Читать книгу Unmasked - Эндрю Ллойд Уэббер - Страница 15

8 Elvis with Mellotron and Tambourines

From Easter 1967 our pop cantata simmered leisurely on the back burner but with The Likes of Us in the deep freeze Tim and I started writing pop songs. The first Rice/Lloyd Webber song to be commercially released was “Down Thru’ Summer.” The artist was Ross Hannaman and the arranger/producer Mike Leander who had arranged “She’s Leaving Home” for The Beatles. Ross was a contestant in the London Evening Standard Girl of the Year, 1967 competition. Those were the days when such contests were only just beginning to be deemed un-PC. We had noticed in Ross’s blurb that she sang. Tim asked his bosses if he could sign her if she won the competition. Surprisingly the answer was yes. So we piled off to hear her sing in some club where we encountered a very pretty teenager with an OK folksy voice, very much in the Marianne Faithfull mould. Tim immediately fancied her but she had two blokes who managed her, one of whom was her boyfriend, so Tim was temporarily stymied.

You could vote as many times as you liked for your favourite Girl of the Year provided you voted on a coupon in your Evening Standard, presumably a marketing wheeze to sell more newspapers to the competitors’ nearest and dearest. Tim and Ross’s manager found a heap of unsold Standards that were about to be pulped and duly voted with the whole lot of them. Her resulting victory was so obviously false that Angus McGill, the witty veteran doyen of Fleet Street diarists who organized the competition, had to declare Ross a joint winner. He couldn’t disqualify her because the rules said you could vote as many times as you liked. But he hadn’t reckoned on someone hijacking the odd thousand unsold copies in a recycling plant. Actually Angus was amused. The contest was hardly serious and he liked the idea that one of the winners might become a pop star. I was introduced to Angus and soon we became real friends. I would often meet him in his Regent’s Park flat from where we would drive to his shop Knobs and Knockers which sold exactly what was on the ticket.

The tune I wrote for Ross was tailor-made for her wispy soprano, a wistful folk ballad that I heard in my head simply arranged for acoustic guitar and a small, sparely scored string section. Tim provided a suitably obtuse flower-powery lyric. “Down thru’ summer you would stay here and be mine.” It was the Summer of Love, after all. The recording session was not at Abbey Road but Olympic Studios, studio of choice for the Rolling Stones and in those days boasting one of the best sounding rooms for an orchestra in London. Little did I guess when I pitched up that morning what a huge part Olympic was to play in my life. Unfortunately Mike Leander’s perception of my little tune could not have been more different from mine. Instead of an acoustic guitar and chamber strings, Mike had arranged the song for a full out galumphing electric rhythm section plus a thrashing drummer whose unsubtle playing was so loud that it spilled over the microphones of the entire orchestra. Nothing could have been more at odds with how I heard my tune and I sat in the corner of the studio, disconsolate.

I thought the B-side, a sort of “Semi-Detached Suburban Mr James” rerun called “I’ll Give All My Love to Southend” (we were in the “Winchester Cathedral” era), fared rather better, even though Tim and I had a “beat group” in mind rather than a pretty folksy girl soprano. I always liked the tune of “Down Thru’ Summer” and reused it as the middle section of “Buenos Aires” in Evita. When the melody accompanies Eva’s premonition of her fatal illness in Act 2 the arrangement isn’t far from how I had heard Ross’s single.

Angus arranged various promotional stunts for Tim and me and the Evening Standard joint winners ranging from a day at Royal Ascot to a night in Mark Birley’s newly opened Annabel’s. This may have made good copy for the Standard but was hardly likely to ingratiate our hopeless single on the record-buying public. Amazingly Tim swung it that we got a second chance with Ross. The song was titled “1969” and the lyric was about someone having a trippy premonition – “ a Chinese band marched by in fours,” that sort of thing. The chorus went “Hey, I hate the picture, 1969.” Tim the soothsayer didn’t predict 1969 to be a bundle of laughs. This time the tune was only partially by me because we decided to make something out of Beethoven’s “Für Elise.” I added what I thought was a rather hooky chorus and a spooky descending tritone linking section. This time the arrangement by ex-Shadows drummer Tony Meehan was far closer to my intentions and I don’t find it totally unlistenable to today. The B-side, “Probably on Thursday,” had a really lovely wistful lyric even if, like so many of Tim’s songs, it told a pessimistic story: “You’re going to leave me, possibly on Wednesday, / Probably on Thursday.” Twenty years later I rewrote the melody of the verse and recorded the song with Sarah Brightman.

That summer we wrote a song for Joseph that we thought might just be a pop hit. Most pop lyrics emanating from the Summer of Love displayed a somewhat opaque side – witness that legendary pop-synth fusion album Days of Future Passed by the Moody Blues or any of Donovan’s hits. The song was “Any Dream Will Do” and the lyrics were no exception. But more of this anon.

A STOCK CHARACTER IN pop showbiz films is the record company postboy. Invariably this character delivers mail to the top executive brass and refuses to leave their offices until they listen to some act he’s discovered. Just to get him out of the door, the top brass reluctantly go to one of the act’s gigs. The act, after various cliffhanging story twists, turns out to be pop’s answer to the Second Coming. EMI had such a postboy. His name was Martin Wilcox. I don’t know if he ever blagged his way into the top honcho’s offices. But he did get as far as Tim Rice. The act he was peddling had a suitably psychedelic name, the Tales of Justine. Its guiding force was a teenager called David Daltrey, naturally presumed to be a distant relative of Roger Daltrey of The Who but I’ve never seen any proof. He lived in Potters Bar in Hertfordshire, not that far from Tim’s home in an area that by 1967 was a sprawling monotone London suburb. Maybe as an escape David had written songs with titles like “Albert (A Pet Sunflower).” He also had a pleasant singing voice and was friendly with an outfit called the Mixed Bag, who did competent cover performances of current hits.

Tim managed to get EMI to sign the Tales of Justine, “Albert (A Pet Sunflower)” was the first single and Tim winged it with his bosses that I arranged it. Albert owed a debt to British music hall, so I stuck a Sgt. Peppery brass band on top of the group which made the record rather fun. We all thought it was catchy enough to be big. Tim and I also signed the band up to ourselves as managers – we called ourselves Antim Management – and we added them to our roster of one, Ross Hannaman, who had ditched her previous team, possibly because she’d had a brief fling with Tim. Unfortunately Ross’s stay with Antim didn’t last long. She shacked up with the begetter of “Excerpt from ‘A Teenage Opera’ ” Mark Wirtz who immediately issued a press release informing the world that we would hear a new Ross Hannaman. In fact we heard nothing at all, the pair got married and were divorced two years later.

Antim Management was undeterred by Ross giving us the heave-ho. Being cutting-edge representatives of our clients, we now designed and printed up some psychedelic sleeves for the Tales of Justine’s “Albert.” One night after hours we inserted all the promotion copies into these sleeves. Our theory was that since no EMI single ever had special promotion covers radio producers and reviewers would think EMI’s entire might was behind this release.

Unfortunately the head of EMI’s promotion department, a thirtyish guy called Roy Featherstone, was extremely unimpressed as was the British public. Sales were zilch. Roy gave Tim a hell of a roasting. I was therefore pretty scared when I got a message from Granny at Harrington Court saying that a Mr Featherstone had called and wanted to see me in his office. I was unprepared for a smiling Roy Featherstone and the offer of a cup of coffee when I quivered into his office two weeks later. Tim had recorded quite a few songs with David Daltrey, and I had done all the arrangements. Mr Featherstone said he thought the songs were OK but the arrangements were terrific, particularly one called “Pathway” where I had experimented with all sorts of effects. He would like to help me get a few more arranging gigs with other artists. This was the first time anyone in a record company had noticed my music, even if it was only my orchestrations. The timing couldn’t have been better because Tim had just hit me with news that had left me axed as if by a pole.

Norrie Paramor announced that, like George Martin and the other top EMI producers before, he too was leaving EMI and setting up on his own. He wanted Tim to go with him as his key man. It was an offer Tim could not refuse. Nor should he have done but it was clear that Norrie, despite hints from Tim, did not envisage a role for me in his new venture. Furthermore he employed instead ex-Westminster boy Nick Ingman as arranger and composer, with whom Tim was to write B-sides and the like. Ironically Nick had been the lead singer of the group that performed “Make Believe Love” at my Westminster concert for Peter and Gordon.

I was very alarmed. Tim was turning 23, had a job with real prospects and entrees into songwriting. I was 19, had chucked up Oxford for Tim and a musical that was never going to be produced. At least Roy Featherstone had thrown me a sort of lifeline and in fact I was to have a great relationship with Roy. But it was not until ten years later. My only real lifeline was a Friday afternoon school concert.

FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 1968 was a grey, drab, drizzly day but not over-cold for the time of year. Around 2 pm a gaggle of two hundred or so parents, mostly mothers as it was a weekday afternoon, gathered with no particular sense of anticipation in the rather cramped entrance hall of Colet Court School. Conversation centred on their fervent hope that this special end-of-term concert of Joseph and His Amazing (Technicolour) Dreamcoat was short enough for them to drive their children home before the weekend rush hour. One young mum commented that Johnny Cash was marrying June Carter that afternoon, US time. They were probably surprised, after they were ushered onto those hard low chairs you only find in school halls, by what was on the stage.

Lloyd Webber and Rice had fielded the entire Antim Management artists’ roster. Stage centre was a pop group rig, drums and amplifiers manned by Potters Bar’s very own cover band, the Mixed Bag. Seated next to a mike stand was no less than Potters Bar’s star vocalist and songwriter, David Daltrey. There was an elephantine keyboard contraption looking like an electronic organ which I had badgered the school to hire called a Mellotron. These now long-extinct dinosaurs were a forerunner of the synthesizer and much loved by the Moody Blues. They didn’t generate their own sounds but used a cumbersome battery of pre-recorded tapes. Seated in serried ranks was the school orchestra, augmented by a few student mates from various colleges of music. Behind all this were two groups of boys. The first batch were the 30-strong school choir and the second the three hundred or so kids who couldn’t sing or were tone deaf or both. Some of these had tambourines. Lurking backstage was Tim, gearing up for an Elvis impression as Pharaoh. So there was a mildly curious buzz from the parents in between anxious glances at watches, hoping the whole thing would crack on and finish PDQ.

The headmaster, a suave traditional cove called Henry Collis, ascended the stage and made a brief speech which decidedly hedged its bets on the forthcoming entertainment. He then introduced Alan Doggett in a fashion that suggested that if things went tits up it was all Doggett’s fault and he needn’t turn up on Monday. Alan bounced on stage, sporting a natty bow tie, raised his conductor’s baton and off we went, straight into the story at bar one because the now signature trumpet fanfare introduction didn’t exist in those days.

Joseph and the Amazing (Technicolour) Dreamcoat (the word “Technicolour” included a “u” and was for some reason billed in brackets) was away to the races.

THE CONCERT WAS A total blast. The yummy mummies forgot about the weekend rush hour and virtually the whole 22-minute cantata was encored. Everyone loved Tim’s Elvis impression as Pharaoh but it was the piece as a whole that was the star. Some mothers clamoured for a repeat performance on another day so that their other halves could hear it. For the record, here is the hugely condensed plot of what we performed that afternoon.

Jacob had two wives and twelve sons. Joseph, his favourite and a dreamer, irritatingly predicts to his brothers that one day he will rise above the lot of them. When Jacob gives Joseph a coat of many colours it is the final straw. They decide to kill him. Luring Joseph into the desert, they encounter some roving Ishmaelites. A sudden twinge of remorse and a chance to make a shekel or two prompts them to sell Joseph as a slave to be taken to Egypt. They dip Joseph’s coat in goat’s blood, telling his grieving dad he was killed bravely fighting. Joseph gets chucked into gaol, presumably as an illegal alien, where he sings his big ballad “Close Every Door.” His interpretation of his cellmates’ dreams catches the attention of Pharaoh who is having nightmares. Joseph interprets these as signifying seven years of impending food glut, followed by seven of famine. Pharaoh makes Joseph boss of a rationing scheme to provide for the bad years. Joseph’s famine-stricken brothers pitch up in Egypt, begging for food. They don’t recognize their brother but he recognizes them and puts them to a test: he plants a cup in Benjamin, the youngest brother’s, food sack, accusing him of stealing. The brothers rally to his defence, offering themselves up for punishment instead. Realizing they are now responsible citizens, Joseph reveals to his astonished siblings who he is. Jacob is brought to Egypt to be reunited with the son he thought was dead. A happy ending is enjoyed by all.

This simple primal tale had everything. Tim had made a brilliant choice. I didn’t realize it at the time but in my attempt to write music that would never allow its kid performers to get bored, I was unwittingly creating what was to become my trademark, a “through-sung” musical, i.e. a score with little or no spoken dialogue where the musical structure, the musical key relationships, rhythms and use of time signatures, not just the melodies, are vital to its success. Nothing in Joseph was random. I wrote it by instinct as I had no experience. But the fact that there was no spoken dialogue meant that I was in the driving seat. Once Tim and I had agreed the essential elements of the plot and we had decided where the key songs would go, it was down to me to control the rhythm of the piece. Of course spoken dialogue can be invaluable – on many occasions it is by far the best way to express dramatic situations – but for me my through-composed shows are the most satisfying.

It is the strength of the heart of Joseph that allowed it to expand like Topsy into a stage musical with its various pastiche set pieces. This central core has its own, if naive, musical style and above all a real emotional centre. The only pastiche in the Colet Court version was “Song of the King” which turned Pharaoh into Elvis. I have to claim that as my idea. I thought we needed something to lighten the mood after Joseph’s “Close Every Door” in which Joseph sings that Children of Israel are never alone, one of the simple central messages of the piece. Unusually the title was also my idea, although hardly original. It was inspired by the Alan Price single “Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear.” “Technicolour” got added as it seemed a cool way of saying “many colours.” Moreover Technicolor dreams, with all their 1960s connotations were definitely the stuff of the moment.

Thrillingly, after the concert there was an on-the-spot offer of publication. Unbeknown to Tim and me, Alan Doggett had invited the team from Novello and Co., the top classical music publisher who had strayed highly successfully into the educational market with The Daniel Jazz. They also published much of my father’s church music and I wonder if he too had a hand in their giving up a Friday afternoon to hear our effort. Anyhow they wanted to sign Joseph there and then. We referred them to Desmond Elliott.

DESMOND HAD SHOWN SCANT interest in our pop cantata. In fact he had shown scant interest in anything I was doing. For a long while his attention had been more or less exclusively devoted to a school friend of Tim’s called Adam Diment. Adam was a novelist who had written a couple of alternative James Bond type books with titles like The Dolly Dolly Spy and The Bang Bang Birds featuring a character not unlike Austin Powers. Desmond persuaded Adam to grow his hair, got publishers Michael Joseph in such a tizzy about him that they paid him a massive advance and then fielded him on TV chat shows around the English-speaking world dressed in “mod” outfits. London bus sides proclaimed “If you can’t read Adam Diment love him.” For a brief while Adam made a heap of money and was quite a celebrity.

It was not surprising then that having a young, good looking male pop star author of his own creation under his belt so to speak, Desmond was no longer as enthused about me as he once was. So when he negotiated a £100 advance for both Tim and me out of Novello’s, peanuts to what he was earning from Adam Diment, he assumed my father (the legal age you could sign a contract in 1968 was 21) would ink the agreement immediately. (Today £1670.) Fortunately Bob Kingston’s homily echoed round my skull and I added the words “excluding Grand Rights” to the document I got Dad to initial as well as adding his moniker.

The resulting explosion in Desmond’s St James’s Street office could be heard above the teatime quartet in the palm court of the neighbouring Ritz Hotel. How could I be so stupid as to jeopardize this deal? I was wasting his time. Anyway there never would be Grand Rights involved with a 20-minute pop cantata. Nobody would perform it in a theatre. He ended a diatribe of a letter to my father with “enough is enough.” Tim stood back aloof from the fray, possibly savouring the saga. I stood my ground. I argued that Novello’s would hardly be bothered about Grand Rights income if there was never going to be any, so let’s leave the wording in, just in case. I was right: Novello’s didn’t even murmur. The contracts were signed excluding Grand Rights. My relationship with Desmond was never the same again.

The clamour for a repeat performance of Joseph simmered just enough for Tim, Alan and me to take it seriously. The problem was a venue. Here my father stepped in. He suggested a performance at the Central Hall, Westminster after the 6:30 pm Sunday service. There were two snags. The Central Hall, Westminster is big – three thousand or so seats. Could we fill it? Secondly Joseph was only 22 minutes long. There would have to be something else to go with it. Now my mother surfaced. The first half of the concert could be classical. Julian could do a bit, Dad could play the organ and John Lill would be the Act 1 closer. May 12 was fixed as the big night. There’s a strange coincidence in this. May 12 was also the date of the first public performance of Jesus Christ Superstar in Pittsburgh three years later.

Rehearsals went just about OK. The vastness of the Central Hall swallowed up the Mixed Bag and without a proper PA system I got very worried David Daltrey’s vocals would be lost. Alan Doggett had never conducted in a hall of this size and didn’t have the control that an experienced musical director would have had. I got so nervous that I wanted to cancel the performance and Tim’s laid-back approach to the issues wound me up still further, something not lost on him. I found the playing untogether and feared it was all going to be too amateurish for a performance open to the public.

I need not have been so stressed. Despite the classical first half being way, way overlong, the joy of Joseph and the infectious enthusiasm of its young performers carried all before it. Although it was past most of the kids’ bedtimes, there were once again several ecstatically received encores, a harbinger of what was to happen to Joseph in the future. Desmond Elliott at last showed some interest, although I don’t think he saw a future in Joseph beyond schools. We had made one alteration. In a quest to make what possibly could be a single on the lines of the hugely successful “Excerpt from ‘A Teenage Opera’ ” the previous summer, we lengthened the sequence in which Pharaoh makes Joseph his second in command. We also added a “teenage opera”-style hooky kids chorus. “Joseph how can we ever say all that we want to about you.” This has become one of the central themes of today’s Joseph, although we were soon to rework this whole section.

But thoughts like that were a million miles away after the huge reaction to the performance. I wanted that night to go on forever. Would there ever be another performance of Joseph like this?