![]() ![]() They began work on it but Tim felt unable to write lyrics as funny as the prose of Wodehouse, and reluctantly withdrew from the project. Initially, Tim and Andrew considered following up Jesus Christ Superstar with a show about P.G. At last, theatre productions sprang up, firstly on Broadway, and latterly in the West End, where it ran for a record-breaking 8 years at the Palace Theatre. The album was first a hit in the USA, becoming the best-selling album of 1971, but was soon an international success, while the single "Superstar" also became a world-wide hit. Freed from staging concerns, and featuring the talents of Ian Gillan, Murray Head, Yvonne Elliman and The Grease Band, the result was a true rock opera. No theatre producer thought the idea commercial, so instead a concept album was recorded through MCA records, at Olympic Studios, London, in 1970. Tim had always wanted to write something about Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate, and out of this desire was born Jesus Christ Superstar. After rejecting ideas based on King Richard the Lionheart and the Old Testament figure King Saul – ideas to which Tim would one day return with other composers – the duo turned to the New Testament for inspiration. Tim relinquished his job with Norrie Paramor so that he and Andrew could concentrate all their attention on their music careers. This resulted in Myers and Land giving Tim and Andrew a three-year management contract. Myers and his business partner David Land were not interested in the idea, but they were excited by the recording of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat which had accompanied the proposal. For his part, Andrew had approached entrepreneur Sefton Myers with the idea of starting a pop museum. Meanwhile, Norrie Paramor left EMI to form his own company, the Norrie Paramor Organisation, and Tim went with him as his personal assistant. Joseph was not, though, an overnight success – it would be 5 years before a fully staged production reached the West End – and Tim and Andrew were still very far from making a career out of musical theatre. The paper’s music critic, Derek Jewell, whose son was at the school, had seen the show and loved it. Although originally envisioned as a 20-minute school show for the boys, a far cry from their West End musical theatrical ambitions, it unexpectedly received a review in the Sunday Times the following weekend. Thus, on 1st March 1968, was the first public performance of a Rice/Lloyd Webber work – Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. While still hoping against hope that something would happen with The Likes Of Us, Tim and Andrew accepted an invitation from the choirmaster of Colet Court School, London, to write a musical entertainment for his boys’ (aged 8 – 11) end of term concert. ![]() Torn between two career paths, Andrew left Oxford early to devote himself full-time to writing with Tim, but despite their enthusiasm for their project – by now called The Likes of Us - the work failed to attract any interest from a producer. Barnardo as their subject and one of Elliot's clients, the novelist Leslie Thomas, was lined up to write the show's book. Meanwhile, Tim and Andrew had begun writing together, choosing, at Desmond Elliot's suggestion, the Victorian philanthropist Dr. His legal career stalling, Tim got a job as a trainee for the A&R department at EMI Records, under the supervision of Norrie Paramor. The two men hit it off immediately, and, owing to Andrew’s love of American musical theatre, began to try to write a musical rather than pop singles. ![]() At Elliot's suggestion, on 21 April 1965 Tim wrote to Andrew, and a meeting was quickly arranged. Elliot knew someone in need of a collaborator: a young man called Andrew Lloyd Webber, who was about to go up to Magdalen College, Oxford, to read history, but who wanted to be a composer. The idea didn't impress Elliot, but the fact that Tim was also a budding song-writer did. While still an apprenticed clerk at the law firm Petit and Westlake, Tim approached the head of Arlington Books, Desmond Elliot, with the idea of writing a book about pop history. Although he began his professional life as a trainee solicitor, from an early age he was a pop music fanatic. Tim Rice was born in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, England, in 1944 and educated at Aldwickbury School and Lancing College. ![]()
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