Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest triumph
"Memory," sung by Betty Buckley, was a show-stopper in the 1980s musical, "Cats." The composer of that song, Andrew Lloyd Webber, is back on Broadway with a brand-new show ... and talking with our Mo Rocca:
"I don't know what really makes a great musical or not," said Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber. "In the end, you write it, and you write it because you want to write it."
And if Lloyd Webber writes it, there's a good chance it'll be a hit. During a four decade-long career he's spun box office gold from felines ... fascists ... and a phantom, all of them characters in some of the most commercially-successful shows in Broadway history.
He hopes to add to that list with the just-opened "School of Rock," based on the Jack Black movie about a washed-up musician who teaches a bunch of prep schoolers to unleash their inner Zeppelin.
"It's not a musical that's going to change the course of the Western musical as we presently know it," said Lloyd Webber, "but hopefully you take something away from it. And I mean, it's got some catchy songs!"
In fact, Lloyd Webber is enjoying some of the best reviews of his career for "School of Rock." The show isn't entirely new territory for him. Early on, he and lyricist Tim Rice teamed up for one of the first-ever rock musicals: "Jesus Christ Superstar."
One song from the 1971 show, "I Don't Know How to Love Him," was so popular, two versions of it landed on the charts at the same time -- by Helen Reddy and Yvonne Elliman.
"I always thought it was a melody that could take a story," said Lloyd Webber. "It has progression and movement."
Telling stories with music started early for him. Raised in a family of musicians (his father was director of the London College of Music), the future impresario fashioned a miniature stage from a record player.
But his musical tastes were not typical. "No. I mean, my love of musical theater was certainly not typical. I mean, it was considered to be very, very abnormal, in fact!" he laughed. "It may sound amazing to people today, but Rodgers and Hammerstein were considered by -- how can I put it? -- the sort of opinion-making tastemakers and everything to be 'off the scale as sentimental.'
"I remember once saying at a dinner when I was very little and there were frightfully grand people, I said, 'You know, I like 'Carousel' 'What?!?' "
After dropping out of the Royal College of Music, Lloyd Webber began collaborating with Rice while still in his teens.
The pair returned to Broadway post-"Superstar" with "Evita," a musical about Eva Peron, the wife of Argentina's military dictator.
Of the anthem, "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina" Lloyd Webber said, "It was a dramatic moment, finding an anthem that could turn on her -- that could be played in complete triumph."
"Evita" was a hit. But "Cats" -- based on the poems of T.S. Eliot, and Lloyd Webber's first musical without Rice -- was a mega-hit.
Rocca said, "I played the cast album of 'Cats' so many times my brother almost killed me. And he'd come into my room and he'd say, 'I'm sick of hearing about the Jellicle cats!'"
Since you mention it, what are Jellicle cats?
"Well, Jellicle cats are a corruption of what the English sort of posh upper class say: 'Dear little cats,'" said Lloyd Webber. "So 'Dear little cats' become Jellicle cats. If you were in 'Downton Abbey' you say, 'Dear little cats.'"
"Are you a cat person?"
"Yes, absolutely!"
"How many do you have?"
"Well, at the moment, I have four. Yeah, all Turkish Van cats. A Van cat is a swimming cat; they like going to a swimming pool."
Are they friendly? "Very friendly. They're very friendly, but they're also extremely strong-willed."
With "Cats" and then "Phantom of the Opera," Lloyd Webber became famous beyond the world of musical theater.
He said he was even asked to play Mozart in the movie, "Amadeus." "And I turned it down!" he laughed. "It was one of those things, the more I said, 'No,' the more they thought it was a great idea.
"I remember the final meeting was just before the opening night of 'Cats' on Broadway, when finally I said, 'I'm really not doing this. Look, I am really flattered but there is an issue: If I play the role, it's got to be my music, not Mozart's.' I thought that might get rid of them. Well, one of them said, actually, 'You know, that's a rather good idea now.' Oh, no, no! Please, please free me!"
"Okay, but when the movie came out, did you think, 'Maybe I should have taken the role'?"
"No. I thought, 'What a good thing I didn't do this.'"
Lloyd Webber seems keenly aware of his own limits. When asked why he hasn't written the lyrics to his shows, he replied, "Because I can't."
Has he tried? "When I was a kid, I tried. And then I soon learned this was not a skill that -- I mean, writing lyrics is something which is very specific, and the great lyric writers, they have a turn of phrase and a way of writing that I simply couldn't get near."
And not all of his shows have been smash hits on Broadway, such as "Starlight Express."
"What was up with the musical where everybody was on roller skates pretending they were trains?" asked Rocca.
"Oh, that was fun, great fun. It was a very stupid idea to bring it here in the form that it was. I hugely opposed it. It's still running in Germany and places. It's written for kids, entirely written for kids."
But don't cry for Andrew Lloyd Webber. He's got an Oscar, three Grammys and seven Tonys. And "Phantom of the Opera" is the longest-running show in Broadway history.
Rocca broached a delicate subject: "I know that a lot of British people don't like to talk about money, but I'm not British, so I have to ask: By some measure, you're the richest man in all of pop music..."
"I very much doubt that."
"I think you are, you've got like a billion dollars."
"I've done extremely well, but I think you might find that the composer and the lyricist of 'The Lion King' were rather ahead of me, I think so."
"Really? You think that Elton John has more money than you?"
"Oh, yeah!"
"No. There's no way."
"Well, he goes out for a few million dollars a concert, for a start," said Lloyd Webber.
"A billion is a thousand million!"
"Listen, it really doesn't matter. The most important thing with money is to use it and that's why I have my foundation. But I can assure you that I am nowhere near the top of the tree when it comes to the rich Brits in music."
We stand corrected: Andrew Lloyd Webber is number two, just behind Sir Paul McCartney, on the list of rich Brits in music. So, he's doing just fine.
"So we've come to the part of the interview where we sum up your life," said Rocca. "How would you describe it?"
"Well, I think I'm the luckiest man alive, really," he replied. "Because I've been able to do the one thing in my life that I really love. I'm 67 now, and I'm still doing it. And I don't intend to stop."
For more info:
- "School of Rock" at the Winter Garden Theatre, New York City | Tickets
- Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation