Читать книгу Unmasked - Эндрю Ллойд Уэббер - Страница 14

7 Teenage Operas, Pop Cantatas

My unanticipated time off from Oxford equalled a newly blank diary until October when I was supposed to restart at university afresh. Clearly with me based in London again, The Likes of Us was unlikely to happen that summer in the Oxford Playhouse. The songs had been demoed. There was still no script. My father arranged for me to have a few lessons at the Royal College of Music. I made several trips to Vi and George in Italy and got taken to the Sanremo Song Festival by Southern Music’s American owner where I met Gene Pitney. I hung out with old school friends, revisited David Marks in Oxford, saw Tim a bit who was still working at Pettit and Westlake, got my driving test at the third attempt, dropped my brother to school, that’s about it, i.e. not the sort of stuff to grip reader or publisher apart from possibly one anecdote which I have many times told elsewhere. The problem is that all these years I’ve been disseminating fake news.

The story as previously told goes as follows. Back in 1966 I used to frequent a shop in the nether regions of the Fulham Road which sold cheap copies of current LPs that somehow had fallen off the back of a lorry. Nearby was a bric-a-brac shop. One day I saw a filthy dirty canvas in its window which looked remarkably like Lord Leighton’s Flaming June, probably one of the most famous of all Victorian paintings. Even though Victorian pictures were still considered nearly worthless, the £50 that the shop owner was asking for it seemed cheap to me. (Today £890.) So I begged Granny to let me borrow the money. When she asked what it was for she opined that she wasn’t going to have Victorian rubbish in her flat.

The way I have been telling the story is that it was bought by the pioneering Victorian picture dealer Jeremy Maas. He then sold it to a Puerto Rican cement baron called Luis A. Ferré who was starting a museum in Ponce, his home town on the south of the island. Apparently Ferré had a policy of never paying more than $5000 for anything. In those days you could buy several acres of Victorian canvases for $5000 and consequently Mr Ferré hoovered up some great paintings such as Burne-Jones’s masterpiece Arthur in Avalon. It is ironic that such important “aesthetic movement” paintings created in the pursuit of beauty should have found their home in an island so cruelly treated by nature. Today Flaming June is billed as “The Mona Lisa of the Southern Hemisphere,” has been in the Tate Gallery, the Frick, you name it, and is worth millions. Thus Granny denied me a Victorian masterpiece. I’ve been writing and dining out on this for decades.

Unfortunately I was wrong. I recently learned that Jeremy Maas bought the real thing from his barber a few years earlier. So I take this opportunity to grovel with apology for a falsehood that I even perpetuated in a Royal Academy exhibition catalogue and revel in the fact that I didn’t lose out on a great deal after all.

IT WAS AROUND EASTER when Bob Kingston, boss of the London office of Southern Music, called me into his office. I am not the only one who should be eternally grateful for what he told me. Everyone from Tim Rice to all those who made tons of money out of our early shows should erect a monument to him. Without it the rest of this book would be completely different, not to mention the rest of my life – and probably that of countless others. Bob Kingston was the first person to tell me about Grand Rights. The meeting came about because either Desmond Elliott or Ernest Hecht had had a faintly encouraging response from Harry Secombe’s management to The Likes of Us demo disc. Harry Secombe was a very successful British comic who was unusual in that he had a more than OK, if slightly strangulated, tenor voice. This propelled him into occasional flights of light opera and the title role in an Oliver! influenced musical called Pickwick which had opened in London in mid-1963, directed by Peter Coe and designed by Sean Kenny, repeating a partnership they had begun with Lionel Bart’s classic. Both these had, of course, also been approached about our epic.

Based on an over optimistic chat with the excitable Desmond, Bob felt it was time to sit me down and explain the music business facts of life. In those days income from songwriting came from three sources. First was record sales. Second were fees from performances on radio, TV and public places. Third was “sheet music” sales, i.e. printed song copies. The publisher split the income from the first two categories 50/50 with the writers and doled out 10% of the proceeds from the third. Income from international sources was split 50/50 based on what the local publisher remitted to the UK publisher. Naturally all the major publishers set up their own local firms who skimmed off a big cut of a song’s income with the result that the publisher in practice could end up with a far bigger share of the income than the authors. For example, a song earns $100 in the US. The US publisher (owned by the UK publisher) takes a 50% cut, remits 50% to the British publisher who splits that 50/50 with the writers. Thus many writers at that time only received 25% of the gross international income. This practice has long since been challenged but it was the norm in 1966. Bob explained that these three income streams are called Small Rights.

What Bob then spelt out was that there is another rights category, Grand Rights. He told me that Tin Pan Alley publishers rarely understood what they were. Grand Rights are the royalties that arise whenever an entire dramatic work is performed on the stage or on film. Bob felt it was not morally right for a pop music publisher to participate in this income. The agreement Tim and I had been given for The Likes of Us was a standard contract whose wording implied that we had signed away absolutely everything to Southern Music. Bob proposed giving us back our Grand Rights. The Likes of Us was never to earn a penny but the advice Bob gave me that morning was unquestionably the most precious of my entire career.

THAT MAY TIM’S BOSSES at the law firm Pettit and Westlake told him to destroy some highly sensitive legal documents. Unfortunately he shredded the wrong ones. This caused Tim’s law career to come into question and so his father Hugh lent on some contacts he had at electronic giant EMI with the result that in June Tim joined EMI Records as a management trainee. Almost immediately Tim was assigned to the A&R department, A&R standing for artists and repertoire, the department responsible for finding artists, choosing their songs and overseeing their recording careers.

Today the initials EMI mean little even in the music business. But in 1966 EMI was the undisputed giant of the record industry. It owned a vast litany of artists headed by The Beatles, an unequalled roster of classical musicians, a huge manufacturing base not only of the software but the hardware of the music business, plus the world’s most famous recording studio complex at Abbey Road. It is hard to believe that today this once proud company’s initials survive only in the names Sony/ATV/EMI Publishing and Virgin/EMI Records. In 2012 the then owners, venture capitalists Terra Firma, became infamously infirm as the giant turned into a munchkin. After complex shenanigans, Japanese giant Sony acquired the music publishing and the record division was swallowed up by Universal Music, who merged it with the Virgin label.

At almost exactly the same time as Tim started at EMI I got a letter from Magdalen. It got straight to the point. The college bigwigs had heard that I was working on a musical. They wished me luck but hoped I realized that when I returned I was expected to concentrate on my studies. If I wanted I could discuss changing the course I was reading but if I returned they expected me to live up to my exhibitioner status.

Reality had caught up with me big time. I thought about switching from History to Music. My father knew Dr Bernard Rose, the highly regarded director of Magdalen College’s fabled choir. But Dad was hugely against my studying music. He felt that the Oxford course would be far too academic for me. So my only future at Oxford was to return and read history seriously. Even give or take a little bit, realistically I would have to take a three-year break from musical theatre or at least from attempting any professional involvement.

Meantime Tim, nearly four years older than me and understandably ambitious for his own future, was starting a job in the creative department of the world’s top record company. Even if Tim was at the bottom of the ladder, he had his foot in the door. Tim could easily have a hit on his own or with another writer. He might easily lose interest in a younger hopeful whose real interest was theatre, a world far away from chart-obsessed EMI and the white-hot heat of Swinging London. Furthermore I knew full well that Oxford offered nobody who could hold a candle to his lyrics.

Should I go back to Oxford or leave? It was the biggest decision of my life and there was nobody I felt I could turn to for advice. My family would point to two dismal A-level results as my only academic qualifications. I had the odd music grade but no way was I a performer so there was no hope down that alley. The most anyone could say about me was that I wrote tunes, had an oddball love of musicals and a bizarre love of architecture and medieval history. I knew that my family would be appalled if I chucked in the lifeline that Magdalen had offered me.

I took myself away to agonize. What if musicals were on the way out? What if I was no good at them anyway? I knew I was no lyricist. So was it not lunacy to try a career where my music was greatly dependent on the words that went with it and stories that might be lousy? What if the writer of those words, in this case Tim, no longer wanted to work with me? What if that writer didn’t come up with the goods? Most musicals are flops. Why should mine be any different? That is, if I ever got one on.

I went over and over in my head what an Oxford degree would mean for me. I couldn’t imagine a career I’d enjoy where it would do me any good. But my family had no money; they didn’t even own the Harrington Court flat. I would have to make a living somehow, someday. But with or without a degree at what? At least staying at Oxford would stave off a career decision for three years. True I would have to knuckle down and work to get a decent class of degree. But on the flip side of the coin I fretted that I was an exhibitioner who was taking up a college subsidized place that would probably have gone to someone far worthier than I had it not been for Professor McFarlane’s cat. Should I not let that worthier someone have my place?

However, there was the certainty of what a decision to leave would do to the family. Granny Molly would be consumed with anxiety. Aunt Vi and Uncle George would be livid. Mum might just take it on the chin but I couldn’t tell what Dad would make of it. Of all the family I was closest to Molly. I strongly sensed that my increasingly frail Granny would regard my leaving Oxford as an insane, suicidal move. Could it somehow rekindle in her a myriad of associations with the loss of her son Alastair? She cared that much about me. But what if I lost Tim? The thought went round and round in my head and drilled into it like an unmelodic earworm. Finally I made my decision. On July 17, 1966 I wrote to Thomas Boase, Magdalen College’s admission tutor, informing him that I did not want to continue as a History exhibitioner.

I thought my bombshell was received pretty well; a few long faces, a bit of muttering, as far as I was concerned that was about it. I took three school friends to stay at Vi and George’s. They seemed on the sombre side of OK but pretty soon Vi and I were experimenting with olive-oil recipes in her glorious seaview kitchen. It’s only recently that I learned things were not quite as I thought. First my brother Julian remembered that he had never witnessed such a family row as happened after I told Mum and Dad of my decision. Then I discovered among some of Mum’s papers the outline of her autobiography. It seems I was dead right about Granny equating what I was doing with the loss of Alastair. In her view I was throwing my life away and she felt appalled that Dad was doing nothing to stop it. Vi and George were safely out of the way in Italy. It was difficult and costly in 1966 to make international phone calls, you had to book them via the operator, but they made their views patently clear in letters that were kept from me.

Years later, according to Mum, I was staggered to learn that it was Dad who not only defended me but supported my decision. Apparently he strongly argued that in all his experience with students at the Royal and London Colleges of Music he had not come across anyone with such determination to succeed and that it would be completely counter-productive to put roadblocks in my way. With hindsight this is borne out by a conversation that Dad and I had before I took off with my school friends to Italy. First he reiterated that he would not support my trying for the Royal College of Music. I remember his reason, “it would educate the music out of you,” quite a statement from the senior Professor of Composition at the Royal College and the head of the London College of Music to boot.

Secondly he strongly felt that I should take a course in orchestration. The orchestra, he opined, provided the richest palette of colours in music if you knew how to use it. I was thrilled when Dad said he would fix for me to take a part-time course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. I was fascinated by the tone colours of composers like Britten and how a high romantic like Richard Strauss could take the orchestra to ever more overripe extremes. I remember thinking that learning orchestration is like learning the basics of cooking: just as I knew from Vi how to make a soufflé or a mayonnaise, now I would learn how to make my orchestral ideas a reality. That Guildhall course has stood me in good stead. It is the only academic course I have taken seriously.

MEANTIME TIM WAS SETTLING in at EMI. I suspect he was too busy finding his feet to worry about my decision and I often wonder if he realized just how big a factor he was in my making it. But the fact that he had a toe in the door of the world’s number one record company could open doors for both of us and I was keen to coat-tail. Tim was assigned to the department of one of EMI’s most successful old-time arranger/producers, Norrie Paramor.

Norrie was a supremo of the pre-Beatles old guard. He was the guiding light behind the legendary British pop star Cliff Richard who has the distinction of having a number one hit in five different decades. Norrie was still a very major force in the British record industry even if younger musical Turks had overtaken him. But come mid-1966 Norrie’s star at EMI was again in the ascendancy. This was because the cream of EMI’s top producers had left to form an independent company, disgusted by the low pay and derisory royalties (if any) they got in return for making EMI untold millions. Stars like Beatles guru George Martin had had enough.

This left good old reliable Norrie in pole position. And with artists like Sinatra again pulverizing the action with songs such as “My Way,” the top brass at EMI might have been forgiven for thinking they made the right call in letting go the George Martins of this world. So Tim was in the right place at the right time. I suspect that old-school Norrie Paramor saw in the contemporary pop ears of the very personable Tim Rice a presentable way into a young world that was no more his natural habitat. Furthermore Tim wrote lyrics. It wasn’t long before Tim was being allowed to produce acts that EMI wanted to drop but was obliged to record in order to see out their contracts.

Pop was changing fast in the last half of the 1960s. 1965 had ushered in “fusion,” the idea that any instrument could go with anything. As early as 1964, Sonny and Cher had featured an oboe on “I Got You Babe.” Paul McCartney sang “Yesterday” accompanied by a string quartet. In 1967 Sgt. Pepper took things still further, including adding the merest hint of a narrative structure. By the end of 1968 even the Rolling Stones were recording with the London Bach Choir. I was learning the rudiments of classical orchestration at exactly the time as its marriage with rock was romping all over the zeitgeist.

In that summer of 1966 the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” kicked off a genre that was to spawn perhaps the ultimate Sixties “fusion” single, Jimmy Webb’s six-minute “MacArthur Park” with Richard Harris. Then there was the concept single. The most successful was “Excerpt from ‘A Teenage Opera,’ ” a sort of mini-opera in itself with a kids’ choir. The “Teenage Opera” never was completed but the idea hugely caught the spirit of the moment. None of this passed me by.

THE UNWANTED ACTS TIM was assigned to humanely lay to rest were pretty dire – with one notable exception. This was a handsome 23-year-old singer called Murray Head. EMI had unsuccessfully tried to launch Murray and had put a fair bit of clout behind him. But now he was “de trop” and Tim was ordered by Norrie to cut his last contractual single. Murray had, however, been cast as one of the leads in a Roy Boulting movie titled The Family Way opposite John and Hayley Mills. Paul McCartney composed the soundtrack and Murray had written a song called “Someday Soon” that was supposed to feature in the film. This was the song Tim recorded.

Murray had a light tenor rock voice, really rather lyrical yet passionate and earthy when he wanted it to be. Tim was very good about letting me meet Murray who must have thought me highly curious. I was hopelessly out of place and felt very shy in his dope-filled flat. But he would often accompany himself on guitar. What struck me was his incredibly musical riffing. It was always melodic and always highly individual. I shared Tim’s belief that given the exposure Murray and the song would get from the movie, Tim might have produced his first hit. Unfortunately this was not to be. Most of “Someday Soon” ended up on the cutting-room floor. But I agreed with Tim. Murray was very special.

1967 dawned with still no Likes of Us script from Leslie Thomas, though I vaguely remember a synopsis appearing that had no relation whatsoever to what Tim and I had written. Hopes of a theatre production pretty much evaporated. I continued to take my orchestration lessons. Mum negotiated that we rented an additional flat at Harrington Court, primarily so she could move John Lill in. To be fair it also had a decent room for my increasingly arthritic granny. There was one spare room which Mum wanted to rent. I suggested offering it to Tim, who accepted, and at a stroke a ménage à trois was created to rival South Kensington’s weirdest. Add me and my turntable next door, Julian on cello and Dad on electronic organ and new meaning was given to the words “bohemian rhapsody.”

AT THE END OF February I got a letter from the music master of Colet Court School, the junior part of St Paul’s School in Hammersmith. His name was Alan Doggett. Alan had taught Julian at Westminster Under School and had become friendly with our parents. Alan was openly gay but not, he pointedly professed, a predator of little boys. Indeed Julian, who was not bad looking himself, knew of no such baggage at the Under School. But nonetheless Alan made no secret of having adult gay relationships. He also loved early classical music.

This caused Julian and me to have a private joke at his expense. There was a flat near ours in Onslow Gardens whose occupant left the window open in summer from which emanated hugely precious harpsichord music. You could see enough of the decor to know that it was not the home of a rugger ace. Julian and I used to call places like this doggett houses. Alan proposed that I compose a “pop cantata” for his charges. His choir had premiered and recorded two such epics already, The Daniel Jazz by Herbert Chappell and Jonah-Man Jazz by Michael Hurd. Their main attraction was telling a Bible story in light pop music, nothing too dangerous, just enough novelty to make parents smile and keep a class of unmusical kids out of detention. Lyrics were not their strong point. Apparently the educational publishers Novello and Co. had done very well with them. Novello published Dad’s church music and he confirmed that this was true. The Daniel Jazz was their top seller.

So on March 5, if an old diary doesn’t lie, I met with Alan for a drink. He explained that he wanted something for the whole school to sing but there must be a special role for the choir and school orchestra. There could be soloists too, but he reiterated that it was vital that there was something for everyone to perform, even the tone deaf. Skirting around why he thought I was the right bloke to compose for the latter, he suggested a collection of poems by American poet Vachel Lindsay called “The Congo” as ideal fodder for me to musicalize. One of them read like lyrics for the Eurovision Song Contest – I quote: “Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle, / Bing. / Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.” “The Congo” is full of similar nonsense words based on Congolese chants. Somehow I wondered if the poem would ring true in the hands of the very white pupils of a posh, fee-paying West London preparatory school, although I could see that kids could have a lot of fun making silly percussive noises with it. However I broached Alan’s offer with Tim.

Tim wasn’t instantly ecstatic at the thought of writing something for a bunch of 8–13-year-old school kids. It was a bit of a comedown from hopes of a West End premiere and the white-hot heat of EMI in the year that company launched Sgt. Pepper. But Tim had schoolday memories of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and Gilbert’s witty lyrics in particular. Also the notion of a “pop cantata” did chime with what was happening at the time. We liked the idea that there would be no script – not that we ever had experience of one, since Leslie Thomas had still failed to deliver anything for the increasingly dust-gathering The Likes of Us. So we tossed a few ideas around. At first we felt another Bible story wasn’t cool. Maybe something from English history? I don’t remember if the subject we subsequently toyed with, King Richard I and his minstrel Blondel, surfaced at the time. We certainly combed our history books but nothing grabbed us. A James Bond themed idea was temporarily our frontrunner but it was soon shown the egress as we thought it would date and anyway it needed a plot.

Salvation came in the form of The Wonder Book of Bible Stories. Books like these are excellent source material for musicals. They save a lot of reading time and effort. The plots are nicely condensed, the print is big and there are lots of pictures to bring important moments to life. Tim fell on the story of Joseph and his coat of many colours. I liked the idea. It had the primal ingredients of revenge and forgiveness. There could be humour, particularly if Joseph himself was made out to be a bit of an irritating prick who in the end turns out to be OK. And then there was Pharaoh. I wondered what would happen if we built and built Pharaoh’s entrance and he turned out to be Elvis. Plus there is a nice happy ending when Joseph is reunited with his dad and family. It seemed a natural.

At first Alan Doggett wasn’t convinced. This would be the third biblical cantata the school would have done. Couldn’t we think of something more original? But he melted when one evening I played him the opening two songs. He beamed at Tim’s turn of phrase:

And when Joseph tried it on

He knew his sheepskin days were gone

His astounding clothing took the biscuit

Quite the smoothest person in the district

It’s the use of everyday colloquialisms that makes Joseph’s lyrics so great. It was 1967, we were writing a “pop cantata” and who cared whether rhymes were perfect. Confirmed bachelor Alan melted still further when I introduced him to Tim. Soon Joseph was slated for the Colet Court End of Easter Term Concert, 1968. The work that launched our careers was under starter’s orders.