Andrew Lloyd Webber - Unmasked

For your first two weeks at the new emporium you were allocated a boy a year older than you, who was tasked with sympathetically demonstrating the niceties of the institution in which you were to spend the next few years. In fact you were regaled with tales of the headmaster’s legendary beatings and the sadistic antics of the gym master, Stuart Murray. I was familiar with this bastard. He had practised minor versions of his craft at the Under School and drilled into me a loathing of exercise and sport that was only partially sorted out by a Californian swimming instructress called Mimosa in the 1970s. I don’t think I’m vindictive by nature but when I read in the school magazine one morning years later that Mr Murray had died, I wrote two tunes and had a bottle of wine for lunch.

I LAY LOW FOR my first term but a plan hatched when I saw the house Christmas pantomime. This struck me as awesomely sophisticated stuff. But none of the music was original. I let the following Easter term pass by but come the summer it was time to strike. I played the card that I had played before. A highlight of the summer term was the annual house concert. I put myself down to play the piano, programme to be announced.

As the end of pre-Beatle days drew nigh, the British charts were home to a few local curiosities, none more so than Russ Conway. Mr Conway was a rather good-looking gay guy. He played pub piano on TV with a fixed grin, despite having lost two digits in an incident in the Royal Navy which need not detain us. He also wrote several chart-topping instrumentals, most famously “Side Saddle.” John Lill featured a few of these in his pub gigs.

My offering at the annual house concert was a tune I had knocked up in his style. It had the desired effect. After two encores the housemaster declared that it would make everyone’s fortunes. Next morning I was summoned to see the Head of House. He told me that another senior boy was writing next term’s annual pantomime. He needed some songs. Would I like to meet him? That’s how I met my first lyricist and came to compose my first-ever performed musical. Its name was Cinderella up the Beanstalk and his name was Robin Barrow.

Any cockiness I acquired was short lived. Buoyed by my belief that I was God’s gift to melody, I wrote a fan letter to none other than Richard Rodgers, courtesy of my father’s publisher Teddy Holmes at Chappell Music. Rodgers actually received it and, to my amazement, invited me to the London opening of The Sound of Music at the Palace Theatre. So on May 19, 1961 I found myself at my first premiere. On my own in a back row of the upper circle, I was overwhelmed by the melodies. However, arrogant little sod that I was, I wrote on my programme, “Not as good as ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’” beside “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” in the songlist. Even so, I knew I was hearing melodies that would become evergreen from a genius at the top of his game.

Unfortunately my marvel at this first night tunefest was not shared by the London critics. This was rammed home to me by my so-called school friends when I pitched up the following morning. They had considerately laid out all the reviews for me on the common-room table. “Look what they’ve done to your idol, Lloydy,” they crowed. That’s when I first experienced a feeling that’s taken the shine off many an opening night. But at least I learned my first lesson in creative advertising. One of the reviews read, “If you are a diabetic craving extra sickly sweet things inject an extra large dose of insulin and you will not fail to thrill to ‘The Sound of Music.’”

“You Will Not Fail To Thrill To The Sound Of Music” adorned the front of the Palace Theatre for eight poetic justice infused years.

NEXT TERM REHEARSALS FOR Cinderella began. I found myself a junior boy rehearsing the seniors in a show with words written by a school prefect. Unsurprisingly, the first two rehearsals were daunting. In those days the seniority code at any school was quite something. But it was amazing how once we got into the swing of things all this was forgotten. Melodies were offered up, criticized, rewritten, discussed. Songs were tried out, cut, reinstated and cut again. It turned out that the Head of House had a rather good voice, so creepily I gave him a couple of wannabe showstoppers. For the first time I was where I was to discover I am happiest – working on a musical. We did three shows. I played the piano backstage and every night I took a proud little bow.

Two incidents dominated Christmas. The first was news from Italy that Auntie Vi had been slung out of Pisa Cathedral for showing her tits to a sacristan who had said her dress showed too much of her shoulders. The second happened on Christmas day. Mum had propelled Julian and me towards the morning Christmas service at the Central Hall, Westminster, unwisely leaving Granny Molly in charge of the Christmas turkey. I suggested that I manned the stoves and that Molly went to hear Dad and his choir strut their stuff, but this suggestion fell on deaf ears. Throughout the service I was gravely concerned about the fate of the turkey and keen to get back to Harrington Court as soon as decently possible. So Mum volunteered to drive me home, leaving Dad and Julian to cadge a lift with a neighbour after the post-service teabag and packet mince-pie party.

Mum turned on the car radio and out of the tinny mono speaker came music that catapulted thought of the turkey into the middle distance. Mum had tuned in five minutes after the start of Puccini’s Tosca . I was completely and utterly captivated. I couldn’t understand a word of it (probably a good thing as the more you understand the plot of Tosca the more unpleasant it is) but I had never heard such theatrical, gloriously melodic music in my life. Mum did explain what was going on when we got to the Act 1 closer, the “Te Deum,” as she parked in the mews by the French Lycée. I realize now why that “Te Deum” hit every nerve in my body. My love of Victorian church architecture equalled an affinity with High Church decadence and if ever a piece of theatre is that, surely it’s the Tosca “Te Deum.” To this day it remains the only piece of theatre I secretly would love to direct. Just that bit though. Sadly, you probably wouldn’t see much of my directorial debut due to excess incense clouds.

Unfortunately Mum clocked Dad and Julian being dropped off home across the road and opined that, Tosca or not, it was time for Christmas presents. I begged her to let me stay in the car. She said something like, “I suppose music is more important than Christmas” and told me to lock the car door after I had finished with the keys which she left in the ignition. With that she ankled towards the family festivities. I listened spellbound to the second act, as the car got colder and colder, and I went as cold as the outside air when I heard what I later discovered to be “Vissi d’arte.” By the time the third-act bells of Rome were chiming I was totally wiped out. This was truly theatre music that I never dreamed possible. And there were no words! It was then that my reverie was interrupted by ferocious banging on the car windscreen.

You have to think of things from the police officer’s point of view. Here was a thirteen-year-old boy in floods of tears at 2 pm on a freezing cold Christmas Day seemingly in charge of a car and listening to opera on the radio at full volume, not everyday stuff for a police officer, let alone on Christmas Day. Furthermore the thirteen-year-old boy seemed extremely indignant, even aggressive at being asked to turn the music off and explain himself. Eventually the policeman sort of accepted my story with an “I suppose I’ll believe you this time because it’s Christmas,” and let me go on condition that he walked me to the flat front door.