The British composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has written the music for some of the most popular musicals in modern history. These include Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. Despite his enormous popular success, Lloyd Webber has been attacked by critics for a lack of originality and a too facile invention, although this cannot detract from the fact that his lavish productions and popular themes have won the hearts of millions worldwide, and his business acumen has made him one of the wealthiest composers in music.
Lloyd Webber was born on March 22, 1948, in London. He had a thorough grounding in classical music—his father was a composer and music professor at the London College of Music and his mother was a piano teacher. He wrote his. first musical, The Likes of Us, with lyricist Tim Rice while they were both at Oxford University.
In 1967, Lloyd Webber and Rice first produced Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (originally a pop-oratorio, later revised and expanded). Their next project was the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar First lvlwased as an album in 1970, it proved hugely successful due in part to its subject matter. Once in production—it opened in Broadway in 1971—the musical enjoyed a long and lucrative run. Releasing the album before staging the musical proved so profitable that he repeated the marketing technique with his next big hit, Evita (again with Rice). Evita was loosely based on the life of Eva Peron, and some of the songs, including “Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina” reached the charts. Cats, which followed in 1981, was also hugely popular, and the song “Memory” has been a lasting success. The musicals Starlight Express (1984) and The Phantom of the Opera (1985) were lavish, spectacular productions that continued Lloyd Webber’s success. Lloyd Webber has won an array of awards including six Tonys, four Drama Desk awards, three Grammys, and one Golden Globe. He won an Academy Award for the song “You Must Love Me,” written with Tim Rice for the film adaptation of Evita.
In the 1990s, Lloyd Webber was beset by problems. He was divorced from his wife, singer Sarah Brightman; financial losses hit Aspects of Love and Sunset Boulevard; and he had legal problems associated with casting changes in Sunset Boulevard. Furthermore, Lloyd Webber amassed a $10 million debt in 1997 for Whistle Down the Wind, based on the 1960s British film, which ironically marked the first time a Lloyd Webber production was staged in the United States without a cast album preceding it. After failing to progress from Washington, D.C. to Broadway in 1997, Lloyd Webber hoped to revive his fortunes with a rewritten version of the show that appeared in London in 1998.
Life magazine estimated that Lloyd Webber was the highest paid composer in history. In 1988, his estimated earnings from Cats, not counting income from merchandising—T-shirts, mugs, albums, and other paraphernalia—was $425 million. Even his less-than-successful shows have made millions.
Lloyd Webber was knighted in 1992 for his service to the arts and made a peer in 1997. That same year, Cats became the longest-running musical in history. At any given time during the 1990s, there were 12 or more Lloyd Webber productions being staged or touring throughout the world.
Linda Dailey Paulson
SEE ALSO:
FILM MUSICALS; MUSICALS; POPULAR MUSIC.
FURTHER READING
Mantle, Jonathan. Fanfare: The Unauthorised Biography of Andrew Lloyd Webber (London: Sphere, 1990);
Richmond, Keith. The Musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber (London: Virgin, 1995).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Aspects of Love; Cats; Evita; Jesus Christ Superstar; Phantom of the Opera; Requ iem; StaHight Express.