1971 was rather eventful. I got married; Superstar opened on Broadway; I met my hero Richard Rodgers; my father made uncannily accurate prophesies about Tim Rice; Stigwood launched three huge Superstar arena tours and Tim and I got a mega putdown from John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival. This occurred on a flight during the publicity tour when Superstar went to No. 1 in the US. We were in a row of three seats – me, Tim and at the end of the row the legendary Mr Fogerty who had boarded in true rock-star fashion at the very last minute. Naturally it was Tim who opened conversation.
“We’re huge fans,” crawled Rice.
I nodded in obsequious agreement.
“What we love about Creedence is you’re a true three-chord band.”
Fogerty looked pained.
“Man,” he drawled, “we’re a two-chord band.”
I WAS STILL NURSING the two-chord putdown when I met Richard Rodgers. I was invited to his Manhattan apartment in the Pierre Hotel which I remember being rather dark and rammed with Impressionist paintings. I was greeted very courteously by his wife Dorothy and shown into a sitting room overlooking Central Park. The great man was perched on a ridiculously uncomfortable-looking French armchair. In hindsight I wish he hadn’t sent me tickets for his latest Broadway musical Two by Two which I had seen the night before. This was the show about Noah’s Ark starring Danny Kaye, who infamously created mayhem after breaking his leg and returning to the production in a wheelchair. Mercifully I saw the show pre this event. But it was a creaky, old-fashioned affair with only a hint that the melodic genius behind some of the greatest shows in musical theatre history had composed the score.
I had a day’s worth of questions. In his first collaboration with Lorenz Hart did he truly write all the melodies first with the lyrics written to the music? Was it really the other way round with Oscar Hammerstein, or was it a bit of both? Why was his melodic style so different in the two collaborations? “Some Enchanted Evening” doesn’t sound like it was by the same composer as “The Lady Is a Tramp.” However, Rodgers had his own agenda.
He wanted to know whether I thought the future of the musical was through-sung. Was the day of the “book” musical over – i. e. a show with songs and spoken dialogue? I said that a through-sung musical put the composer in the driving seat but surely it was horses for courses. Today it would be like saying that post Hamilton every musical must be written in hip hop.
Next Dick Rodgers – he insisted I call him Dick – gave me three precious insights. The first resonated like an oversized dinner gong. The human ear cannot take in more than two or three melodies at one listening. So was this why we released Superstar on record before a stage show? I explained that nobody was interested in producing it and the only way we could get our work heard was through a recording. He said we had hit on something very smart. He repeated that no one, not even he, could take in a crock of melodies in one listening, so critics often said a great score was tuneless or not up to previous best. He cited The King and I as a case in point. He said it wasn’t until the movie that the score was recognized. I found this astonishing, the score is a classic tunefest, made even more extraordinary as all the main melodies are written within just one octave because its star, Gertrude Lawrence, had a tiny singing range.
Secondly, not all his melodies ended up in the shows where they started. “Getting to Know You,” the song Anna sings to the children in The King and I, was originally written for South Pacific and titled “Suddenly Lucky.” He cited it as the perfect example of the wrong tune in the wrong place. In South Pacific it was intended for the second lead Lieutenant Cable to sing about his new-found love, the Tonkinese girl Liat. But the melody with its lyric “Suddenly lucky / Suddenly my arms are lucky” was far too flippant and it was replaced with the classic “Younger than Springtime.” However, it was perfect for the much flightier moment in The King and I.
Thirdly, he complained that critics were afraid of sentiment and are not trained to read musical scores. Who am I to disagree with arguably the greatest melodist of the twentieth century?
BACK IN BRITAIN I found out that Granny had been ensconced in a nursing home in Surrey. The news worried me deeply. Why wasn’t she in a home in London? Mum said Vi and George had recommended the place. Had anyone seen her? I asked. The answer was it only happened a few days ago and that the nursing home was a top-drawer establishment trusted by all. Sarah and I drove there immediately and my worst fears were confirmed. We found Granny in a cold, first-floor bedroom of a converted Victorian house straight out of Bleak House. She was lying in bed, emaciated, shivering and crying. The shocking pain of her arthritis had crippled her, but the most distressing thing was that she was begging for something to eat. I couldn’t find any nursing staff who might have had a vague clue about what was going on so I drove to the village store and bought some basics like bread, ham and cheese which she wolfed down whilst Sarah and I gazed out of the window onto an ugly main road and fought back the tears.
How, why had this happened? I couldn’t be bothered to make a scene with whoever ran the place. I just had to get her out of it fast. I found a phone box and called our family doctor, Brian Pigott – the one I had called about Granny before Christmas. Brian had been my uncle’s junior partner and had taken over his practice when he retired to Italy. He didn’t sound surprised. I told him that we had to find a London nursing home for her immediately and that I would pay. He said that he knew of just the place – in fact he had recommended it to begin with. I told Granny I was moving her to London as soon as possible. She clasped my hand as best she could. I will never forget the sight of those pathetically swollen arthritic fingers or the tears of thanks when I promised her she would be out of this cursed place as soon as I could get everything together.
Brian Pigott moved fast. By the time I had got home, he had arranged for her to be picked up by ambulance and driven to a private nursing home in Pimlico, near Westminster. He warned me he had spoken to Vi and George and that they were furious with me. That evening I talked it all through with Sarah. Neither of us could work out why moving her to London was such a big deal. Next day Granny was moved to a beautifully run nursing home in St George’s Square, two doors along from the home of a master who had taught me at Westminster.
She wasn’t there long. My beloved Granny died a few days later.
I couldn’t go to her cremation. Superstar beckoned again, this time somewhere in Europe. I could have cancelled but Granny would have emphatically not wanted me to. Vi and George didn’t fly home. They sent flowers. What was the reason everyone was so weird about the woman who had provided the home for my family and done so much for all of us? I didn’t put two and two together at the time, but when I took my first faltering steps towards writing this book, the penny dropped. Granny had worked for George as a secretary. After a year or so he met her 20-year-old actress daughter Viola. Granny Molly was a very attractive divorcee and George divorced his first wife fairly soon after she worked for him.
George had had an affair with my grandmother and then married her daughter.
EARLY IN THE YEAR we were summoned for lunch at Robert’s Stanmore pad to talk about Broadway directors. Things started promisingly. Robert had bought some go-carts he was hugely pleased with, so Tim and I obliged by racing each other round his not inconsiderable grounds. Unfortunately during a promising overtaking move I took a corner too fast and ended up in a rhododendron bush. There followed a touching moment when Rice, perhaps fearing that Superstar would be our last work together, abandoned his go-cart and sauntered over to check that his collaborator was all right. Unwittingly he left his go-cart running. From my bushtop vantage point I could see a crisis developing. The go-cart was slowly making its way towards Robert’s new swimming pool. Abandoning all thoughts of his injured colleague Tim sprinted manfully after the accelerating vehicle. Every time he tried to grab it, it seemed to edge forward just that little bit faster.
I don’t know if the go-cart’s performance in the swimming pool was typical of the genre but frankly it got to the middle rather elegantly, merely skimming the surface and giving rise to huge hope that it would make it incident-free to the other side. Then it sank.
Back in the 1950s Noël Coward was asked for an opening night verdict on the actor Edward Woodward in High Spirits.
“Edward Woodward,” he replied, “sounds like a fart in the bath.”
Until its immersion the go-cart’s amphibious debut had been gloriously silent. But then it rent the air with a high-pitched shrieking sound like a demented kettle and plummeted to the pool floor in a stream of Edward Woodwards that lasted fully twenty seconds. From nowhere three young men in tight white trousers sprinted, screaming “Oh my God!” to the poolside where a foul looking, dark brown slick was now challenging the water’s immaculately balanced pH factor.
Robert was very gracious and feigned far more concern about my split lip, but when lunch was announced something told me once again this was not the moment to raise the Hal Prince issue. During the first course I got hiccups. From my dining-room seat I could see vain attempts to bring Tim’s go-cart to the pool surface which was now black. This sideshow rather clobbered conversation. Thankfully the tight-trousered saviours decided their quest was futile just as the main course was dished up. Robert pronounced this was the moment to get real about theatre directors and that we must think “outside the box.” With these words I realized that any hope I might have had of Hal Prince getting into the mix was doomed.
Two theatre directors were mooted. I simply can’t imagine who suggested the first, Frank Corsaro. Frank was a bona fide, cutting-edge opera director – not an obvious name to come out of the Stigwood firmament. He had recently directed a much talked about production of Janacek’s The Makropulos Affair and was a regular player at New York City Opera. When we subsequently met I liked him immediately. His idea was that the stage should be filled with banks of TV screens as if the Jesus story was breaking news. It was truly ahead of its time. I had misgivings about how this would work: TV screens were small back then and projection in its infancy, but his knowledge of music and his feeling that the staging should embrace media technology was original and exciting.
The only other candidate, at least presented to us, was Tom O’Horgan, then the “it” man of the theatre because he had directed Hair. Stigwood had come across him when he produced the London version. Our meeting did not go well. I don’t think I have ever heard such modish bullshit as he spouted and I got the strong feeling he was going through the motions and wasn’t genuinely interested in our work. So I strongly urged for Corsaro and that seemed fine with everybody. I never thought to ask why these were the only two names on the table, possibly because a huge issue overtook us that came totally from left field. It led to Stigwood making legal history and establishing case law of massive importance not just for Tim and me but for everyone who today works in musical theatre. This is what happened.
Early 1971 was seeing a mushrooming of Superstar concerts in the US presented by opportunist producers who saw a fantastic opportunity to quickly cash in on our album’s runaway success. There had never been a through-sung dramatic piece that could be produced in concert quite like this before. Consequently there was no legal precedent to stop anyone simply hiring any old musicians and singers, taking a huge hall and charging the public what they could get whilst paying us practically nothing for our work, let alone caring about performance standards. By simply arguing they were presenting the songs of an album in concert, these promoters paid only the basic standard performing license fee for the songs rather than a box office royalty whilst passing off that theirs was a properly authorized concert.
Stigwood leapt into action. Peter Brown suggested he hired music business lawyer Lee Eastman to put an injunction on every producer he discovered presenting what he called “unauthorized” performances. I got to know Eastman’s son John, whose sister Linda was to marry Paul McCartney. Together with a highly effective advocate Robert Osterberg, the Eastmans ensured that Stigwood was successful in injuncting most of these performances. The saga ended in what John Eastman describes as a “critically important judgement” in our favour in the US Court of Appeals Second Circuit. It defined grand rights performances for the first time and established that a complete dramatic work performed in concert, even if performed without staging, was a grand right. It is impossible to overestimate how much today’s composers, authors and producers owe to what Stigwood with Eastman and Osterberg achieved with this judgement.
But getting an injunction was one thing. Enforcing it was another. I remember a judge telling us that Superstar had gone so huge it would never be possible to prevent every “unauthorized” performance. The only way to beat these pirate producers was to mount our own versions like yesterday.
Robert’s experience as a pop promoter now stood us in huge stead. No 1970s theatre producer could remotely have achieved what he now did. First he realized he could not take on the US single-handed so he brought in Universal as a partner, a by-product of which was that our US album royalties were doubled to equal the British royalty rate. He hired the William Morris Agency and its top booker Steve Leber to set up the tour. Then he linked arms with me. No rock tour had featured a full symphony orchestra before and Robert realized I was key to getting the concerts right. I worried about them clashing with my upcoming wedding, but he turned on his considerable charm and assured me all would be well.
ROBERT SLATED THE TOUR to begin at the Pittsburgh Civic Arena on July 12, leaving plenty of time for me to be home for nuptials on the 24th. So I wound up as musical honcho of the biggest rock touring behemoth attempted to date. Casting was vital. We had to have names from the album to give us credibility and distinguish us from the pirates. Yvonne Elliman was a natural choice and Barry Dennen came on board on condition that he was confirmed for Broadway. But there was no way we could get our original Judas and Jesus. Murray Head was pursuing his film career and Ian Gillan was committed to Deep Purple. After hastily arranged auditions, two clear favourites emerged: African American Carl Anderson as Judas and a rock singer from Texas Jeff Fenholt as JC.
The big issue now was the sound. In those days live sound mixing engineers were virtually unheard of. Rock bands set themselves up on stage, did their own balance and that was about that. The concept of balancing individually close-miked voices was way off anyone’s radar, let alone plus a 60-piece orchestra and full chorus. Ideally someone had to be found who could actually read music! In the end that proved too difficult and we ended up with a guy with a script and me shouting cues down his ear.
I shudder to think what an audience would make of the sound today. The orchestral amplification was a few boom mikes hoisted over the musicians and although we experimented with screens to isolate the rock players, the truth was that the orchestral mikes picked up everything. Still the rock band, 60-piece orchestra, soloists, choir and our three “soul” girls made an impressive sight.
The need to get the concerts up and running fast meant rehearsal time was short. I was so immersed that it wasn’t until a nervous dinner before our Pittsburgh debut that I asked Robert when Tim would be turning up. Apparently he was now scared of flying and preferred travelling on ocean liners. So he was giving these early shows a miss. I remember how much I wished he could have seen the excitement outside the arena with the ticket touts plying their trade and over ten thousand people jostling to hear our rock opera live for the first time. How far away it seemed from the Stoke Edith House Hotel. I sat next to Robert by the primitive sound desk and watched the audience file almost reverently into the massive arena. Even the seats behind the stage had been sold. When we started there wasn’t the usual massive cheer. The audience seemed strangely muted, even after Yvonne gave a blinding performance of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.” I was slightly panicked. Robert told me not to worry and to wait till the end of “King Herod’s Song.” Jeff was a bit tentative at the start of “Gethsemane” but nailed the top notes brilliantly. Still the audience seemed down. Then it was “King Herod’s Song.” Robert was right. The audience went totally ballistic. It was like the lid being taken off a pressure cooker. The first-ever live performance ended in triumph.
But why did the audience behave like they were at a seance for so long? The answer wasn’t complicated. Because Jesus Christ Superstar was constructed for records none of the songs had theatrical applause grabbing endings. Our aim had been to get the story from A to B as quickly as possible. The only song with any sort of big finish was “King Herod’s Song.” Some of the songs do have endings now. Theatregoers like to be reassured that their neighbours are enjoying themselves. But I believe Jesus Christ Superstar works best the closer it is to a well-staged concert. That Pittsburgh premiere remains one of the most precious moments of my career.
By next morning Robert had gone into overdrive. Despite the announcement that our “official” concert tour was up and running, rogue concerts were still sprouting everywhere. Now I saw his showman’s grasp of an opportunity full frontal. We had the blueprint for the concert. There wouldn’t be one, there would be two additional arena tours immediately. The Pittsburgh original would now hoover up the East Coast cities whilst the new identical production would play the West Coast. Eventually the two tours would cross over in middle America, giving repeat concerts on the coast they hadn’t played. The second new tour would play a scaled-down version for towns with smaller venues.
He was as good as his chutzpah. By the fall, three arena tours were plying the USA. I was about to head home and prepare for the wedding when Robert nabbed me, saying he needed me at one more performance. Before the show we had a catch up about Broadway where we discussed trying out some possible additional material on the tour. I asked whether Frank Corsaro had yet finalized anything with the design team. Two young men, Peter Neufeld and Tyler Gatchell, had been engaged as the Broadway “line producers,” i.e. the guys who oversaw the nuts and bolts of the show from contracting the actors to getting the sets built at the right price. They were surprisingly non-committal. Tyler Gatchell became one of my closest friends in the Broadway community but back then he didn’t know me well enough to confide in me what was going on and anyway my mind was on the wedding and getting home asap.
That evening Tyler and I were braving the crush outside the arena main entrance when I heard a familiar voice.
“Programmes, programmes! only a dollar!” the voice proclaimed. “Programmes, lovely souvenir programmes, cheap . . .” The voice stuttered to a halt when its owner caught sight of me.
There, dressed in a white coat sporting “official” on its back, was none other than David Land. Noticing Tyler, he conspiratorially drew me aside.
“Let’s keep this our secret,” he whispered. “We can share programme money, you and I, all cash, no questions asked.”
“What about Tim?” I muttered.
“He’s not here, only you and I need know. Look, Andrew, there’s a few bob in this for both of us.”
Again I asked if Tim knew about this.
David looked pained. “I was once beaten by my father for nicking threepenny bits,” he said.
Probably a good thing too, I said.
“But you see my boy, my dad didn’t cane me for stealing threepenny bits. He beat me for stealing his threepenny bits.”