Andrew Lloyd Webber looks back on 40 years in show business in conversation with Charles Spencer.
Things have been unusually quiet on Planet Lloyd Webber in recent months. He has been laid up with back problems – now on the mend – but the Lord, as Graham Norton called him on those telly talent shows, is now back with a vengeance. On Easter Sunday ITV is broadcasting a 90 minute special celebrating his continuous run of hits in the West End over the past 40 years. There hasn’t been a single week since Jesus Christ Superstar opened without at least one Lloyd Webber show in London, and at one point he had five playing simultaneously.
Michael Ball hosts the extravaganza, and as well as Lloyd Webber, those taking part include Michael Caine, Il Divo, Nicole Scherzinger, Melanie C, Tim Minchin and the egregious Simon Cowell. Classical guitarist Milos Karadaglic will also perform a number from Lloyd Webber’s eagerly awaited new musical, Stephen Ward, about the Profumo affair, that heady mix of politics, spies and good-time girls that engulfed the Macmillan Government in the early Sixties. It reunites him with lyricist Don Black and writer Christopher Hampton for the first time since Sunset Boulevard and is planned to open early next year.
CS: How have you seen the West End change in the last 40 years?
ALW: In the last few years, everything seems to have gone slightly away from music and more towards the comedy musicals, the Hairsprays and the Book of Mormons. I just don’t know if there’s a public for something now which is much more serious and is old fashioned in the sense that it is melodic.
CS: Does that make you feel out of place?
ALW: Somewhat, yes, because I’m quite frankly proud of the fact that there have only been three of my musicals that have not had a top three hit. It’s very difficult to get a hit song from a show nowadays. The songs are what I think musicals are about in the end. Of course they can be about something else and they can be fun and they can be, you know period and whatever, but for me, songs are what I do. I find it much more difficult not to write tunes than to write them.
CS: Have you ever been stumped for a tune?
ALW: I’ve sometimes found that they’ve taken a while, but then you get the ones where its so obvious that you think 'that must have been done before’ so you go through agonies and get musicologists and people to look at them.
CS: You’re currently working on a musical about Stephen Ward, the society osteopath at the centre of the Profumo Affair. What will that be like?
ALW: Well because of the period and everything, the Stephen Ward show is going to feature much more of my other side. This is going to be the antithesis of 'Love Never Dies’ or 'Phantom’
CS: What drew you to the story, apart from the sex, vice and sleaze?
ALW: I didn’t really know much about the character of Stephen Ward, apart from the fact that he was the one who was convicted, but then I happened to read an interview with him from 1962 which said he was a bore about the Cold War.
Things have been unusually quiet on Planet Lloyd Webber in recent months. He has been laid up with back problems – now on the mend – but the Lord, as Graham Norton called him on those telly talent shows, is now back with a vengeance. On Easter Sunday ITV is broadcasting a 90 minute special celebrating his continuous run of hits in the West End over the past 40 years. There hasn’t been a single week since Jesus Christ Superstar opened without at least one Lloyd Webber show in London, and at one point he had five playing simultaneously.
Michael Ball hosts the extravaganza, and as well as Lloyd Webber, those taking part include Michael Caine, Il Divo, Nicole Scherzinger, Melanie C, Tim Minchin and the egregious Simon Cowell. Classical guitarist Milos Karadaglic will also perform a number from Lloyd Webber’s eagerly awaited new musical, Stephen Ward, about the Profumo affair, that heady mix of politics, spies and good-time girls that engulfed the Macmillan Government in the early Sixties. It reunites him with lyricist Don Black and writer Christopher Hampton for the first time since Sunset Boulevard and is planned to open early next year.
CS: How have you seen the West End change in the last 40 years?
ALW: In the last few years, everything seems to have gone slightly away from music and more towards the comedy musicals, the Hairsprays and the Book of Mormons. I just don’t know if there’s a public for something now which is much more serious and is old fashioned in the sense that it is melodic.
CS: Does that make you feel out of place?
ALW: Somewhat, yes, because I’m quite frankly proud of the fact that there have only been three of my musicals that have not had a top three hit. It’s very difficult to get a hit song from a show nowadays. The songs are what I think musicals are about in the end. Of course they can be about something else and they can be fun and they can be, you know period and whatever, but for me, songs are what I do. I find it much more difficult not to write tunes than to write them.
CS: Have you ever been stumped for a tune?
ALW: I’ve sometimes found that they’ve taken a while, but then you get the ones where its so obvious that you think 'that must have been done before’ so you go through agonies and get musicologists and people to look at them.
CS: You’re currently working on a musical about Stephen Ward, the society osteopath at the centre of the Profumo Affair. What will that be like?
ALW: Well because of the period and everything, the Stephen Ward show is going to feature much more of my other side. This is going to be the antithesis of 'Love Never Dies’ or 'Phantom’
CS: What drew you to the story, apart from the sex, vice and sleaze?
ALW: I didn’t really know much about the character of Stephen Ward, apart from the fact that he was the one who was convicted, but then I happened to read an interview with him from 1962 which said he was a bore about the Cold War.
I was really hoping that the Tim Rice relationship would have gone on but my dad was the one who first pointed out to me that he thought it was unlikely.————————对不想看长英文采访的人，这里就是全篇最大的亮点了。看起来很微妙。
神奇的句号
