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[0:00] Tim Rice: Hello, welcome to my podcast, episode 8 of Get Onto My Cloud.

[0:14] Tim Rice: In this episode, Get Onto My Cloud, I'd like to talk about a musical I wrote with Elton John in the late 90s called Aida. It tells the story of forbidden love between the Egyptian soldier Radamez and the beautiful Nubian princess Aida. Based in truth, the origin of the story emerged from ancient Egyptian papyrus documentation and was most memorably used in modern times by Giuseppe Verdi and Antonio Ghislanzoni, hope I got that right, in their grand opera Aida, which received its world premiere at the Kedivial Opera House in Cairo, Egypt, on December 24th, 1871, to commemorate the opening of the Suez Canal.

[0:58] Tim Rice: The opening had been delayed by several months thanks to the Franco-Prussian War. Our show received its world premiere at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, on September the 16th, 1998. After extensive rewrites, a revised production opened in Chicago in November 1999 and thence to Broadway, where it opened on March 23rd, 2000, and ran for 1852 performances, four and a half years, picking up four Tonys en route.

[1:29] Tim Rice: According to Wikipedia, it's since played in 25 countries, but not yet in the UK. I knew about several of these overseas shows. Indeed, I saw quite a few. I saw those in Holland, Germany, the Czech Republic. That was a particularly good one, Estonia, Japan, and South Korea. But bearing in mind it still hasn't made it to the UK, apart from the odd school or amateur production, I was amazed when I researched the show online for this podcast to find it had been to so many foreign parts.

[1:58] Tim Rice: I seemed to have missed out on freebies to Brazil, Croatia, and Mexico, among others. And it's still never come to the UK. But we are aiming to put this right. Before this awful pandemic swept the globe, a new timetable for a major new production of Aida, involving an American tour, followed by, we hoped a return to Broadway and thence Europe, notably the West End, was in serious preparation. Disney Theatricals, the producers, were gung-ho about this new venture and had appointed a marvellous creative team.

[2:29] Tim Rice: The director was to be Shelley Williams, a most distinguished actress and singer, now director, who'd been in our original Aida cast, and you'll hear her singing in a few minutes. And also in the team, two veterans of Aida first time round, David Henry Huang, who wrote the book, and Bob Crowley, who did the set and costumes. They were the key figures. Plus me and Elton. The Franco-Prussian war had nothing on COVID-19, as the delay to this new production is already more than a few months.

[2:58] Tim Rice: But the revised plan is to go straight to Germany, where the show has already played, and from there to London, which is, of course, for me the most exciting prospect. I think I'm going to have to make the Aida Tale a two-parter, as there are, in my humble yet arrogant opinion, a lot of terrific songs and some entertaining tales of triumph and tragedy to tell. And I don't want my podcasts to start getting over long and my punters switching to Peter Crouch or Giles Coron before finishing mine.

[3:26] Tim Rice: Back to the matter in hand. One of the reasons for Aida's success in America was a sensational performance of the wonderful Heather Headley as the Nubian Princess Aida. English audiences saw Heather in the bodyguard in London in 2012. She was also magnificent in the colour purple on Broadway, co-starring with Cynthia Erivo in 2016. It's hard for me to choose my favorite Heather performance in Aida, but easy as life takes some beating.

[3:53] Tim Rice: Ayyid is at her lowest ebb in the story, caught up in what would be a disastrous love affair if discovered, witnessing the subjugation of her people and the imprisonment of her father. But I won't even try.

[4:56] ♪ Musical number: "Easy as Life" — performed by Heather Headley ♪

[8:14] Tim Rice: The great Heather Headley singing Easy as Life from Aida. Our Aida saga began shortly after the great success of the Lion King movie. I refer, of course, to the original and infinitely superior film. The Disney Empire, then run by Michael Eisner, were keen for me and Elton to have a go at something else. And Aida was mooted as a subject for an animated movie. We dithered about this for a bit, but when Disney suggested that it could go straight to stage, we went for it.

[8:41] Tim Rice: Disney Theatricals had just got going with Beauty and the Beast on Broadway. The Lion King on stage was in preparation, and clearly that part of the company was firing on all cylinders. Rather than just be another in the admittedly hugely successful line of Disney animated features, we thought it would be more exciting to do the show live. And indeed it was. The first reading was presented to Disney executives on April 1st, 1996.

[9:08] Tim Rice: Elton and I had written 15 to 20 songs, and Elton had made some marvellous demos of them all. They've never been officially released, but still seemed to crop up in the most extraordinary places. They're among some of my favourite recordings by this great artist. Reaction to the work in this early stage was pretty good, and everybody headed for Atlanta for the first tryout.

[9:28] Tim Rice: The Atlanta production featured Heather Headley as Aida and Shere Renee Scott as Amneris, the Egyptian princess officially betrothed to the Egyptian soldier Radamaze, who does not reciprocate her love. These two wonderful performers stayed with the show all the way to Broadway, bumpy though the ride was on occasion. As far as I can remember, we got reasonable reviews in Atlanta, and audiences seemed to enjoy it, although we had some nightmares with the set, which was centered around a six-ton gold pyramid full of moving parts, and the massive object's shape could change to portray a ship, a prison, a throne room, a field, and probably a greyhound racing tracker that being needed.

[10:09] Tim Rice: Visually impressive, it was a hydraulic headache, and many performances were interrupted or completely brought to a halt by the pyramid electing not to move, which meant technicians coming on stage with oil cans or just brute force in order to shift the scene from riverbank to palace or whatever. Although sometimes this led to a most exciting evening, as on the occasion when the pyramid was declared totally immovable, refusing to budge an inch even for Michael Eisner, and the entire company performed the show in full costume with full orchestra in support, sitting on a row of chairs at the front of the stage behind the doomed monolith that towered sullenly over them.

[10:48] Tim Rice: You could hear every word, and the songs really hit home. Even the number called Another Pyramid, which probably struck a chord with some of the backstage workers who would have quite liked one. Spotting snags and disasters is what tryouts are for, we told ourselves, and so do the producers who decided to start again in Chicago. There was a night of a thousand knives backstage. Elton and I survived the cull, and we all reported back for a new look Aida a year later.

[11:15] Tim Rice: Mercifully, Heather and Cherie stayed on board. Elton has had the amazing achievement of having had four shows on Broadway in the 21st century: The Lion King, Aida, Billy Elliott, and a stat. Of the three shows written initially for stage, I honestly think his music for Aida is the standout. Here he is, with his original demo of one of the lighter moments in the show, Amneris's song about clothes, fashion, and glamour. It's called My Strongest Suit.

[12:13] ♪ Musical number: "The Strongest Suit" — performed by Elton John ♪

[16:40] Tim Rice: Elton with my strongest suit, with which Shere Renee Scott went down a storm every night in Atlanta, then Chicago, and then New York. I don't remember Aida in Chicago being received with great acclaim by the critics there. In fact, the media reception was probably not as good as it had been in Atlanta. Fortunately, this did not discourage the producers, and with a superb cast now boosted by Adam Pascal as Radamez, the decision to move to New York was taken with confidence. There was one very hairy moment in Chicago when a set mishap at the very end of the show, involving Adam and Heather, who were encased in a heavy box representing a tomb, fell eight feet from its support to the foot of the stage, and they were in it.

They were, however, wisely following medical procedure, not moving. And although badly shaken and sustaining minor injuries, they were able to return to the show a day or so later. The incident actually brought the casting company closer together, and the team spirit, which had been pretty good all along, was raised to new enthusiastic levels. There is so much more I could say about Aida, so I'll definitely have to do a second or even third podcast about the saga before too long. I feel very excited that it's back in my life now, as it contains quite a few of the songs I'd put in my all-time personal top 20, and I have about 500 to choose from, 433 of which are not scheduled to be featured in my podcasts at this moment in time.

An all-star album of the songs from Aida was released well before the Broadway production, and although it features some stellar names and was produced by the late great Phil Ramone, singers such as Sting, Tina Turner, The Spice Girls, Shania Twain, Boys to Men, Lenny Kravitz, James Taylor, Leanne Rhymes, Kelly Price, Janet Jackson, Lulu, Angelique Kidjo, plus Elton and Heather and Cherie, it didn't really make much sense as a guide to the entire work. Not many singers knew what the story was or which part they were playing. Whereas the original Broadway cast album, released in 2000, is a great illustration of what the show is all about. One of the highlights of the Broadway show is the Act One closer, The Gods Love Nubia, which not only features Heather, but the director of our new forthcoming version, the sublime Shelley Williams, as Nahepka. Here they are with the Gods Love Nubia. More Aida soon.

[19:10] ♪ Musical number ♪

[23:05] Tim Rice: It's torn upon my spirit will keep my voice.

[24:00] Tim Rice: That was Get On to My Cloud, Episode Eight. Written and presented by Tim Rice, produced by Peter Holmes.