s Cobbler’s. I think his work has been hits. I think it’s silly to dismiss Andrew Lloyd Webber’s work as sheer spectacle because you’ve got spectacular effects in some of the shows, but every show has that, virtually. I think the concept of a small, unspectacular musical is… It’s not what the people want. If they want something small and unspectacular, go and see a play. And I think also, if you’re dealing with big themes, you’ve got to have it big visually as well as big musically. And it actually, that’s what musicals should deal with on the whole, I think, is fairly big themes. I think very introspective musicals often struggle because it’s like opera. You don’t have. Great operas that are small, if you see what I mean. They’ve got to be slightly over the top. That’s the thrill, that’s the excitement. You’re seeing emotions painted larger than life. And if you paint them smaller than life, you might as well sit at home and watch telly or look in the mirror, which I do a lot of.
Interviewer: That’s a great answer. From an outsider’s perspective, what do you think the musical says about America? People say that it’s an American art form, so maybe you don’t even agree with that, but.
Tim Rice: Well, I suppose people say it’s an American art form because the golden age of musicals was virtually entirely US. I mean, it was Rogers and Hammerstein and, you know, Jerome Kern and all these great, great writers whose work will never fade. But before that, there was Gilbert and Sullivan. And since that, there’ve been quite a few good British musicals. But it’s, it’s not for my guess, which America kick-started into something fairly permanent, just as rock and roll is really. But there again, Britain has kind of taken over rock and roll in some areas, or did in the 60s and 70s. I wouldn’t say that people these days think of it as an American art form, really, no. Experts, people who study it do, and Americans might too. But over here, I don’t think we think of that. Probably in Uruguay, they think of it as a Uruguayan art form.
Interviewer: Um… Favorite lyricist of yours? Larry Hard, Ira Gershwin, someone who you…
Tim Rice: Gosh, very difficult. Joey Lieber takes a lot of beating, although he operated almost exclusively in the record field. Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, these are the people I tend to like and nick ideas from. But in the theater field, Alan Jay Lerner, I would rate very highly. I mean, who wouldn’t actually? I mean all the obvious ones really. Guess Cole Porter, you know, Arag Gershwin, I mean, they’re all fantastic. But in the last 30, 40 years, the lyricists I’ve admired would tend to be ones operating in the record field or the rock field.
Interviewer: Does the art suffer because of it?
Tim Rice: Well, that’s a difficult one. I think the greatest musicals are not driven initially by corporations. I think, the greatest hits or the lasting works will always emerge from the idea of a writer or somebody creative. Corporations and producers can move in and be vital part of making something worldwide. But I think it’s very difficult for any business entity or huge firm to just put on a musical that works. It’s been done, obviously, I guess, but I think the next great thing in musicals, whatever that is, will come out of left field and will come from people who no one’s ever heard of.
