This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Tim Rice: Hello, this is Tim Rice, and this is episode 33 of my podcast Get Onto My Cloud. As I record this podcast, the ghastly 2020 is tottering to its close. Nonetheless, I wish listeners as merry a Christmas as possible, and of course, a much better new year.

[4:40] ♪ Musical number: "A Winter's Tale" — performed by David Essex ♪

[4:40] Tim Rice: A Winter's Tale, written by Mike Batt and me. Titled, more or less by W. Shakespeare. A Yuletide hit back in 1982, sung by one of the nicest guys you could wish for in the music business, David Essex. Like nearly everybody, I thought that lockdown and or its variations would be over within a few months, if not weeks. And that once I got back into the swing of things, I would neither have the time nor inclination to continue with these offerings. Furthermore, in 10 or at most 20 episodes, I would cover most of the shows and projects I've been involved with since I unintentionally fell into the musicals business in 1965. Well, of course, I was wrong about the length of the COVID crisis, but also wrong in thinking that I couldn't keep going much beyond 10 or 20 weekly chats about my life and times.

Here I am, having turned out a third of a century of 20 to 25 minute thoughts and reminiscences, and I know I could keep going for quite a while yet, without repeating myself too often. Whether my audience can keep going for quite a while yet is of course another matter, but there's still quite a bit to reveal or rehash. I've written the complete lyrics for 11 stage musicals. The likes of us, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Blondel, Chess, Starmania, Heathcliff, King David, Aida, and From Here to Eternity. Four film musicals, The Lion King, The Road to El Dorado, Jock of the Bushveld, and Nutcracker, two oratorios, Comeback Richard and Cricket, although Joseph started out as an oratorio, and made substantial contributions to three stage musicals, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and The Wizard of Oz, and to two film musicals, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast again.

And some of the stage stuff became a film, and even vice versa, in the case of a couple of Disney movies. There were a pair of concept albums, such as 1984, Yes, Orwell, with music by the marvellous Rick Wakeman. Then, of course, there are dozens of one-off songs for movies or records, 90% all but unknown, plus lyrics written for special occasions, usually a parody tribute to a distinguished artist such as John Mills or Herbert Kretzmer, or my favourite, a reworking of "One Night in Bangkok" in honor of my late manager David Land. All in all, I'm knackered just thinking about it, and I might have forgotten a few things. If you'd asked me when I was at school what I wanted to do when I grew up, assuming I would grow up, writing lyrics for theatre would not have been high on the list, if at all.

Despite my obsession with pop music and rock and roll from the age of 11, it never crossed my mind that I could have a career in any form of entertainment, not even behind the scenes working for a record company or a music publisher. In insane daydreams, I often thought it would be terrific to be a recording star, like the giants of the day, Tommy Steele, Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde, Billy Fury. But this seemed to be a world away from my conventional middle-class upbringing and beyond serious contemplation. Although I was part of Lansing College's first and almost competent pop group, the Ardvax, so named because we will be top of any alphabetical bill, even ahead of ABBA, not that we knew about ABBA back in the early 60s, not even ABBA knew about ABBA in the early 60s, the thought of mounting a challenge to Marty or Cliff was ludicrous.

The Ardvax did make a privately funded EP, which we managed to pay for by flogging copies around the school, but when it came to the long-term future, I was steered towards respectability and rejecting university, the law. I worked for two and a half years in a solicitor's office, failing my exams three times. Finally, after the third debacle getting the message and a lowly job as a management trainee at EMI Records. And around the time I abandoned any ambition to become Rice QC, I met Andrew Lloyd Webber, and his certainty about his career and his determination to succeed as a composer for the theatre was as impressive as his musical talent. I hardly ever went to the theatre as a child, other than on school trips to local productions, mainly in Harpenden and Hertfordshire, of Gilbert and Sullivan.

I performed in a few school plays without distinction and indeed without lines in most cases. My grandmother took me to see my first West End show in 1954, Salad Days, the show which fired the young Cameron Mackintosh to pursue a career in musical theatre. Maybe Cameron was a noisy little pest in front of me who kept jumping out of his seat. We're looking for a P I A N O. We're looking for a piano, a piano. Yes, a piano. Customia, no, the one that's rather rare.

[9:35] Tim Rice: We're writing for it phrases till its reputation blazes from the patrice fell for crazies in the Tuffany Daily scare. We're looking for a piano, a piano, yes, a piano. Just any opiat. No, the one that makes you dance. Oh, are it's drastic. We are so enthusiastic when we train the light. Fantastic, but we rarely get the chance. It must be near to where we are. We've seen it very lately. You need not fear, we'll go too far. We'll only dance in Aatling. It's come, it's gone, it's out of sight. This piano's most illusive. We'd like to buy the right to write and keep the right exclusive. King May Look, King May Look, no, King We looking for a PO. We're looking for a piano, a canon. Yes, a piano. Just any OPA.

No, the one that's not allowed. Its owners are requested to appear and be arrested for him next to Park. Contested when they draw so large a crowd. They may decide to be benign, but first it would be wise to be sure they're able to define the crime. They close their eyes to unlike stories are how to her license, choice out of big, they have to be recorded on it default and triplicate by the way of all kids. We're looking for a P. We're looking for a girl, no a candle is a girl.

[10:57] ⚠ About 3 minutes of audio could not be automatically transcribed.

[13:32] Tim Rice: I just loved long players, LPs, which gave me all the stage and movie musicals experience I needed back then. I loved a long playing record's feel and shape. Its blackness, the covers, the artwork, the label, the sleeve notes, the sometimes mysterious names and numbers on the label, the very grooves, the inner sleeves, the writing on the spine of the package, the hole in the middle. Well, perhaps I'm going too far. But the point is, I was, without really knowing it, a vinyl junkie. Just as without really knowing it, it was the words that floated my boat before the music. Of course, Andrew's expertise and blazing confidence in his music, but not so much in the words of school friends he'd worked with so far.

He was still only 17, had made me see all this. Even the rock and pop songs I'd love most had tended to be strong lyrically. Writers such as Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, and Jerry Lieber. Wake Up Little Susie, the Bryants' Summertime Blues, Eddie Cochran, almost anything by Chuck Berry, who often used the same tune for several different hits, and the Coasters and Elvis's early hits, such as Yakety Yak and Jailhouse Rock, words by Jerry Lieber, were all songs that would have graced any Broadway show. Except Rock and Broadway never mixed back in the 50s and 60s. Even an apparently nonsensical lyric such as Tootie Fruity and its unforgettable opening, "Bamboo," would be half the number it was. If Little Richard's opening shout was say, "Gee, I love you, baby, and you know I do."

[15:14] Tim Rice: Wiggle, please, vegan. We both did so. Again, we're in trouble, deep. We're gonna put Susie, wiggle pretty Susie. Well, what are we gonna tell your mama? What are we gonna tell your father? What are we gonna tell our friends as we may say? Wake up, pretty Susie. Will I told me mama like you'd be in battery? Well, Susie Baby looks like we do together. Wake up, pretty Susie. Wake up, pretty Susie. We gotta go home.

[16:12] ⚠ About 3 minutes of audio could not be automatically transcribed.

[18:54] ♪ Musical number: "The Gnu Song" ♪

[21:19] Tim Rice: The news song, or rather, the Gnu song. I'll need several more podcasts to explain, if only to myself, how and why I've ended up writing lyrics, but I hope some of the reasons and inspirations have emerged in this podcast. I could end with WS Gilbert, Alan J. Lerner, or Tom Lehrer, but as they haven't yet featured me in their podcasts, I shall arrogantly end with a song from the concept album I mentioned at the start. The 1981 album based on George Orwell's 1984. The song is Julia's song. Music by Rick Wakeman, sung by the splendid spectacular Chaka Khan.

[22:21] ♪ Musical number: "Julia's Song" — performed by Chaka Khan ♪

[26:49] Tim Rice: That was episode thirty-three of Get Onto My Cloud, the podcast written and presented by me, Tim Rice, and produced immaculately by Peter Hobbes.