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[0:00] Tim Rice: Hello, this is Tim Rice, and this is episode 55 of my podcast Get Onto My Cloud.

[0:18] Tim Rice: It's often crossed my mind, and does so more and more as the years roll by, that most of the characters and stories I've attempted to adapt, write or rewrite during my time in musical theatre and other assorted entertainments, cross my mind that they first intrigued or inspired me when I was young.

[0:36] Tim Rice: And by that I mean very young, mainly under 10 years old.

[0:40] Tim Rice: Joseph and his coat of many colours was my favourite Bible story.

[0:44] Tim Rice: My first moderately intelligent grasp of the gospel stories, as per Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John came from the magnificent Eagle comic in the 1950s.

[0:53] Tim Rice: And Ava Perron originally entered my consciousness because I collected stamps.

[0:59] Tim Rice: Any merit that my work with Disney animation may have is largely derived from my great love of nearly all animation, and in particular the first Disney classics I saw, such as Dumbo, Peter Pan, and Alice in Wonderland, not to mention MGM's brilliant Tom and Jerry, at least brilliant while Hannah and Barbera were in charge.

[1:20] Tim Rice: Working with a Disney production and creative teams in the 1990s was not only a delight because of my chance to become a small part of the Disney legacy, but made easier because, as a cartoon and American comic book obsessive from way back, I was never bewildered when my Burbank studio colleagues referenced Little Lulu, Howdy Doody, Scrooge McDuck, Casper the Friendly Ghost, or Woody Woodpecker, not all of whom were ever household names in the UK.

[1:46] Tim Rice: Then I became obsessed with cricket, aged nine, just in time to see England win the Ashes for the first time in 19 years.

[1:55] Tim Rice: I didn't know it at the time, but I was into everything that really mattered to me in later life by the time I was 12.

[2:02] Tim Rice: And I believe this is true for nearly everyone.

[2:04] Tim Rice: You will be more influenced, for good or bad, by what happens to you at your primary school than at your secondary school.

[2:12] Tim Rice: I was 12 when I first became aware of Elvis Presley and rock and roll.

[2:16] Tim Rice: In 1957, I bought my first pop record, a 78 revolutions per minute shellac platter, highly breakable, Tommy Steele's Singing the Blues, which I played in Get Onto My Cloud episode 41 while talking about the Guinness Book of British Hits singles.

[2:32] Tim Rice: Inevitably, Singing the Blues did get broken after about six months, eventually replaced by an unbreakable 45 RPM copy.

[2:41] Tim Rice: I embarked upon a lifetime obsession with popular music, which back then revolved almost totally around the charts, the hit parade, the new musical express top 30 was my Bible.

[2:53] Tim Rice: But in fact, the real clue, what was to happen to me later, had occurred well before Tommy Steele, Elvis's All Shook Up, and Ricky Nelson's Poor Little Fool.

[3:03] Tim Rice: In 1955, my parents splashed out recklessly on a four-speed record player, and their what seemed massive collection of maybe 15 to 20 long playing records featured principally soundtracks and cast albums of great musicals from Gilbert and Sullivan onwards.

[3:22] Tim Rice: I remember they had The Pirates of Penzance, Oklahoma, South Pacific, The Pajama Game, High Society, Kiss Me Kate, My Fair Lady, my absolute favourite, Damn Yankees, and British shows, such as Salad Days and Grab Me a Gondola.

[3:22] Tim Rice: Grab me a gondola?

[3:39] Tim Rice: That was a 1956 show written by James Gilbert, Book and Lyrics, and Julian Moore music.

[3:46] Tim Rice: Which started at the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith.

[3:49] Tim Rice: And then ran at the lyric in the West End for 18 months.

[3:53] Tim Rice: It was a hit.

[3:54] Tim Rice: It starred Joan Heal.

[3:58] Tim Rice: The man I love must be polite and still be rudely healthy.

[4:07] Tim Rice: And just to get the balance right, he also must be wealthy.

[4:13] Tim Rice: Debonaire and full of charm.

[4:16] Tim Rice: Strong, devoted, gay, and calm.

[4:19] Tim Rice: The day I have the luck to find a hymn.

[4:26] Tim Rice: He will find me right behind him.

[4:35] Tim Rice: I want a man, not a mouse, to be master in my house.

[4:46] Tim Rice: I want a man not a gnome from an Edgar Allan Home.

[4:58] Tim Rice: I like the tan of a bronze Apollo with the muscles like a tree.

[5:10] Tim Rice: I want a man, not a grouse.

[5:13] Tim Rice: Who complains when I corrupt?

[5:16] Tim Rice: I want a man want a man won a man, not a mouse.

[5:19] Tim Rice: God I understand again.

[5:21] Tim Rice: I want a man, not a bee.

[5:24] Tim Rice: Who with his honey on his knees?

[5:28] Tim Rice: A man who's a bee has no money.

[5:34] Tim Rice: Not a natural thing wrong my Paris happens.

[5:39] Tim Rice: A man who's a natural founder, round my flat.

[5:42] Tim Rice: And I missed the won't be found with me.

[5:44] Tim Rice: I take great pains, and I try to do more for a man of strong pissy.

[5:50] Tim Rice: He won't need brains.

[5:52] Tim Rice: Or a sense of humor.

[5:53] Tim Rice: Hit his draw is solid teeth.

[5:56] Tim Rice: I want a toad.

[6:03] Tim Rice: What a murder!

[6:05] Tim Rice: What a murder!

[6:06] Tim Rice: What a murder!

[6:08] Tim Rice: What a mur!

[6:11] Tim Rice: And not a mondause, sung by Joan Heal from the 1956 British musical hit Grab Me a Gondola.

[6:28] Tim Rice: Its lyric and message, Seven Decades On, sounds like a prototype of a feminist rallying call.

[6:35] Tim Rice: Lyricist James Gilbert thus way ahead of his time.

[6:38] Tim Rice: Although I suspect his main purpose, quite rightly, was simply to write a funny and powerful scene.

[6:44] Tim Rice: Which he did.

[6:45] Tim Rice: Joan's co-star in the show was a young Dennis Quilly.

[6:49] Tim Rice: Little did I know when I listened to my parents' copy of that album, that one day both Joan and Dennis would be in shows that I wrote.

[6:57] Tim Rice: Joan as Potifal's wife in Joseph's first West End run in 1973.

[7:02] Tim Rice: And Dennis as a brilliant Molokov on the 1984 original album of Chess.

[7:07] Tim Rice: He was one of the most delightful actors you could hope to meet.

[7:11] Tim Rice: The third leading role in Grab Me a Gondola was taken by Jane Wenham, who had a long and distinguished TV career right up until her role in Downton Abbey in her 80s.

[7:20] Tim Rice: Once married to Albert Finney, she died in 2018, aged nearly 91.

[7:26] Tim Rice: Sad to say, Joan Heal and Dennis Quilly have also left the stage, but their voices and vivacity live on.

[7:33] Tim Rice: For me, on vinyl.

[7:35] Tim Rice: Grab me a gondola, all but forgotten now, but not by me, was a substantial success, running for nearly 700 performances from late 1956, a comedy with a plot based around the Venice Film Festival, inspired apparently by a hugely celebrated publicity photograph of the glamorous British actress Diana Dawes being thrown into a canal wearing a mink bikini.

[8:00] Tim Rice: Other future British stars in Grab Me a Gondola included Euna Stubbs and Joyce Blair.

[8:06] Tim Rice: Strange to relate, I never had any great desire to go and see Grab Me a Gondola or indeed any of the great shows whose soundtrack and the original cast albums I devoured avidly.

[8:16] Tim Rice: Because, even pre my rock and roll epiphany, I was already a vinyl junkie and liked nothing more when listening to the show or film albums than to study every aspect of the sleeve.

[8:27] Tim Rice: And indeed the label, obviously I didn't study the label of the album that I was currently playing.

[8:32] Tim Rice: Grab me a gondola was on the HMV label, his master's voice, a terrific label name with a fabulous logo of Nipper the Dog, listening to an 1899 vintage phonograph.

[8:44] Tim Rice: HMV, his master's voice, was part of EMI, the company that would be my first music business employers in 1966.

[8:53] Tim Rice: Grab me a gondola's HMV number was CLP 1103.

[8:58] Tim Rice: EMI also seemed to own the King and I movie album, but that was on Capital, LCT 6108, as were my parents' Frank Sinatra albums.

[9:07] Tim Rice: Our American copy of Kiss Me Kate was on MGM and had, like most American albums, more sturdy sleeves than the average British LP, and its number was E3077.

[9:18] Tim Rice: Enough!

[9:19] Tim Rice: I was really into the record business as much as the songs, without realizing it.

[9:24] Tim Rice: After Tommy Steele launched my own collection in late 1957, I played that and subsequent treasured purchases over and over again on my parents' record player, still mainly referred to as the gramophone by the entire family.

[9:39] Tim Rice: Parents just about tolerated the endless repetition of our extremely limited music library, which reached a total of around 10 singles by late 1958.

[9:49] Tim Rice: But their collection was still far more extensive.

[9:52] Tim Rice: And inevitably, after the 19th consecutive play of the Everly Brothers' Bird Dog, I continued to spin many platters from what I now see as their very sophisticated record library.

[10:03] Tim Rice: One of my father's favourite singers was Eartha Kitt.

[10:06] Tim Rice: Eartha remained a significant star right up until her death at 81 in 2008.

[10:11] Tim Rice: And today is best remembered for her hits Just an Old Fashioned Girl and the Christmas Perennial Santa Baby.

[10:18] Tim Rice: I also loved her first hit record, which made the US Top 30 in 1953, Uskadara.

[10:25] Tim Rice: She recorded Uskadara with Henri René and his orchestra at Manhattan Center, New York City, on March the 13th, 1953.

[10:34] Tim Rice: The song was released by RCA Victor Records.

[10:37] Tim Rice: Catalogue number 20, hyphen 5284 in the USA, and by EMI in Britain, on his master's voice label as catalogue number B old Og.

[10:47] Tim Rice: The Anarch in me is getting carried away.

[10:49] Tim Rice: Here is that great single by Eartha Kitt from my father's collection.

[12:03] Tim Rice: Oh well, that's Turkey.

[12:35] Tim Rice: They take a trip from Ishkedara in the rain, and on the way they fall in love.

[12:40] Tim Rice: He's wearing a stiff collar and a full dress suit.

[12:43] Tim Rice: She looks at him longingly through her veil and casually feeds him candy.

[12:48] Tim Rice: Oh, those takes my ara ikan yandim dabuldoons. In two thousand and two, Thomas S. Hischak in the Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia stated, quote, Ushkadara, a Turkish tale, nineteen fifty-three, is a spirited novelty number written by Stella Lee that's adapted from a Turkish song. Although Edie Gourmet introduced the song with a successful record, in America, the piece is most associated with Eartha Kitt, who sang it both in a grossly misrepresented English translation and an atrociously mispronounced Turkish, that she had a best-selling disc and kept it in her nightclub act for years. I'm glad my dad never read Mr. Hischak's review. I don't know much about Stella Lee, who wrote the song. I own a modest boat down in Cornwall that was partly built in Turkey, so I've named it Ushkadara as a tribute to both my father and to Eartha, neither of whom ever had the chance for a ride in it.

[14:53] Tim Rice: The childhood impact of the stories of Joseph and Jesus in my life was easy to recognise once I began attempting to recreate them in what Andrew Lloyd Webber and I hoped was an original way many years later. The stories had resonated throughout my school days in many ways: Compulsory Chapel, Divinity O-Level, the aforementioned Eagle Comics, and so forth. But I'd never thought much about Ava Peron since she made her debut in my early life in my stamp collection. Stamp collecting was a big thing for kids in the 1950s, and I don't really know whether it has many young followers today, although it's clear that despite emails and every type of online communication, postage stamps are still going strong and remain a great investment with the advantage of not taking up very much space. A British Guyana one-cent Magenta sold for over $8 million in 2021, who said philately will get you nowhere.

[15:49] Tim Rice: My stamp album in 1954 contained a page for every major territory of the world, arranged alphabetically. I don't recall ever getting my grubby hands on a stamp from Afghanistan, Albania, or Andorra, so the Argentina page was the first in my book actually to contain stamps. And they all featured a very glamorous looking lady who I discovered was the recently deceased Ava Peron, wife of the then president Juan Peron. Her features were strikingly more attractive than the run-of-the-mill mugshot on the stamps of many other territories, always accepting our own monarch. But while Ava's image remained in my mind, I learned very little more about her until I heard a 30-minute radio documentary about her in 1973. I often wonder if I'd not been aware of Ava in my stamp collection days, whether I would have bothered to have listened to that radio programme. But I'm glad I did.

[16:46] Tim Rice: Then cricket. Well, in 1986, Andrew Lloyd Webber and I were asked by Prince Edward, who'd been working at Andrew's Really Useful Company's theatrical offices, whether we could write something for the Queen's 60th birthday. To be fair, he asked Andrew, who was kind enough to invite me on board. I offered an idea for a mini musical lasting for just half an hour, which involved a love triangle of a cricketer, his lady love, and a racing cad named Vincent St. Ledger. It was called simply Cricket or Hearts and Wickets. There's a lot more about this in my podcast number 43, but suffice it to say here that it went down well with Her Majesty. And although many of the tunes have gone on to greater things, the abandoned words are available in full in a marvellous anthology of cricket verse, a book compiled by Hubert Doggett and David Raven Allen, entitled A Breathless Hush.

[17:40] Tim Rice: One other great interest of mine when I was very young was the solar system, although I'm afraid my obsession with the sun and the planets faded a little as Elvis and Company took over. Rather, as I've noticed children today being major dinosaur experts until they're about eight, then they switched to more accessible topics such as football. However, my planetary interest is simply laying dormant. And if I were to attempt a major new enterprise in whatever format, the sun and its eight planets, nine when I was young, are in with a shout of being major characters. I'm not sure if my early 80s obsession to write a musical about chess players and romance in the shadow of the Cold War was sparked off by some extreme youthful experience, so it may be the exception that proves the rule. Maybe Dennis Quilley got the role of Molokov in Chess because of Grab Me a Gondola. More likely, though, simply because he was a supreme actor and singer.

[18:36] Tim Rice: Here he is, with Tommy Körberg, in a scene from the original Chess album that leads into Anatoly's first big number, Where I Want to Be.

[18:46] ♪ Musical number ♪

[25:18] Tim Rice: That was episode fifty-five of my podcast Get Onto My Cloud. Written and presented by me, Tim Rice, and produced by the eternally young Peter Hobbs.