Andrew Lloyd Webber - The Maestro of Musical Theatre Transforming the Stage

Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber, KG (born March 22, 1948) is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 21 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass.

Several of Lloyd Webber's songs have been widely recorded and achieved significant success outside their parent musicals, such as "Memory" from Cats, "The Music of the Night" and "All I Ask of You" from The Phantom of the Opera, "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar, "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from Evita, and "Any Dream Will Do" from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. In 2001, The New York Times referred to him as "the most commercially successful composer in history." The Daily Telegraph named him in 2008 the fifth-most powerful person in British culture, with lyricist Don Black stating that "Andrew more or less single-handedly reinvented the musical."

Lloyd Webber has received numerous awards, including a knighthood in 1992, followed by a peerage for services to the arts, six Tonys, seven Olivier Awards, three Grammys (as well as the Grammy Legend Award), an Academy Award, 14 Ivor Novello Awards, a Golden Globe, a Brit Award, the 2006 Kennedy Center Honors, and two Classic Brit Awards (for Outstanding Contribution to Music in 2008, and for Musical Theatre and Education in 2018). In 2018, after Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live), he became the thirteenth person to win an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Tony. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, is an inductee into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and is a fellow of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors.

The Really Useful Group, Lloyd Webber's company, is one of the largest theatre operators in London. Producers in several parts of the UK have staged productions, including national tours, of Lloyd Webber musicals under license from the Really Useful Group. He is also the president of the Arts Educational Schools, London, a performing arts school located in Chiswick, west London. Lloyd Webber is involved in various charitable activities, including the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Nordoff Robbins, Prostate Cancer UK, and War Child. In 1992, he started the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, which supports the arts, culture, and heritage of the UK.

Early Life

Lloyd Webber was born on March 22, 1948, at Westminster Hospital in London, the elder son of William Lloyd Webber (1914–1982), a composer and organist, and Jean Hermione Johnstone (1921–1993), a violinist and pianist. His younger brother, Julian Lloyd Webber, is a world-renowned solo cellist. On the BBC's genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?, he learned that his mother's great-great-uncle was the soldier Sir Peregrine Maitland, who served as a major general at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Lloyd Webber studied at the Royal College of Music in London, as did his father William. In 2014, he received an honorary doctorate from the college for his "contribution to musical life." He started writing his own music at a young age, composing a suite of six pieces at the age of nine. He also put on "productions" with Julian and his aunt Viola in his toy theatre (which he built at Viola's suggestion). In his memoir, he writes: "Mum was determined that I should be a prodigy in something or other." His aunt Viola, an actress, took him to see many of her shows and introduced him to the world of theatre. His father enrolled him as a part-time student at the Eric Gilder School of Music in 1963. At this time, he was working on a Genghis Khan musical called Westonia!

From 1960 to 1965, Lloyd Webber was a Queen's Scholar at Westminster School. An avid listener of 1960s rock and pop music, he called The Rolling Stones song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" the "best record of the Sixties" and Dusty Springfield's rendition of "Son of a Preacher Man" the song that taught him "the power of a perfect pop song." He studied history for a term at Magdalen College, Oxford, although he abandoned the course in the winter of 1965 to study at the Royal College of Music in London and pursue his interest in musical theatre.

Career

Early Years
In 1965, when Lloyd Webber was a 17-year-old budding musical-theatre composer, he was introduced to the 20-year-old aspiring pop songwriter Tim Rice. Their first collaboration was The Likes of Us, an Oliver!-inspired musical based on the true story of Thomas John Barnardo. They produced a demo tape of that work in 1966, but the project failed to gain a backer. Although composed in 1965, The Likes of Us was not publicly performed until 2005, when a production was staged at Lloyd Webber's Sydmonton Festival.

In the summer of 1967, Alan Doggett, a family friend of the Lloyd Webbers who had assisted on The Likes of Us and who was the music teacher at the Colet Court school in London, commissioned Lloyd Webber and Rice to write a piece for the school's choir. Doggett requested a "pop cantata" along the lines of Herbert Chappell's The Daniel Jazz (1963) and Michael Hurd's Jonah-Man Jazz (1966). This resulted in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, a retelling of the biblical story of Joseph, in which Lloyd Webber and Rice humorously pastiched a number of pop music styles such as Elvis-style rock'n'roll, Calypso, and country music. Joseph began life as a short cantata that gained some recognition on its second staging with a favorable review in The Times. For its subsequent performances, Rice and Lloyd Webber revised the show and added new songs to expand it to a more substantial length, culminating in a 1972 stage musical and a two-hour-long production staged in the West End in 1973 on the back of the success of Jesus Christ Superstar.

In 1969, Rice and Lloyd Webber wrote a song for the Eurovision Song Contest called "Try It and See," which was not selected. With rewritten lyrics, it became "King Herod's Song" in their third musical, Jesus Christ Superstar (1970). Debuting on Broadway in 1971, by 1980 the musical had grossed more than $237 million worldwide. Running for over eight years in London between 1972 and 1980, it held the record for longest-running West End musical before it was overtaken by Cats in 1989.

Lloyd Webber collaborated with Rice once again to write Evita (1978), a musical based on the life of Eva Perón. As with Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita was released first as a concept album (1976) featuring Julie Covington singing the part of Eva Perón. The song "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" became a hit single, and the musical was staged at the West End's Prince Edward Theatre in a production directed by Harold Prince and starring Elaine Paige in the title role. This original production was enormously successful, eventually running for nearly eight years in the West End.

Mid-1970s

In 1978, Lloyd Webber embarked on a project with his cellist brother Julian, the Variations, based on the 24th Caprice by Paganini; this reached number two in the pop album chart in the United Kingdom. The main theme was used as the theme tune for ITV's long-running South Bank Show throughout its 32-year run. The same year, he also composed a new theme tune for the long-running documentary series Whicker's World, which was used from 1978 to 1980.

Lloyd Webber premiered The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty's Theatre in the West End in 1986, inspired by the 1911 Gaston Leroux novel. He wrote the part of Christine for his then-wife, Sarah Brightman, who played the role in the original London and Broadway productions alongside Michael Crawford as the Phantom. The production was directed by Harold Prince, who had also earlier directed Evita. Charles Hart wrote the lyrics for Phantom with some additional material provided by Richard Stilgoe, with whom Lloyd Webber co-wrote the book of the musical. It became a hit and is still running in the West End; in January 2006, it overtook Lloyd Webber's Cats as the longest-running show on Broadway.

1980s

Cats (1981) was to become the longest-running musical in London, where it ran for 21 years and 8,949 performances before closing. On Broadway, Cats ran for 18 years, a record which would ultimately be broken by another Lloyd Webber musical, The Phantom of the Opera. Starlight Express (1984) was a commercial hit but received negative reviews from critics. It ran for 7,409 performances in London, making it the ninth longest-running West End show.

Lloyd Webber wrote a Requiem Mass dedicated to his father, William, who had died in 1982. It premiered at St. Thomas Church in New York on February 24, 1985. Church music had been a part of the composer's upbringing, and the composition was inspired by an article he had read about the plight of Cambodian orphans. Lloyd Webber received a Grammy Award in 1986 for Requiem in the category of best classical composition.

1990s

Lloyd Webber was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1993 for his contribution to live theatre. He was asked to write a song for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona and composed "Amigos Para Siempre — Friends for Life" with Don Black providing the lyrics. Lloyd Webber had toyed with the idea of writing a musical based on Billy Wilder's critically acclaimed movie, Sunset Boulevard, since seeing the film in the early 1970s, but the project did not come to fruition until after the completion of Aspects of Love.

2000s

Having achieved great popular success in musical theatre, Lloyd Webber was referred to by The New York Times in 2001 as "the most commercially successful composer in history." In 2002, he turned producer, bringing the musical Bombay Dreams to London. With music by Indian composer A.R. Rahman and lyrics by Don Black, it ran for two years at the Apollo Victoria Theatre. A revised Broadway production at the Broadway Theatre two years later ran for only 284 performances. On September 16, 2004, his production of The Woman in White opened at the Palace Theatre in London, running for 19 months and 500 performances. A revised production opened on Broadway at the Marquis Theatre on November 17, 2005, but closed only three months later due to mixed reviews.

Lloyd Webber produced a staging of The Sound of Music, which debuted in November 2006. He controversially chose an unknown to play leading lady Maria, found through the BBC's reality television show How Do You Solve a Problem like Maria?, in which he was a judge. The winner of the show was Connie Fisher. In September 2006, Lloyd Webber was named a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors, recognized for his outstanding contribution to American performing arts.

2010s

Following the opening of Love Never Dies, Lloyd Webber began a search for a new musical theatre performer in the BBC One series Over the Rainbow. He cast the winner, Danielle Hope, in the role of Dorothy Gale in his forthcoming stage production of The Wizard of Oz. On March 1, 2011, The Wizard of Oz opened at The Palladium Theatre, starring Hope as Dorothy Gale and Michael Crawford as the Wizard of Oz. In 2012, Lloyd Webber fronted a new ITV primetime show Superstar, which gave the UK public the chance to decide who would play the starring role of Jesus in an arena tour of Jesus Christ Superstar.

In 2013, Lloyd Webber reunited with Christopher Hampton and Don Black on Stephen Ward the Musical. For his next project, a 2015 musical adaptation of the 2003 film School of Rock, auditions were held for children aged nine to fifteen in cooperation with the School of Rock music education program. In April 2016, the English National Opera staged a revival of Sunset Boulevard at the London Coliseum, which was so well-received that it transferred to the Palace Theatre on Broadway in February 2017.

Lloyd Webber's memoir, Unmasked, was published in 2018. On September 9, 2018, he, along with Tim Rice and John Legend, won an Emmy for Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert. With this win, they joined the list of people who have won Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards. Lloyd Webber wrote the song "Beautiful Ghosts" with Taylor Swift for the film adaptation of Cats, released in December 2019.

2020s

Lloyd Webber's new version of Cinderella opened at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in the West End in 2021. The opening, originally set for August 2020, was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He garnered press attention in July 2021 for saying that he was "prepared to be arrested" to open Cinderella to full houses despite rising Covid cases. In 2022, he appeared alongside Lin-Manuel Miranda in the BBC Platinum Jubilee Concert for the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.

In 2023, Lloyd Webber was one of twelve composers asked to write a new piece for the coronation of Charles III and Camilla. His anthem, "Make a Joyful Noise," was performed during the enthronement of Queen Camilla.

Accusations of Plagiarism

Lloyd Webber has faced accusations of plagiarism throughout his career. Dutch composer Louis Andriessen stated that he "has yet to think up a single note." Lloyd Webber's biographer acknowledged a similarity between the andante movement of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto and the Jesus Christ Superstar song "I Don't Know How to Love Him," but noted that Lloyd Webber brought new dramatic tension to the melody.

In 1987, the Puccini estate filed a lawsuit against Lloyd Webber, accusing him of plagiarism regarding a recurring melody in La fanciulla del West. The case was settled out of court. Additionally, songwriter Ray Repp claimed that Lloyd Webber had stolen a melody from his song "Till You," but the court ruled in Lloyd Webber's favor.

Personal Life

Lloyd Webber has been married three times. He first married Sarah Hugill on July 24, 1971; they divorced on November 14, 1983. Together they had two children: Imogen Lloyd Webber and Nicholas Lloyd Webber. He then married English soprano Sarah Brightman on March 22, 1984, but they divorced on January 3, 1990. They have remained close friends and continued to work together. His third marriage was to Madeleine Gurdon on February 9, 1991, and they have three children: Alastair Adam Lloyd Webber, William Richard Lloyd Webber, and Isabella Aurora Lloyd Webber. Lloyd Webber and Madeleine founded the Watership Down Stud in 1992 and expanded their equestrian holdings by purchasing Kiltinan Castle Stud in Ireland.

In a 1971 interview, Lloyd Webber described himself as an agnostic but acknowledged Jesus as "one of the great figures of history." He is a lifelong supporter of Leyton Orient F.C. In late 2009, he underwent surgery for early-stage prostate cancer but declared himself cancer-free in January 2010 after having his prostate removed as a preventative measure. In 2023, his son Nicholas passed away at the age of 43 after battling gastric cancer.

Lloyd Webber owns a house in Eaton Square, London, and in 2024, he revealed that he had his house blessed by a priest to displace a "poltergeist" haunting the property.

Wealth

The Sunday Times Rich List ranked Lloyd Webber as the 87th-richest person in Britain in 2006, with an estimated fortune of £700 million. His wealth increased to £750 million in 2007, but he was ranked 101st in 2008. By 2019, he was recognized as the richest musician in the UK, with a fortune of £820 million. He resides at Sydmonton Court in Hampshire and owns much of the nearby Watership Down.

Lloyd Webber is also an art collector with a passion for Victorian painting. An exhibition of works from his collection was presented at the Royal Academy in 2003. In 2006, he planned to sell a Picasso painting to benefit the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation but withdrew it from auction after claims regarding its previous ownership. The painting was later sold at auction for £34.7 million.

Charity

Lloyd Webber is involved in various charitable activities, including the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Nordoff Robbins, Prostate Cancer UK, and War Child. In 1992, he established the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation to support the arts, culture, and heritage in the UK. In 2013, he launched the Andrew Lloyd Webber Programme to aid the Music in Secondary Schools Trust, aiming to provide every child at participating schools the opportunity to study a musical instrument.

In 2014, he designed a Cats-themed Paddington Bear statue to raise funds for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).

Politics

Lloyd Webber was made a life peer in 1997 and sat for the Conservative Party. He has supported the Conservatives and allowed his song "Take That Look Off Your Face" to be used in a party promotional film before the 2005 general election. In 2014, he signed a letter opposing Scottish independence. In 2015, he faced criticism for voting in favor of tax credit cuts while having a limited voting record. He retired from the House of Lords in 2017, citing a busy schedule.

In July 2021, he expressed that he would never vote for the Conservatives again due to their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the arts sector's treatment during that time.

Awards and Honours

Lloyd Webber was knighted in the Queen's 1992 Birthday Honours for services to the arts and was created Baron Lloyd-Webber in 1997. He is styled "The Lord Lloyd-Webber" and has received numerous accolades throughout his career, including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. His contributions to musical theatre have made him a prominent figure in the arts, and he continues to influence the industry with his work.

Note: Music composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber unless otherwise noted.

• The Likes of Us (1965)
  Lyrics by Tim Rice
  Book by Leslie Thomas
  Not produced until 2005

• Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1968)
  Lyrics by Tim Rice

• Jesus Christ Superstar (1970)
  Lyrics by Tim Rice

• Jeeves (1975)
  Book and lyrics by Alan Ayckbourn
  Revised in 1996 as By Jeeves

• Evita (1976)
  Lyrics by Tim Rice

• Tell Me on a Sunday (1979)
  Lyrics by Don Black

• Cats (1981)
  Lyrics based on Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot
  Additional lyrics after Eliot by Richard Stilgoe and Trevor Nunn

• Song and Dance (1982)
  Lyrics by Don Black (revised by Richard Maltby Jr. for Broadway)
  Combination of Variations (1978) and Tell Me on a Sunday (1979)

• Starlight Express (1984)
  Lyrics by Richard Stilgoe
  Later revisions by Don Black and David Yazbek
  Inspired by The Railway Series books by The Rev. W. Awdry

• Cricket (1986)
  Lyrics by Tim Rice
  First performed for Queen Elizabeth II's 60th birthday

• The Phantom of the Opera (1986)
  Lyrics by Charles Hart
  Additional Lyrics by Richard Stilgoe
  Book by Richard Stilgoe and Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Based on the novel by Gaston Leroux

• Aspects of Love (1989)
  Lyrics by Don Black and Charles Hart
  Book by Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Based on the novel by David Garnett

• Sunset Boulevard (1993)
  Book and lyrics by Christopher Hampton and Don Black
  Based on the 1950 film by Billy Wilder

• Whistle Down the Wind (1996)
  Lyrics by Jim Steinman
  Book by Patricia Knop, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Gale Edwards

• The Beautiful Game (2000)
  Book and lyrics by Ben Elton
  Updated as The Boys in the Photograph (2009)

• The Woman in White (2004)
  Lyrics by David Zippel
  Book by Charlotte Jones
  Based on the Wilkie Collins novel

• Love Never Dies (2010)
  Book & Lyrics by Glenn Slater
  Book by Ben Elton & Frederick Forsyth
  Additional lyrics by Charles Hart

• The Wizard of Oz (2011)
  Book by Andrew Lloyd Webber & Jeremy Sams
  Music by Harold Arlen
  Lyrics by E.Y. Harburg
  Additional music by Andrew Lloyd Webber
  Additional lyrics by Tim Rice
  Based on the 1939 motion picture The Wizard of Oz
  Based on the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

• Stephen Ward (2013)
  Book and lyrics by Christopher Hampton and Don Black

• School of Rock (2015)
  Lyrics by Glenn Slater
  Book by Julian Fellowes
  Based on the 2003 film by Richard Linklater

• Cinderella (2021)
  Lyrics by David Zippel
  Book by Emerald Fennell
  Based on the classic story
  Produced on Broadway as Bad Cinderella

Film Adaptations

There have been several film adaptations of Lloyd Webber's musicals:

• Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), directed by Norman Jewison

• Evita (1996), directed by Alan Parker

• The Phantom of the Opera (2004), directed by Joel Schumacher and co-produced by Lloyd Webber

• Cats (2019), directed by Tom Hooper and executive produced by Lloyd Webber

Additionally, Cats (1998), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1999), Jesus Christ Superstar (2000), and By Jeeves (2001) have been adapted into made-for-television films that have been released on DVD and VHS and often air on BBC.

A special performance of The Phantom of the Opera at the Royal Albert Hall for the 25th anniversary was broadcast live to cinemas in early October 2011 and later released on DVD and Blu-ray in February 2012. The same was also done with a reworked version of Love Never Dies, filmed in Melbourne, which received a limited cinema release in the US and Canada in 2012 to assess the viability of bringing the show to Broadway.

Other Works

• Gumshoe (1971) - Film score

• The Odessa File (1974) – Film score

• Variations (1978) – A set of musical variations on Niccolò Paganini's Caprice in A minor, composed for his brother, cellist Julian. This album featured fifteen rock musicians, including guitarist Gary Moore and pianist Rod Argent, and reached number 2 in the UK album chart upon its release. It was later combined with Tell Me on a Sunday to form one show, Song and Dance. Lloyd Webber also used variation five as the basis for "Unexpected Song" in Song and Dance. The main theme is used as the theme music to The South Bank Show.

• Requiem (1985) – A classical choral work composed in honor of his father, William.

• Watership Down (1999) – Lloyd Webber and Mike Batt, the main soundtrack composer of the animated series adaptation of Richard Adams' novel, composed the song "Fields of Sun." The actual song was never used on the show, nor was it available on the CD soundtrack released at the time, but he was credited for the unused song in the show's opening titles.

Discography

Musicals and Show Recordings

• • The Likes of Us (1965)

  • Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1968)

  • Jesus Christ Superstar (1970)

  • Jeeves (1975)

  • Evita (1976)

  • Tell Me on a Sunday (1979)

  • Cats (1981)

  • Song and Dance (1982)

  • Starlight Express (1984)

  • The Phantom of the Opera (1986)

  • Aspects of Love (1989)

  • Sunset Boulevard (1993)

  • Whistle Down the Wind (1998)

  • The Beautiful Game (2000)

  • The Woman in White (2004)

  • Love Never Dies (2010)

  • The Wizard of Oz (2011)

  • Stephen Ward (2013)

  • School of Rock (2015)

  • Cinderella (2021)

  • Bad Cinderella (2023)

Other Albums

• Variations (1978)

• Variations with London Philharmonic Orchestra (1986)

• Symphonic Suites (2021)

Andrew Lloyd Webber's contributions to musical theatre have left an indelible mark on the industry, and his works continue to resonate with audiences around the world.