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[0:00] Tim Rice: Hello, this is Tim Rice, and this is podcast number thirty-two in the series Get On to My Cloud.

[0:18] Tim Rice: This podcast features Alan Menken, superstar.

[0:57] ♪ Musical number: "Leave Me" — performed by Dan Stevens ♪

[3:47] Tim Rice: The music was by Alan Menken and I wrote the words, a new song written especially for the 2017 film. Alan and I actually wrote three new songs for this remake, directed by Bill Condon. Evermore, How Can a Moment Last Forever, and Days in the Sun. None of the eight or nine songs we wrote together for the Broadway version of the show made it into the new movie, although the original material Alan had written with the late Howard Ashman quite rightly did. I'm not quite sure why our stage show numbers all got the boot. One of the reasons given was that the storyline had been changed, which indeed it had been slightly. I was a little disappointed that one of my favourite songs from the show's score, A Change in Me, was not included in the new movie and ditto the Beast's big number in the show If I Can't Love Her.

But it was nonetheless a pleasure to add three more numbers to the quite considerable portfolio of stuff I've written with Alan Menken. Taking into account around a dozen Beauty and the Beast songs, maybe six or seven for Aladdin, the entire score of King David, which involved writing at least 25 songs or scenes, plus a few one-offs, I must have written around 50 songs with this great American songwriter, who's won no less than eight Oscars for his songs and scores, more than any other living composer. I'm a little vague about the exact number of numbers we've done together because so many never get beyond the demo stage. So many indeed never get finished. This is par for the course in the wonderful world of musical theatre or film.

Sometimes it's simply crystal clear to all and sundry, possibly even to the writers, that this or that song isn't quite working, or is crap. Sometimes it's the fact that the storyline gets changed, and a song that fitted beautifully into a scene is now out in the cold, because the plot has been drastically altered, or even a character brutally culled. In my experience, this happens more in animation than in any other dramatic format. As cartoon warthogs or princesses don't have agents to complain on their behalf. In live musical theatre, if you tell a leading man or woman that their big number isn't cutting the mustard, you'd better have another one that will, because they ain't leaving. I would say that for every song that winds up in a film, around three or four are tried out to a greater or lesser extent, and three or four don't make it.

For the Aladdin movie, the brilliant original animated 1992 version, Alan and I wrote several songs and scenes for Jafar, the villain of the piece, marvelously portrayed by Jonathan Freeman, who had enormous fun throughout the movie as the power-hungry grand vizier of Agrabah. But in the end, all Jafar got to sing of mine was a verse or two of a mini reprise of the huge Robin Williams genie song Prince Ali. It certainly wasn't Jonathan's fault. But the structure of Disney animation films for many, many years had been such that there was only room for five or six songs at most. Yes, that must have been the only reason why this number I wrote with Alan for Jafar got the chop. I always liked this one, describing how Jafar is bewildered by his constant bad luck and lack of recognition for his great talents. Here's Jonathan with Why Me.

[7:22] ♪ Musical number: "Why Me" — performed by Jonathan Freeman ♪

[10:30] Tim Rice: Jonathan Freeman and his wonderful interpretation of Why Me from Aladdin. Or rather, not from Aladdin as it wound up on the cutting room floor. Mercifully, a couple of other songs that Alan and I wrote for Aladdin did not, including A Whole New World and One Jump Ahead. I've played A Whole New World twice already in these podcasts. Both the Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle hit record and an early take on the song by the performers who sang it in the film, Brad Kane as Aladdin, and Lea Salonga as Princess Jasmine. So if you're desperate to hear that smash again, nip back to a couple of my earlier podcasts. One Jump Ahead is a song that Aladdin sings as he flees from an angry bunch of scimitar-wielding guards who had spotted him thieving. Here it is with Brad Kane singing Aladdin.

[11:37] ♪ Musical number: "One Jump Ahead" — performed by Brad Kane ♪

[12:54] Tim Rice: Otherwise we'd get along.

[13:19] ♪ Musical number: "One Jump Ahead" — performed by Alan Menken ♪

[13:38] Tim Rice: Alan Menken was the first American composer I'd worked with on a major project. And "One Jump Ahead," one of the first songs. So I had to buy a new rhyming dictionary. An American one. In one of the first lyrics I did for "One Jump Ahead," I rhymed poor, as in not rich, with lore, as in legal. In English English, "lore" and "poor" is a perfectly good rhyme. In American English, the regular pronunciation is "lore" and "poor." Alan and indeed the American Disney team clearly thought they'd just signed up a bloke who couldn't rhyme to save his life. And rhyming is pretty important in theatrical and movie scores. Rock music's much more relaxed to the extent that rhyming sometimes is non-existent or not exact, as demonstrated by popular non-rhyming couplets that keep cropping up, such as "girl" and "world" or "mine" and "time."

In a musical, those inaccurate rhymes are a no-no. I'm afraid in my earliest days in the business, I did use a few dodgy rhymes, but in more recent stuff, I do attempt to be pure rhyming-wise. There again, I've often been guilty of excessive rhyme, which can sometimes distract from the message of the lyric, particularly if the rhyme can be seen coming a mile off. One of the greatest lyrics of all time, "Some Enchanted Evening" by Oscar Hammerstein from South Pacific, has no rhyme at all in its verses. Often a truly strong melody is best served if rhymes are not overdone. Better no rhyme at all than a forced one. And rhymes are, of course, often at their most valuable in a funny or fast-moving lyric.

They should be used sparingly when attempting to create a romantic mood. People might be surprised to hear that all lyricists, as far as I know, make use of rhyming dictionaries. Because if we didn't have one, you would just go "bog," "cog," "dog," "fog," "hog," etc. So you might as well benefit from someone else having done that bit for you. And of course, as the years roll by, most lyricists can recite most of the rhyming dictionary without opening it. And if you've written over 500 songs, finding an original rhyme couplet is not as easy as it was on day one. But I digress. The only complete work that I've written with Alan is King David. We wrote this in the late '90s, having been commissioned to write it for the 3000th birthday celebrations of Jerusalem, where the world premiere was to have taken place. For various reasons, some political.

[17:30] ♪ Musical number: "Never Again" — performed by Judy Kuhn ♪

[20:10] Tim Rice: Judy Kuhn singing in King David live from the New Amsterdam Theatre in 1997. One of the problems working with Alan is that his vocals on demos are so strong that whoever subsequently agrees to record it never seems quite as good, at least on first hearing. On the other hand, if I sang some of the demo songs, no singer or actor in their right mind would consider them. Here is Alan singing one more King David aria, based on David's lament for the deaths of Saul and his son Jonathan, which is also a lament for Israel, based on the beautiful language in the first chapter of the second book of Samuel.

[20:54] ♪ Musical number: "Tell It Not in Gath" — performed by Alan Menken ♪

[25:32] Tim Rice: That was Get Onto My Cloud, Episode Thirty Two, the podcast written and presented by Tim Rice. That's me, and produced by Peter Hobbs. That's him.