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[0:00] Tim Rice: Hello, this is Tim Rice, and this is episode 67 of my podcast Get Onto My Cloud. I was saddened by the recent news that Darius Campbell Danesh had died. I knew him moderately well because he played a leading role in the musical I wrote with Stuart Brayson, From Here to Eternity. The show ran for six months back in 2013-14 at the Shaftesbury Theatre in the West End, and although we got some very good reviews, it never quite caught on. This was in no way the fault of the excellent cast. Darius played Sergeant Milton Warden, who was having an extremely dangerous affair with the wife of his superior, Captain Holmes. The story is based on the best-selling and prize-winning novel From Here to Eternity, written by James Jones and first published in 1951.

It was made into a magnificent film by Fred Zimmerman two years later and scooped a load of Oscars and other awards. It starred Bert Lancaster as Warden and Deborah Carr as Karen Holmes. Montgomery Clift played Private Pruitt and Donna Reed, his lover, Lorreen. Frank Sinatra made a dramatic career comeback as Private Maggio. Our musical was based on the James Jones book, not on Zimmerman's brilliant film, which included a dramatically erotic beach scene featuring Lancaster and Carr lost in passion amid the waves. This was not actually a specific feature of the novel, and frankly, almost impossible to recreate in live theatre, even if we technically had the rights to do so. We had the rights to the book, not to the movie.

We gave that scene a go with Darius and Rebecca Thornhill, but real life surfing size breakers would have totally submerged the already strained budget. Darius, tall, dark, and handsome, was a singular man, out of the ordinary, and at times gave the impression of being a loner. This may be unfair, but although I liked him and greatly admired his talent, I never felt I knew him very well. I saw him in Funny Girl opposite Sheridan Smith sometime after Eternity, and I felt he was even better in that part than he had been as Sergeant Warden. I enjoyed an hour or so with him after the show and warmed to him, felt more relaxed in his company than I ever had during his time in From Here to Eternity.

I was truly astounded to hear he had died in Minnesota at the age of 41. Here is Darius singing "More Than America" from the cast album of From Here to Eternity, together with Rebecca Thornhill and the company and chorus of the Shaftesbury Avenue production.

[3:12] ♪ Musical number: "More Than America" — performed by Darius Campbell Danesh, Rebecca Thornhill, and the company ♪

[6:49] Tim Rice: That striking Stuart Brayson melody will be heard again in the London Theatre when a revival of From Here to Eternity opens at the Charing Cross Theatre under the arches in October 2022 for a two-month run. Plus a lot of other songs, of course, including one or two new ones, despite my half-hearted attempts to retire. Stuart's tunes are just too good an opportunity for me to get back into the lyrical swing of things. In a recent podcast, actually the last one I recorded a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned another marvellous actor singer with whom I'd had the pleasure of working, albeit some decades ago, Maynard Williams. He was a very early Joseph star, and in the first West End production took the important part of Rubin, lead singer of Joseph's brother's dishonest tribute, "One More Angel in Heaven."

I also said this in Get Onto My Cloud 66. So impressed were we with Maynard's vocal talents that Andrew Lloyd Webber and I recorded an album with him in 1974, for which we wrote several new songs. Maynard's 1974 album was rather unexcitedly called Ten Songs, and I'm sorry to say, did not set the charts alight. Of the ten songs on the LP, this is way before CDs and even way up before than downloads, streamings, etc., six were written by me and Andrew, one by Neil Sedaka, two by Maynard and Kevin Williams, no relation, and one was a rather magnificent mashup medley of George Harrison's songs, centered around George's contribution to the 1965 Beatles Help album, "I Need You." The melodies of three of the six Webber Rice songs found further life in musicals, sometime after it was clear that the versions on Maynard's album were not going to be standards.

This fact, of course, was no fault whatsoever of Maynard, whose superb voice and acting ability stood him in fine stead in his subsequent theatrical career. He was just unlucky to get his tonsils around some fine tunes which were not quite presented in the most advantageous form. This failure was, of course, down to the album's producers, i.e., me and Andrew. Having said all that, the three tracks in question are very enjoyable. One of them, "Down on the Farm," I played in Get Onto My Cloud Episode 31, well worth searching for. I think I can safely claim it's one of the best ever lyrics about the industrialization of agriculture. Admittedly, not a field that has attracted many wordsmiths over the years.

The tune, however, was an ALW corker, and when it went into the score of Evita, it became "High Flying Adored," which I would certainly put into my top ten favorite songs that I've been involved with over the past half century. Another tune on Maynard's LP wound up, I believe, in more than one of Andrew's shows. Indeed, I wrote at least one other lyric for it before it finally came to rest in Sunset Boulevard, a show which wisely used Don Black and Christopher Hampton's lyrics. On Maynard's album, the song was called "Turning," a strange tale which began at a posh dinner party and wound up wildly out of control in some distant castle. It's bonkers, but fun.

[10:11] ♪ Musical number: "Turning" — performed by Maynard Williams ♪

[15:23] Tim Rice: What did he and Shirley do next? Search me. I always felt that I hadn't quite completed this romantic tale, which, if inspired by anything, was probably the Robin Hood and William Tell TV series I watched avidly in my unsophisticated youth. Around the time we were working on Maynard's album, Andrew and I had written a song for the Ronald Neeme movie, The Odessa File. This was based on Freddie Forsyth's second hugely popular novel, following on from Day of the Jackal. Andrew wrote the entire movie's score, but Ronnie Neeme also needed a new song, which could have been written in late 1963 at the time of President Kennedy's assassination. Incidentally, the first political event of my life that made any impact upon me.

So, as an early scene in the film was set in Germany just before Christmas, we wrote a Christmas song, which included some German lyrics, not by me, entitled "Christmas Dream." We recorded it with Maynard in the hope that his version would be accepted for the movie. The song was, but the producers wanted a bigger name, and Perry Como was persuaded to record it. This was an honor, and Como's single even lurched for one week into the lower regions of the US Hot 100, a place we had not visited since the heady days of Superstar three years before. "Christmas Dream" has never quite become a festive season standard, but it usually picks up a few radio plays in December and has had the odd cover version, including one I rather liked, by none other than Terry Wogan, Aled Jones, Hayley Westenra, and the glam string quartet Bond.

Having played it again recently, I thought I might feature it in a podcast closer to Christmas time. But as I don't have a clue at what time of year anyone listens to any particular podcast, if indeed anyone ever does listen, I might as well feature it right now, right here.

[17:16] ♪ Musical number: "Christmas Dream" — performed by Perry Como ♪

[19:56] Tim Rice: Happy Christmas to all my listeners. Back to Maynard Williams. Besides "Turning," aka "Sunset Boulevard," and "Down on the Farm," aka "High Flying Adored," Andrew and I contributed reworkings of two of Andrew's oldest melodies, "Down Through Summer," our first ever flop single together, with Ross Hanneman back in 1967, and of "Make Believe Love," a song Andrew had written the words and music of before we even met, which now became "Marisa" in a tribute to Marisa Berenson, a beautiful actress I had met at a David Hemmings dinner party. None of these gems helped save the album. Another song on Maynard's album was entitled "The Red Room." This was quite a commercial lyric about a bloke being unable to resist returning to a house of ill-repute, obviously not based on personal experience.

However, parts of the song are now very recognizable as being key elements of "Buenos Aires" from Evita. I think we tried this as a single, but as is so often the case, if the public are determined not to buy something, they'll do so in very large numbers. Anyway, here is Maynard's spirited version of "The Red Room" before it was shifted to South America.

[21:02] ♪ Musical number: "The Red Room" — performed by Maynard Williams ♪

[25:07] Tim Rice: "The Red Room," another Lloyd Webber-Rice obscurio, from which bits went on to greater recognition. I've never been particularly competent as far as writing one-off songs is concerned. Indeed, the only hit I've ever had that did not emerge from a stage show or film is David Essex's "A Winter's Tale," co-written with Mike Batt. And some of the biggest hit singles I've enjoyed were never envisaged as chart records at all. The most obvious example being "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," written as a scene in a show, and which never struck me as a likely top 40 contender out of context. Our efforts with Maynard were by no means artistic failures, and the album's star was clearly a fine singer with a voice that suited the recording studio as well as it did the stage.

But there is a difference between the skills required for hit records and those required for a musical. Often one can inspire the other, and often these skills overlap, but most of the time it's horses for courses. To end this podcast featuring two outstanding vocalists, back to Darius. As Sergeant Warden in From Here to Eternity, here is the already missed gentleman, "Marking Time."

[26:29] ♪ Musical number: "Marking Time" — performed by Darius Campbell Danesh ♪

[29:09] Tim Rice: That was episode sixty-seven of my podcast Get Onto My Cloud. Written and presented by me, Tim Rice, and produced extremely efficiently by Peter Holmes.