Unmasked. Эндрю Ллойд Уэббер

Harrington Court saying that a Mr Featherstone had called and wanted to see me in his office. I was unprepared for a smiling Roy Featherstone and the offer of a cup of coffee when I quivered into his office two weeks later. Tim had recorded quite a few songs with David Daltrey, and I had done all the arrangements. Mr Featherstone said he thought the songs were OK but the arrangements were terrific, particularly one called “Pathway” where I had experimented with all sorts of effects. He would like to help me get a few more arranging gigs with other artists. This was the first time anyone in a record company had noticed my music, even if it was only my orchestrations. The timing couldn’t have been better because Tim had just hit me with news that had left me axed as if by a pole.

      Norrie Paramor announced that, like George Martin and the other top EMI producers before, he too was leaving EMI and setting up on his own. He wanted Tim to go with him as his key man. It was an offer Tim could not refuse. Nor should he have done but it was clear that Norrie, despite hints from Tim, did not envisage a role for me in his new venture. Furthermore he employed instead ex-Westminster boy Nick Ingman as arranger and composer, with whom Tim was to write B-sides and the like. Ironically Nick had been the lead singer of the group that performed “Make Believe Love” at my Westminster concert for Peter and Gordon.

      I was very alarmed. Tim was turning 23, had a job with real prospects and entrees into songwriting. I was 19, had chucked up Oxford for Tim and a musical that was never going to be produced. At least Roy Featherstone had thrown me a sort of lifeline and in fact I was to have a great relationship with Roy. But it was not until ten years later. My only real lifeline was a Friday afternoon school concert.

      FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 1968 was a grey, drab, drizzly day but not over-cold for the time of year. Around 2 pm a gaggle of two hundred or so parents, mostly mothers as it was a weekday afternoon, gathered with no particular sense of anticipation in the rather cramped entrance hall of Colet Court School. Conversation centred on their fervent hope that this special end-of-term concert of Joseph and His Amazing (Technicolour) Dreamcoat was short enough for them to drive their children home before the weekend rush hour. One young mum commented that Johnny Cash was marrying June Carter that afternoon, US time. They were probably surprised, after they were ushered onto those hard low chairs you only find in school halls, by what was on the stage.

      Lloyd Webber and Rice had fielded the entire Antim Management artists’ roster. Stage centre was a pop group rig, drums and amplifiers manned by Potters Bar’s very own cover band, the Mixed Bag. Seated next to a mike stand was no less than Potters Bar’s star vocalist and songwriter, David Daltrey. There was an elephantine keyboard contraption looking like an electronic organ which I had badgered the school to hire called a Mellotron. These now long-extinct dinosaurs were a forerunner of the synthesizer and much loved by the Moody Blues. They didn’t generate their own sounds but used a cumbersome battery of pre-recorded tapes. Seated in serried ranks was the school orchestra, augmented by a few student mates from various colleges of music. Behind all this were two groups of boys. The first batch were the 30-strong school choir and the second the three hundred or so kids who couldn’t sing or were tone deaf or both. Some of these had tambourines. Lurking backstage was Tim, gearing up for an Elvis impression as Pharaoh. So there was a mildly curious buzz from the parents in between anxious glances at watches, hoping the whole thing would crack on and finish PDQ.

      The headmaster, a suave traditional cove called Henry Collis, ascended the stage and made a brief speech which decidedly hedged its bets on the forthcoming entertainment. He then introduced Alan Doggett in a fashion that suggested that if things went tits up it was all Doggett’s fault and he needn’t turn up on Monday. Alan bounced on stage, sporting a natty bow tie, raised his conductor’s baton and off we went, straight into the story at bar one because the now signature trumpet fanfare introduction didn’t exist in those days.

      Joseph and the Amazing (Technicolour) Dreamcoat (the word “Technicolour” included a “u” and was for some reason billed in brackets) was away to the races.

      THE CONCERT WAS A total blast. The yummy mummies forgot about the weekend rush hour and virtually the whole 22-minute cantata was encored. Everyone loved Tim’s Elvis impression as Pharaoh but it was the piece as a whole that was the star. Some mothers clamoured for a repeat performance on another day so that their other halves could hear it. For the record, here is the hugely condensed plot of what we performed that afternoon.

      Jacob had two wives and twelve sons. Joseph, his favourite and a dreamer, irritatingly predicts to his brothers that one day he will rise above the lot of them. When Jacob gives Joseph a coat of many colours it is the final straw. They decide to kill him. Luring Joseph into the desert, they encounter some roving Ishmaelites. A sudden twinge of remorse and a chance to make a shekel or two prompts them to sell Joseph as a slave to be taken to Egypt. They dip Joseph’s coat in goat’s blood, telling his grieving dad he was killed bravely fighting. Joseph gets chucked into gaol, presumably as an illegal alien, where he sings his big ballad “Close Every Door.” His interpretation of his cellmates’ dreams catches the attention of Pharaoh who is having nightmares. Joseph interprets these as signifying seven years of impending food glut, followed by seven of famine. Pharaoh makes Joseph boss of a rationing scheme to provide for the bad years. Joseph’s famine-stricken brothers pitch up in Egypt, begging for food. They don’t recognize their brother but he recognizes them and puts them to a test: he plants a cup in Benjamin, the youngest brother’s, food sack, accusing him of stealing. The brothers rally to his defence, offering themselves up for punishment instead. Realizing they are now responsible citizens, Joseph reveals to his astonished siblings who he is. Jacob is brought to Egypt to be reunited with the son he thought was dead. A happy ending is enjoyed by all.

      This simple primal tale had everything. Tim had made a brilliant choice. I didn’t realize it at the time but in my attempt to write music that would never allow its kid performers to get bored, I was unwittingly creating what was to become my trademark, a “through-sung” musical, i.e. a score with little or no spoken dialogue where the musical structure, the musical key relationships, rhythms and use of time signatures, not just the melodies, are vital to its success. Nothing in Joseph was random. I wrote it by instinct as I had no experience. But the fact that there was no spoken dialogue meant that I was in the driving seat. Once Tim and I had agreed the essential elements of the plot and we had decided where the key songs would go, it was down to me to control the rhythm of the piece. Of course spoken dialogue can be invaluable – on many occasions it is by far the best way to express dramatic situations – but for me my through-composed shows are the most satisfying.

      It is the strength of the heart of Joseph that allowed it to expand like Topsy into a stage musical with its various pastiche set pieces. This central core has its own, if naive, musical style and above all a real emotional centre. The only pastiche in the Colet Court version was “Song of the King” which turned Pharaoh into Elvis. I have to claim that as my idea. I thought we needed something to lighten the mood after Joseph’s “Close Every Door” in which Joseph sings that Children of Israel are never alone, one of the simple central messages of the piece. Unusually the title was also my idea, although hardly original. It was inspired by the Alan Price single “Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear.” “Technicolour” got added as it seemed a cool way of saying “many colours.” Moreover Technicolor dreams, with all their 1960s connotations were definitely the stuff of the moment.

      Thrillingly, after the concert there was an on-the-spot offer of publication. Unbeknown to Tim and me, Alan Doggett had invited the team from Novello and Co., the top classical music publisher who had strayed highly successfully into the educational market with The Daniel Jazz. They also published much of my father’s church music and I wonder if he too had a hand in their giving up a Friday afternoon to hear our effort. Anyhow they wanted to sign Joseph there and then. We referred them to Desmond Elliott.

      DESMOND HAD SHOWN SCANT interest in our pop cantata. In fact he had shown scant interest in anything I was doing. For a long while his attention had been more or less exclusively devoted to a school friend of Tim’s called Adam Diment. Adam was a novelist who had written a couple of alternative James Bond type books with titles like The Dolly Dolly Spy and The Bang Bang Birds featuring a character not unlike Austin Powers. Desmond persuaded Adam to grow his hair, got publishers