he first chapter of Unmasked, memoir by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, a pet monkey reacts to fetal Andrew, attacking his mother's swollen belly. The memoirist concludes that the monkey was "the first to dislike me."With this comment, Lloyd Webber wryly acknowledges a famous anecdote about him. Google "instant dislike" to find numerous versions of the story that Lloyd Webber asked Broadway lyricist Alan Jay Lerner, "Why does everyone take an instant dislike to me?" Lerner reportedly answered that "it saves time."
Except for the word "dislike," Lerner's putdown does not appear in the memoir, but Lerner's long, affectionate letter to Lloyd Webber does, written just as the lyricist went into treatment for cancer.
Lloyd Webber answers his critics this same indirect way throughout the book: he nods regretfully in their direction as he gives his side to the story. He sets a positive tone in his prologue, observing how fortunate he is to make a living doing what he loves, much more to make millions. He comes across as a naïf, wide-eyed with wonder, and shy -- except when taking a stand in his chosen fields of musical theatre and architecture.
Easy and Shallow?
My personal appreciation for Lloyd Webber's work, posted some years ago, is tempered by a common criticism that he settles for "The First Things that Come to Mind." I've written that Lloyd Webber and his collaborators don't look beneath the surface, even when they deal with deep subjects. Lloyd Webber's accounts of his thoughts as he created various works show me to have been wrong, at least part of the time.
I've learned that he, not his librettists, was architect of the dramatic effects I've loved most in all his work: his music came before any of the words. He and collaborator Tim Rice wrote Jesus Christ Superstar for a "concept album," where interruptions from dialogue would be annoying and staging wasn't a consideration; so, they wrote it as if it were a radio drama, aiming for "clarity" in the storytelling with constant variety achieved through unusual time signatures (Lloyd Webber favors 7/8 and 5/4) and qualities of "light and shade." Lloyd Webber writes that the trial of Jesus before Pilate "loomed large" throughout the writing process, so he made the wise choice to compose a Vaudevillian interlude for Herod, way out of character for the rest of the score, to give the audience a break between the intense Gethsemane song and the trial. (That sequence of numbers is what I recall most from seeing the show in an unauthorized concert version at Atlanta's defunct Municipal Auditorium in 1971.)
About Evita, Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice got a lot of criticism and mockery for glorifying a ruthless fascist dictator's opportunistic wife. Tim Rice stoked that line of criticism by claiming that they weren't interested in politics, but in examining celebrity -- Eva being just another "superstar," early critics suggested. But that's not how Lloyd Webber saw it. In an outstanding paragraph, he depicts England in the mid-1970s disintegrating among competing forces: fascist militias, socialists openly promising to squeeze the rich dry, crippling debt, tax rates up to 97%, unions vowing to shut the country down, and Irish Republican terrorism. To his mind, at least, he was drawing parallels to contemporary life with his proletarian anthem "A New Argentina," and the power couple's cynical manipulation of Labor.
Lloyd Webber, no less than his critics (and I) wondered, why should we care about this reprehensible woman Eva Peron? He tells how he got his answer when he remembered his experience watching Judy Garland in her last days. The star arrived an hour late, the audience was already hostile, and they booed her as she fumbled lyrics for "The Trolley Song." Lloyd Webber describes her trying to get into the audience's good graces by having the pianist begin her signature tune, "Over the Rainbow," but it backfired. The audience mocked her (213). Lloyd Webber composed Eva Peron's anthem "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" to be the song that would "break" her when she sings it on her deathbed late in the show.
Lloyd Webber's descriptions of how the theatrical magic in the first minute of Cats won over a loudly skeptical crowd at the first preview (351), and a long excerpt from his memo laying out his vision for the prologue to Phantom -- which became the reality -- have made me re-evaluate my feelings about those shows.** Where I and others have heard tedious recycling of themes, Lloyd Webber tells us how there is "no accident" in his use of motifs throughout Phantom (475).
Lloyd Webber explains decisions he made for particular effects in particular songs. When Eva tells Peron, "I'd be surprisingly good for you, too," Lloyd Webber uses a dissonance under the preposition to accent the cynicism of Eva's proposition. A snare drum adds menace to a love song in Phantom. The counter-melody from the song "Prima Donna" underlies Christine's melody in the song "Twisted Every Way," literally underscoring her indecision. He shifts key three times in the song "Memory" to postpone the effect of the singer's high note until the climactic repetition of the plea, "Touch me!"
About his Requiem, Lloyd Webber does indeed have second thoughts, giving us pages of what he should have done for different numbers in his mass (430 ff). While he admits it's not up to standards, he denies that it's "derivative" of certain composers, as critics charged, since he's never heard of those composers! He has regrets about a recent show of his, Stephen Ward, all but admitting what I thought when I listened hard to the cast album, that it's a disappointingly superficial treatment of a multi-faceted subject, the Profumo scandal that broke England's government in the 1960s.
Though Lloyd Webber has convinced me that he doesn't toss these things off lightly, I stand my ground when he discusses his "obsession" with melody. He sometimes has to work hard for one, but he tells us that melodies often occur to him in an instant, even while he's eating (486). To me, that's a sign that the melody is what his detractors say, derivative of something already familiar. Regardless the source, those melodies of his, from "I Don't Know How to Love Him" to "With One Look," including "Memory," "Music of the Night," "All I Ask of You," or "Love Changes Everything," all stretch like taffy from plodding syllable to syllable, gumming up the drama.
Lloyd Webber's music is exciting when he writes for several parties in conflict. Besides the aforementioned trial scene in JCS, there's the Casa Rosado in Evita with dissonant chants of "Peron! Peron!", over which rises the dictator's rabble-rousing declamation ("We are all leaders now, fighting against our common enemies, foreign domination of our industries...") while Eva snarls at the military brass who would hold her back just before she launches so sincerely into her seduction of the crowd with "Don't Cry for Me...." Now that's musical drama. The first ten minutes or so of Sunset Boulevard propel us into a world that's both noire and glamorous, with a high speed chase and elements of farce. These pieces have texture. Compared to them, those much - vaunted melodies are thin.
We agree on one piece that stands out among all the others in the memoir for being pure "joy," his Variations on a theme by Paganini, written to celebrate his brother Julian's virtuosity on the cello (260). He mentions it often, as if it were a favorite child.
I've learned that he, not his librettists, was architect of the dramatic effects I've loved most in all his work: his music came before any of the words. He and collaborator Tim Rice wrote Jesus Christ Superstar for a "concept album," where interruptions from dialogue would be annoying and staging wasn't a consideration; so, they wrote it as if it were a radio drama, aiming for "clarity" in the storytelling with constant variety achieved through unusual time signatures (Lloyd Webber favors 7/8 and 5/4) and qualities of "light and shade." Lloyd Webber writes that the trial of Jesus before Pilate "loomed large" throughout the writing process, so he made the wise choice to compose a Vaudevillian interlude for Herod, way out of character for the rest of the score, to give the audience a break between the intense Gethsemane song and the trial. (That sequence of numbers is what I recall most from seeing the show in an unauthorized concert version at Atlanta's defunct Municipal Auditorium in 1971.)
About Evita, Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice got a lot of criticism and mockery for glorifying a ruthless fascist dictator's opportunistic wife. Tim Rice stoked that line of criticism by claiming that they weren't interested in politics, but in examining celebrity -- Eva being just another "superstar," early critics suggested. But that's not how Lloyd Webber saw it. In an outstanding paragraph, he depicts England in the mid-1970s disintegrating among competing forces: fascist militias, socialists openly promising to squeeze the rich dry, crippling debt, tax rates up to 97%, unions vowing to shut the country down, and Irish Republican terrorism. To his mind, at least, he was drawing parallels to contemporary life with his proletarian anthem "A New Argentina," and the power couple's cynical manipulation of Labor.
Lloyd Webber, no less than his critics (and I) wondered, why should we care about this reprehensible woman Eva Peron? He tells how he got his answer when he remembered his experience watching Judy Garland in her last days. The star arrived an hour late, the audience was already hostile, and they booed her as she fumbled lyrics for "The Trolley Song." Lloyd Webber describes her trying to get into the audience's good graces by having the pianist begin her signature tune, "Over the Rainbow," but it backfired. The audience mocked her (213). Lloyd Webber composed Eva Peron's anthem "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" to be the song that would "break" her when she sings it on her deathbed late in the show.
Lloyd Webber's descriptions of how the theatrical magic in the first minute of Cats won over a loudly skeptical crowd at the first preview (351), and a long excerpt from his memo laying out his vision for the prologue to Phantom -- which became the reality -- have made me re-evaluate my feelings about those shows.** Where I and others have heard tedious recycling of themes, Lloyd Webber tells us how there is "no accident" in his use of motifs throughout Phantom (475).
Lloyd Webber explains decisions he made for particular effects in particular songs. When Eva tells Peron, "I'd be surprisingly good for you, too," Lloyd Webber uses a dissonance under the preposition to accent the cynicism of Eva's proposition. A snare drum adds menace to a love song in Phantom. The counter-melody from the song "Prima Donna" underlies Christine's melody in the song "Twisted Every Way," literally underscoring her indecision. He shifts key three times in the song "Memory" to postpone the effect of the singer's high note until the climactic repetition of the plea, "Touch me!"
About his Requiem, Lloyd Webber does indeed have second thoughts, giving us pages of what he should have done for different numbers in his mass (430 ff). While he admits it's not up to standards, he denies that it's "derivative" of certain composers, as critics charged, since he's never heard of those composers! He has regrets about a recent show of his, Stephen Ward, all but admitting what I thought when I listened hard to the cast album, that it's a disappointingly superficial treatment of a multi-faceted subject, the Profumo scandal that broke England's government in the 1960s.
Though Lloyd Webber has convinced me that he doesn't toss these things off lightly, I stand my ground when he discusses his "obsession" with melody. He sometimes has to work hard for one, but he tells us that melodies often occur to him in an instant, even while he's eating (486). To me, that's a sign that the melody is what his detractors say, derivative of something already familiar. Regardless the source, those melodies of his, from "I Don't Know How to Love Him" to "With One Look," including "Memory," "Music of the Night," "All I Ask of You," or "Love Changes Everything," all stretch like taffy from plodding syllable to syllable, gumming up the drama.
Lloyd Webber's music is exciting when he writes for several parties in conflict. Besides the aforementioned trial scene in JCS, there's the Casa Rosado in Evita with dissonant chants of "Peron! Peron!", over which rises the dictator's rabble-rousing declamation ("We are all leaders now, fighting against our common enemies, foreign domination of our industries...") while Eva snarls at the military brass who would hold her back just before she launches so sincerely into her seduction of the crowd with "Don't Cry for Me...." Now that's musical drama. The first ten minutes or so of Sunset Boulevard propel us into a world that's both noire and glamorous, with a high speed chase and elements of farce. These pieces have texture. Compared to them, those much - vaunted melodies are thin.
We agree on one piece that stands out among all the others in the memoir for being pure "joy," his Variations on a theme by Paganini, written to celebrate his brother Julian's virtuosity on the cello (260). He mentions it often, as if it were a favorite child.
Dislike?
But the Lerner anecdote sticks to Lloyd Webber for a reason. He tells us that the late director Milos Forman approached him to play Mozart in the film Amadeus, because the two composers share certain traits: "a foul temper," rude public burping, "hot-headed perfectionism," and being "extremely obnoxious." (Spoiler: Forman persists until Lloyd Webber, following advice from Lorin Maazel, accepts the role with the stipulation that all music in the movie be Lloyd Webber's.)Lloyd Webber admits that his laid back collaborator Tim Rice may have finally tired of "tantrums" from "hypertense Andrew"(234) ; and that he has "behaved appallingly in theatres more often than I care to mention" (236). He presents these admitted flaws in the context of telling how he doesn't accept inferior quality in sound systems. Rice, he laments, didn't even hear the difference.
We get the sense that Lloyd Webber is proud to be obnoxious for the sake of music and architecture, twin loves since early childhood. He prints a photo of a prized possession from childhood, an elaborate model of a proscenium stage, peopled with chorus and actors. Music was always part of his life, his dad being a composition teacher at the Royal College of Music -- though he advised his own son that the school would "educate the music right out of you." Improvising portraits of faculty members at the piano for a school talent show transformed him from geek to hero.
We get a taste of his righteous indignation when he describes the desecration of late-Victorian theatres that his Really Useful Foundation has restored. A chapter tells in numbing detail how he acquired the "mongrel" manor home Sydmonton, where his view includes Watership Down (yes, the one with the rabbits) and the location for "Downton Abbey." Even the footnote about its background packs two pages. There, he lives, and there he hosts an annual arts festival, where he has tried out early drafts of Variations, Cats, and Phantom.
There is also the matter of his marriages and divorces. His first wife was 16 when he, 22, married her. He tells us that he never considered what his infidelity would do to her, and that's before he left her for singer Sarah Brightman. His chapter about that, he tells us, is his "umpteenth draft," presumably because he worked so hard to appear not awful in it. He's since gone on to another wife.
He tells us that he bought the first one a country home, and he's still good friends with number two.
Unmasked?
Aside from the allusion to his most successful creation, what "mask" does Andrew Lloyd Webber remove in this memoir? I suppose that he wants us to see behind the image that his critics have portrayed. Even though he allows us to see the ways that he earned his reputation, he has softened some of the hard edges, and has caused this musical fan to reconsider his work. In fact, I've got out my vintage CD of Variations with cello and rock band, to fall in love again with music that is indeed a joy.PS and Notes
1. About "instant dislike": Dig a bit deeper in Google to find use by others of the same putdown, all predated by its use in an episode of M*A*S*H, between the characters Frank and Trapper John. 2. Was there an editor for this book? ALW consistently uses the past tense when he should've used the subjunctive. I never cared so much about that before now, as I was constantly confused about whether something was accomplished, or only considered. For example, "He also demanded that the auditorium was painted black" (375). No: He demanded that the auditorium be painted black; it hasn't happened yet, and may never.
*Page references are to locations in the Kindle Edition of Unmasked, by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Harper Collins, publisher.
**(By the way, he asked T. S. Eliot's daughter what I've always wondered, what did Eliot mean by "jellicle" cats? It was the poet's transliteration of the way upper-class Brits muddled the words "dear little." "Pollicle" is "poor little.")
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