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[0:00] Tim Rice: Hello, this is Tim Rice with Get Onto My Cloud, episode 37.

[0:14] Tim Rice: Throughout the many years that I've been involved with the business of writing musicals, I've often been asked for advice or guidance on the topic, as if I have access to some kind of secret formula for a hit. I don't think for one minute that there is a formula for creating a successful musical. Have you noticed that most of the how to write a hit musical books are written by people who've never actually written one? But since 1965, when I first met Andrew Lloyd Webber, and having had a considerable amount of good fortune along the way, I thought I'd assemble a short list of hints and ideas I've picked up through sometimes grisly experience.

[0:53] Tim Rice: Okay, so here are the ten rice golden rules, which I believe every prospective writer of a musical should at least bear in mind, if not follow to the letter. Some of it comes from the school of the pleasing obvious, but there may be a useful corpuscle or two of observation among them that never crossed your mind. It never entered my golden rule number one.

[1:23] Tim Rice: No one knows anything. However long one's been in the theatre business, quite possibly in any business, no one can say with absolute confidence what's going to work, what is going to be the next big thing. Most people don't even know what the last big thing was. So, if your idea is rejected by all and sundry, including the so-called heavyweights of musical theatre, this doesn't mean it's a bad idea. Of course, it could be a bad idea, but it's a fact that most of the shows that burst onto the scene out of nowhere, created by unknowns, usually had a tough time getting noticed and thence produced.

[2:02] Tim Rice: The obvious example from my personal experience is Jesus Christ Superstar. Nobody wanted to stage it, and as a last resort, we made an album, which did so well, everyone wanted to stage it. Andrew and I were hailed as marketing geniuses by putting out the score before the show, even though it was something we hadn't originally wanted to do. The huge success of the album took us by surprise as much as it did everyone else. No one knew anything, including us. However, if you know you don't know anything, you are one step ahead in the game. I wouldn't blame you if at this point you decide to dispense with my remaining nine golden rules. But for those of you who are sticking with me, golden rule number two.

[2:48] Tim Rice: That's my story, yes. A good story, preferably a great story, is the most vital ingredient of any musical. In the end, every aspect of the show has to be right, but without a tale that will grip your audience from the first scene, you may be struggling. It's much more likely that a show will be a success with a great story and merely passable score than the other way round. Terrific songs but a NAF book. Book, of course, refers to the plot of a musical, which can be told with dialogue between numbers, or as part of a sung-through piece, as per opera. Obviously, it's best to get both aspects, story and score, spot on. But even hit songs stuck together won't work as a dramatic musical without plausible drama.

[3:36] Tim Rice: Mamma Mia triumphed because the wonderful ABBA material was brilliantly woven into a strong, albeit tongue-in-cheek, story. Shows based on other great song catalogues from The Beatles to Boney M have flopped because the story that was intended to shoehorn the songs into a plausible tale didn't. The story doesn't have to be an original one. In fact, most musicals are derived from another source. A great book, E.G. Les Miserables, a great play, My Fair Lady, or even a great movie, Sunset Boulevard, or the Bible, or history, such as Hamilton or Evita. We were told that Superstar would never be a success because everybody knew the story. We were told that Evita would never be a success because nobody knew the story.

What actually mattered was that both were good stories. Whether the lyrics precede the music or the music precedes the lyrics, or whether both are written around the same time by the same genius, the story should always come first in order to inspire both departments.

[4:41] Tim Rice: Golden rule number three: no preaching. I am sorry. If you have a message for the world, don't bang on about it. Insert it with subtlety. For starters, most people go to the theatre, particularly in the case of musicals, hoping to be entertained and have a break from the pressures of their everyday lives. And in many cases, any show which is primarily there to get your viewpoint out to the rest of the world will have lost half of its potential audience before it even opens. Of course, you should be able, must be able, to express opinions, and of course, your work can have a point of view, but let the audience discover them rather than have them rammed down their throats in a sermonizing lecture or diatribe in the first five minutes.

[5:27] Tim Rice: When the audiences see characters they've come to like, or anyway, taken an interest in, when they see them affected by political or social problems or just by sheer bad luck, they will react and appreciate. Even if you have a totally understandable desire to raise awareness about something almost everyone would agree on, such as a cure for cancer, better to have a hit show about something else which can raise money for the cause than to have a worthy failure solely about the topic.

[5:57] Tim Rice: Golden rule number four. Write something you would like if you hadn't written it. I like it. I like it. In other words, be true to yourself. Don't aim at a specific audience, as you'll almost certainly miss. Don't aim at a universal audience, because you'll never please everyone. Pursuing either of these routes, you'll probably end up with no audience at all. But if you go for what you like, your work will be honest, uncynical, and there's a fighting chance that others will go for it, because you're not unique. It's also easier to write something you believe in than something which you're writing because you think that's what all or some of the public wants. They probably don't.

[6:45] Tim Rice: Golden rule number five: lyrics. No false rhymes, probably. To take your heart away. Ironically, this is the area about which I'm most hesitant to offer even vague advice. Clearly, good lyrics, songwrits, as the great Lionel Bart referred to them, are pretty crucial to any show's success. This doesn't mean they have to be sophisticated or even make sense, as the fabulous song Good Morning Starshine in Hair illustrates, although some would argue that. And frankly, I nicked it in Jesus Christ Superstar. In both cases, the alleged nonsense is very memorable, much more so than a conventional lyric might have been within those particular songs.

[8:22] Tim Rice: But it's much more important to say that false rhymes should be avoided at all costs. False rhymes like girl and world, or time and fine are dire. Yikes, and there are others, including one or two in Superstar, which I would rather not bring to your attention. I think I've now kicked the habit. However, there are rare occasions when a rhyme that isn't quite true can actually be funny. Again, from Joseph, I wrote the couplet. Quite the smoothest person in the district. Biscuit and district are not exact rhymes, but it worked. Maybe nobody noticed. When I did, I tried to change it for one particular production, but I was outvoted by the company, so I let it be.

[10:30] Tim Rice: Manuel Miranda's brilliant internal rhyming and rap influences in Hamilton. So the only rule is really no rhyme at all is better than a false one, except for Biscuit and District. And remember that the lyrics are there to serve the music. Golden rule number six: the music is not just a batch of songs.

[10:52] Tim Rice: Well, I've got a handful of songs to sing you. The most important thing about the music in a musical, be it sung through opera-like or as in a conventional book musical, supported by spoken dialogue, is that the songs are first and foremost parts of a collective whole, with a common style and common emotional thread, whether or not they are ballads, rockers, or in between.

[11:17] Tim Rice: Sometimes the music, as in Joseph, can embrace a variety of different styles, but the score should never just be a batch of numbers, however good each one might be. The flavor and fun of Andrew's eclectic Joseph Score is consistent, whether the song is a country and Western parody, a French chanson, or 50s rock and roll. Andrew's marvelous melody for Don't Cry for Me Argentina first appears in Evita as an up-tempo, Oh, what a circus, and many of the other musical themes reappear in different guises at different times. Even the mistress's well-known melody, Another Suitcase in Another Hall, returns briefly to haunt Ava as she comes to terms with her illness.

[11:59] Tim Rice: What happens now? What happens now? She sings, just as the young girl she so viciously expelled from Peron's apartment had sung years before. And remember that the music is there to serve the lyrics.

[12:19] Tim Rice: Golden Rules number seven. Keep it short. This is pretty straightforward to understand, but not as easy to do as you think. It's agony cutting any part of your magnificent œuvre if a producer or theatre owner, thinking perhaps of overtime payments, curfews, lavatory maintenance, etc., wants everybody out by 11 p.m. But even if you feel that such mundane considerations are not something that should concern or affect an artist with your creative vision, the producer may well be doing you a favor by imposing a time limit. All musicals are ten minutes too long. In fact, almost everything in life is ten minutes too long, but there's not much you can do about that. Try and keep your show down to two hours at the most.

You will almost certainly fail in this endeavour. True, plenty of mammoth hits have gone on for almost three hours, sometimes feeling more like three days. But aim for two hours max, and you'll wind up with two and a half, and you'll be more succinct and will delight more theatre goers than if you aimed for three hours and wound up with four. If the punters are desperate for more, they can always come and sit through the show again and pay for it again.

[13:36] Tim Rice: Golden Rules number eight. Launch the show with a live performance. The next two rules are concerned with getting your show off the ground in the first place. It's a sad fact of life that if you send a recording of your work to a major producer, director, or star, in whatever format, there is little chance of it being listened to thoroughly, except possibly by the office junior, whose views will not cut much ice on Monday morning anyway. This tragic state of affairs is simply because major producers, directors, or stars have more than enough on their plates already. That's why they're major. Your effort will join several dozen other recordings of hopeful material on their desk, and even if listened to, will struggle to impress or stand above the crowd.

However expensive or illustrious the demos, nothing can make an impact more powerfully than the live performance. Anyone can make a top quality album in their front room these days, but to know whether it could move or entertain a theatre audience, a live performance is still vital. It does not have to be an expensive undertaking. A school choir of eight to eleven-year-olds were the first to perform Joseph, and it showed us pretty quickly that we were on the right track when the parents cheered the then 20-minute piece to the rafters. Giving an audience a good time or a worthwhile time or both, is really the be-all and end all. Seeing that we'd written something that resonated with at least two generations, we turned our attention to progressing the work by further live Joseph performances, and eventually these led to a publishing contract, a recording contract, and professional representation. We were often running, or at least trotting.

[15:21] Tim Rice: Golden Rules number nine. Better to start with fun rather than angst. Come to my place and live in. However dramatic your ballads, however heartfelt your agony, angst is not the best way to launch your career. Once you're established and older, then you can be as gloomy as you like. You might well have more reason to be, I hope not. Once you've made a mark, those with clout, those who matter, will have the time and patience to go with your more serious offerings. But at the start of what you plan to be a long and magnificent career, immediate smiles, quickfire gags, and instantly catchy melodies fit the bill better. Before you decide to follow my snippets of advice with unflagging devotion and efficiency, I should point out that while in theory I've been around long enough to have grasped what's been happening in musical theater in the past few decades, in practice, I might just be an old codger who lost the plot somewhere around the turn of the century. Your call.

[17:21] Tim Rice: Yes, just a mere recording to a producer. And you'll probably have the biggest hit since Les Mis. The final and most important golden rule. Number 10 is there are no rules.

[18:08] Tim Rice: Good morning, starshine. The earth says hello. You twinkle above us. We twinkle below. Good morning, starshine. Delete us along my love and me as we sing our early mornings sing and song.

[18:59] Tim Rice: Early morning singing song. Good morning, star shine. There's love in your skies, reflecting the sunlight in my lover's eyes. Good morning, star shine. So happy to please my love and me as we sing.

[20:09] Tim Rice: Can you hear me singing a song Latin song sing a song coming a song that little song singing a song sing a song a single song sing song Song Song Song Sing Sing Sing Song Sing Song Yeah, you can sing, sing, sing a song, sing song, sing song, sing a song.

[21:25] Tim Rice: That was episode thirty-seven of my podcast, written and introduced by me, Tim Rice, and the man at the controls is Peter Hobbs.