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[0:00] Tim Rice: Hello, this is Tim Rice, and this is my podcast, Get On to My Cloud, Episode 59.

[0:16] Tim Rice: I've recently emerged from a working cruise, which is not quite a contradiction in terms. I was booked to entertain the passengers on a voyage from Lisbon to Madeira and the Canary Islands. The ship involved was not a particularly large vessel by most cruise liner standards, around 500 passengers, whereas many of the floating blocks of flats that potter around the safer coastlines of the globe contained several thousand punters in search of, well, nothing much except peace and quiet, sun, ever ready drink, and the occasional break for Nosh, be it snack or full-blown formal blowout. Sometimes travelers would even venture onto the shore when the opportunity rose. On my recent trip, I managed to wander around four Canary Islands and Madeira. But obviously, I dedicated most of my time abroad to my entertainment commitments.

[1:10] Tim Rice: My show was a kind of greatest hits collection, with the greatest hits fortunately not being performed by me, but by four excellent vocalists, two identifying as male and two as female, and in fact were two of each, supported by four live musicians, augmented in many cases by orchestral and or rhythm track. In between numbers, I would regale the literally captive audience with stories about how each song came to be written, if it came from a show, how the show evolved, and fling in a few, I hoped amusing, tales related to the said creations. I didn't have a formal script beyond the running order of the song, so sometimes I tended to drift off into uncharted reminiscence, which at least made it more interesting for the singers and musicians who had had to sit through my ramblings many times before.

[2:03] Tim Rice: The show had been taking place on seaborne ships for many months, even years, and on many far-off oceans, even if I wasn't there in the flesh. With my wit and wisdom on a very high-tech and sophisticated film linking the songs. I'm not sure I was high-tech and sophisticated, but the electronics certainly were. I do the show on dry land now and then. Whether you're a performer or merely a songwriter with a fairly extensive catalogue from a long career behind you, the crucial question is always, which songs should I include in the act? Well, of course, it has to be the best known ones, which are what the audience will want to hear, even if you are fed up to the back teeth with them. The songs, not the audience. Sometimes both, perhaps.

[2:48] Tim Rice: The moment in many a star's show when they say, now we're going to play a couple of tracks from my new album, is generally the signal to rush to the loo or in America or the restroom, with two tracks usually about enough time to relieve oneself before getting back to the hits. The average length of my show on a ship is usually just under 60 minutes, so it's difficult to slip more than one lesser-known item into the mix. And anyway, most of the members of the admittedly slightly on the senior side audience can easily hold out for an hour, and I generally reckon it's safe to go with one less familiar item. And sometimes the audience actually appreciates something they hadn't heard before, and stop wondering for a moment when Don't Cry for Me, Argentina will come on.

[3:33] Tim Rice: On my recent voyage, I featured one of my favourite songs from From Here to Eternity in the Don't Think I Know This One Spot, Fight the Fight, music by Stuart Brayson. From Here to Eternity is our musical based on the magnificent James Jones novel set in the US Army base in Hawaii just before, during, and after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December the 7th, 1941. The show first played in London at the Shaftesbury Theatre in late 2013. We are planning a return this coming autumn, October 2022. I have in fact played Fight the Fight in a couple of previous podcasts, including a fine cover version by Michael Ball. So here's something else you won't know from that show. Another language.

[5:15] ♪ Musical number: "Another Language" — performed by Claire Teal ♪

[8:13] Tim Rice: Another language from From Here to Eternity sung by Claire Teal. Music by Stuart Brayson, lyrics by moi. I think it's a great show, one of my favorites. It surely can't be too long before Stuart's musical fame matches his talent. Most shows based around the work of one songwriter hone in on the guy or gal who writes the music. Fair enough. Who wouldn't want two hours of Elton's melodies? But a concert or show based around lyrics and featuring the music of several writers has a greater variety of musical styles. Not necessarily a good thing, but if you are lucky enough to be able to include the work of Elton John, Alan Menken, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stuart Brayson, all in one program, it has a fighting chance of working well.

[9:01] Tim Rice: If I include a Q&A in the show, then I get inquiries about all these diverse characters, how they write, how I met them, which comes first, the words or music, and so on. Ah, yes, which comes first, the words or the music. The question I think I'm asked more than any other. Well, the answer I always give is that as far as musical theatre is concerned, the story outline must come first. You are more likely to have a success with a strong story and an average score than with a fantastic score and a weak plot. Obviously, it's ideal to have a terrific story and superb songs. Assuming you have an irresistible tale to tell, it doesn't really matter, as far as I can see, whether words or music comes first as far as each individual song or scene is concerned.

[9:46] Tim Rice: All the great composers I've worked with prefer most of the time to present a finished melody and musical structure to the lyricist, having written the music, knowing exactly what is required of each particular point in the show. A love scene, a comic moment, an argument, a choral blast for a huge crowd. Then the wordsman, as long as he likes the music, sharpens his pencils, gets out his rhyming dictionary, makes a cup of coffee, rearranges his desk layout, walks the dog, makes another cup of coffee, watches Pointless, or Jeopardy if in America, and finally gets down to it just before the football results. The only composer who always wants the lyric first is Sir Elton.

[10:27] Tim Rice: When I heard the exciting news that Elton was joining the Lion King team, at my suggestion, I hastened to add, I asked him innocently if he had any great unused tunes lying around. He had none. I wondered if he had any average unused tunes lying around, as even an average Elton John tune would be vastly superior to the best efforts of many other writers. But before I could make this insane suggestion, he informed me that he never wrote anything until he had a lyric. All those wonderful songs he's written over the years with Bernie Taupin came with words first. Sacrifice, I'm Still Standing, Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and so on and on and on, more or less ad infinitum.

[11:10] Tim Rice: I remembered that my one previous collaboration with Elton was a song on his Jump Up album entitled The Legal Boys, and there the words had come first. So I had no excuse for delay. I had to come up sharpish with a lyric for the movie. The first one, after another four cups of coffee, was Can You Hear the Love Tonight, which thank goodness became Can You Feel the Love Tonight in fairly short order. It seems to me that the words guy sometimes gets the short end of the stick. Once a composer's written verse one, he has automatically written verses two, three, four, five, and six, although he may wish to sling in a middle eight or bridge or even a chorus if he feels he's on a roll. The poor lyricist generally has to come up with different words for every verse.

[11:54] Tim Rice: And in some cases, such as Oh Water Circus and Don't Cry for Me, Argentina in Evita, the same music, albeit with different arrangements, crops up as two completely different songs. Not that I'm criticizing that for one minute, because one of the great gifts that Andrew Lloyd Webber has is that he is able to seamlessly incorporate the return of great melodies to his work at different stages of the story, adding great strength to the power of the entire piece.

[12:22] Tim Rice: And of course, if a great tune doesn't work first time around, it's usually salvageable. Not so true with words. If the Evita show had flopped, he would have been mad not to have used his superb melody of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" in another show, in another context with different lyrics. In cruel contrast, if Evita had failed, I would have struggled to have got the lyric of "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" into The Lion King, without a fairly drastic change of storyline. So the lyricist's lot is not always a happy one. But luckily, Evita did okay. One of the hits from the show that made it onto the top 40 charts was David Essex's marvelous re-recording of "Oh What a Circus," produced by Mike Batt.

I played David's original cast recording of Circus in Get Onto My Cloud episode 14, which is still fluttering around in cyberspace somewhere. Easy to find, I'm sure. But Mike Batt gave "Oh What a Circus" a whole new kick as a pop single. This is a Mike Batt re-re-recording, perhaps even more dramatic than the 1978 number three hit version.

[12:57] ♪ Musical number: "Oh What a Circus" — performed by David Essex ♪

[17:33] Tim Rice: Masterly David Essex dominating a magnificent Mike Batt production of "Oh What a Circus." Talking of Mike Batt, I've had the privilege of writing two songs with him, one, "A Winter's Tale," again a hit for David Essex, and one entitled "Falling Down to Earth," which featured on an album I co-produced with Andrew Powell for Elaine Paige back in 1980. I must play that in a future podcast. Two other totally reasonable questions I'm often asked in Q&As are what is your favourite song of the ones you've written, and what are you doing now? The second question always seems to have a hidden subtext of, you're obviously not doing very much at the moment or you wouldn't be on a cruise. Well, yes and no. Apart from the fact that presenting a retrospective of some of my stuff actually requires quite a lot of preparation and involves quite a few people, notably my current MD, Duncan Ward, I genuinely enjoy chatting to people who have a reasonable interest in what I'm up to.

I've done similar shows on land on many occasions over the last 20 or 30 years in the UK and in many foreign countries. Quite a few have been in aid of some worthwhile cause or other. In some cases, I admit the worthwhile cause is me. We are plotting, Duncan and I, a UK greatest hits tour, which will be the two-hour version, giving me the chance to get away with more than just one comparatively unknown number. Then, post-COVID, which has clobbered so many people's working lives in the performing arts for two years, I'm returning to the proposed revivals of several shows, which work was understandably brought to halt by lockdowns and restrictions. I've mentioned a few podcasts back the prospect of Chess returning to Broadway, and the definite new staging of From Here to Eternity in London at the Charing Cross Theatre.

Disney Theatricals are determined to get Aida to London via Europe within the next two years. It's strange that that very successful Broadway show hasn't yet been professionally performed in the home country of the two writers. That's Elton and me. It's genuinely one of my favourite scores. Reapproaching the show two decades on has already given us quite a different perspective on the work, now in the directorial hands of Shelley Williams, who was in the 2000 Broadway cast. Her singing of "God's Love Nubia" was mighty powerful. I'm busy with several other projects, still in the hush-hush or not quite sure if it's a good idea at all stage, and I'm trying to sort my work of the past half century or more into some sort of archive, sort the sheep from the goats, the odd winner from the army of losers.

My descendants at least might be interested, and attempting to put the chaos of my past into some sort of logical order, be it alphabetical, chronological, or popularity, at least keeps the Anorak in me happy. And when I'm asked what is my favourite of my own songs, I usually reply, the one I haven't heard for the longest time. I hardly ever play my stuff at home unless it's for something like this podcast, but I'm always thrilled and turn up the volume when I hear something of mine by chance on the radio, knowing that a lot of other people are listening to it at the same time, and some of them probably turning it down. But on my recent February 2022 cruise, the news across the water was unceasingly tragic.

And it feels difficult even to write semi-trivia about songs and shows at the moment. However, one song for which I wrote the words nearly 40 years ago has perhaps a renewed relevance today. Music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, sung by Tommy Körberg.

[21:04] Tim Rice: If he's listening, it's for Dimitri. No man, no madness, though they're sad, power may prevail, can possess conquer my country's heart, they rise to fame. When no flags flew and no army stood, my land was born, and you ask me why love her through was death and despair. She is the constant. We who don't care, and you wonder will I leave her, but how the borders, but I'm still there now. Can I leave her? Where would I stop? Let man's destinations take themselves my lands on the borders line.

[24:18] Tim Rice: That was Get Onto My Cloud, Episode Fifty Nine. Written and presented by me, Tim Rice, and produced by who else? Peter Holmes.