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[0:00] Tim Rice: Hello, this is Tim Rice.

[0:01] Tim Rice: Welcome to episode 50 of Get Onto My Cloud.

[0:15] Tim Rice: The very first podcast I produced, the debut of Get Onto My Cloud, 49 shows ago, featured an exciting tour of the mantelpiece in my study, on which I found several mementos, souvenirs, photographs, postcards, and objects, some decorative, some bewildering, many of which reminded me of events and people in my musical and theatrical life, or family and friends.

[0:42] Tim Rice: Quite a few are simply completely baffling with no apparent connection with anything or anyone I've ever known, such as a tasteful plastic rabbit.

[0:50] Tim Rice: I wasn't even sure if I had all the objects the right way up.

[0:54] Tim Rice: But that mantelpiece tour did, however, enable me to ramble through various aspects of the past 50 years or so, ranging from Sir Donald Bradman to King David, from old school registers to a metallic Joseph poster for a production of that show in Mexico City, from fake pearl earrings to a bag of seeds, presumably for a legal plant, and anyway, well past their plant by date.

[1:19] Tim Rice: I thoroughly enjoyed my stroll through my mantel past, so decided to celebrate this, my 50th podcast, with a repeat, for I have another mantelpiece of dodgy items.

[1:30] Tim Rice: More a shelf, really, in the kitchen, which I've recently dared to investigate.

[1:35] Tim Rice: No animals were harmed in this process, but the odd insect was.

[1:41] Tim Rice: The highlight of the shelf, and indeed the largest single object, is a state of the art Welltron 8-track AMFM Multiplex Tape Player and Radio, which I bought on one of my first trips to America in 1971, when we, Andrew Lloyd Webber and I, were in New York for our first Broadway show, Jesus Christ Superstar.

[2:04] Tim Rice: This magnificent machine, the Welltron 8-track radio recorder, not Jesus Christ Superstar, is a large and yellow round object that has always been referred to in my domestic circles as Buzz Aldrin's helmet, as the 12-inch dime at a globe closely resembles the headgear worn by that intrepid astronaut and his colleagues, as they repeatedly popped to and fro from the moon in those exciting early space exploration days between 1969 and 1972.

[2:34] Tim Rice: Furthermore, it still works.

[2:36] Tim Rice: The Welltron, not Buzz Aldrin, although I only use it as a radio these days, as the tape playing aspect ground to a halt around 1980.

[2:44] Tim Rice: In 1971, I had backed the wrong horse in preferring eight-track cartridges to cassettes as the music playing format of the future.

[2:52] Tim Rice: So I have a fairly large and unplayable collection of eight-tracks that have been festering in a cupboard for almost half a century.

[3:00] Tim Rice: I was amazed to see an identical Welltron to mine featured in an auction in Sherburn, England, very recently, late 2020, but it only fetched 100 quid, which is not far off what it must have cost me in the first place.

[3:13] Tim Rice: So, as an investment, not much COP, but still lovely to look at.

[3:18] Tim Rice: On my shelf near the Welltron, there's a photograph of a wonderful singer, the late Lori Beechman.

[3:24] Tim Rice: Lori sang the narrating in the first production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on Broadway in 1982.

[3:32] Tim Rice: She was the first woman to play that role professionally, and thanks to her flawless performance, we realized that the part of the narrator, which is as important as that of Joseph, worked as well, if not better, for a woman than it did for a man.

[3:47] Tim Rice: It gave the show more contrast and balance.

[3:51] Tim Rice: Maybe if Lori had been less than perfect, we might not have realized this important fact.

[3:57] Tim Rice: For her performance as the narrator, Lori was nominated for a Tony as Best Featured Actress in a Musical that year, and was unlucky to be part of an unusually strong field of nominees in that category.

[4:10] Tim Rice: Lori made her Broadway debut in 1977 in the original production of Annie, and in her way too short career post-Joseph went on to star in Cats, Les Misérables, and among other notable performances, sang at President Bill Clinton's second inauguration gala.

[4:28] Tim Rice: Cruelly, she was struck by ovarian cancer, and although she continued performing during her treatment, died in March 1998, aged just 44.

[4:39] Tim Rice: A huge loss to musical theatre.

[4:41] Tim Rice: In the mid-90s, Adam Menken and I, two of her greatest fans, had asked her to sing demos of some of our songs from our King David Oratorio.

[4:50] Tim Rice: And here she is, with the man who would be king, a song about the prophet Samuel's decision to replace Israel's King Saul, who had displeased him with the young boy David.

[5:05] Tim Rice: The father knew he had to break the erratic king.

[5:11] Tim Rice: He made his time was short.

[5:15] Tim Rice: His final shot could not be long delayed.

[5:21] Tim Rice: And he vowed he would employ a man, or even boy to praise, seduce, and then destroy the man who would be king.

[5:40] Tim Rice: The prophet turned away from Saul and he moved to Bethlehem, which terrified the people there.

[5:52] Tim Rice: Why had Samuel come to them?

[5:56] Tim Rice: Do you come in peace?

[5:59] Tim Rice: I do, but uh not passing through.

[6:05] Tim Rice: I seek the son of Jesse, who is next, who could be king.

[6:15] Tim Rice: The prophet called for Jesse's sons, seven hopeful knights.

[6:25] Tim Rice: But Samuel saw God had chosen of these.

[6:38] Tim Rice: Not here, the youngest boy, but he's a mere shepherd and a king.

[6:49] Tim Rice: Just a boy amidst a crowd of men, but all this changed forever when Samuel left anointed there and then the man who would be king.

[7:17] Tim Rice: The impeccable Lori Beechman.

[7:19] Tim Rice: The Lori Beechman Theatre, named in her honour, is on 42nd Street in New York.

[7:26] Tim Rice: Back to my kitchen shelf.

[7:28] Tim Rice: I see a card taken from a 1974 diary stating, 1975 will be here before you know it.

[7:35] Tim Rice: Order your 1975 diary now.

[7:38] Tim Rice: I don't think I did.

[7:40] Tim Rice: And then pinned to the wall behind the shelf is a leaflet entitled Scripture Lessons.

[7:45] Tim Rice: Home lesson leaflet number seven, and dated February the 14th, Valentine's Day, 1915.

[7:53] Tim Rice: I'm really not sure where on earth this came from, but after over a century, it's in good condition and consists of recommended biblical readings for the day.

[8:02] Tim Rice: One from the Gospel according to St. John and one from the first book of Samuel.

[8:06] Tim Rice: Both those books were of great help to me when working on musicals.

[8:11] Tim Rice: John's Gospel for Jesus Christ Superstar and Samuel, Books 1 and 2 for King David.

[8:16] Tim Rice: So I suspect it was sent to me by some alert and possibly very old fan.

[8:21] Tim Rice: It also features a fetching portrait of Samuel aged about five, sometime before he began plotting to remove King Saul and replace him with King David, as per the song I just played.

[8:34] Tim Rice: Next on the shelf, a CD of Spandau Ballet's Greatest Hits, six pencil sharpeners and just one aged pencil.

[8:41] Tim Rice: A small lavender scented cushion, still smelling sweetly, embroidered with the name Binden, one of mine, I'm afraid.

[8:48] Tim Rice: A selection of Argentine stamps featuring Eva Perón, a harmonica in the key of D, and a press cutting and photograph headed Veteran Performers Honoured, referring to a BMI Awards ceremony a year or two ago.

[9:02] Tim Rice: The snap is of me and three other old codgers, Ray Davies, Don Black, and Van Morrison, all four of us looking distinguishedly veteran.

[9:11] Tim Rice: Then some handwritten lyrics of the middle bit of Route 66.

[9:15] Tim Rice: Starts in St. Louis and Joplin, Missouri, which I used to sing when our band Wang and the Cheviots still managed three or four gigs a year.

[9:24] Tim Rice: And Oklahoma said he looks mighty mighty pretty, you'll see Amarillo, and so on.

[9:29] Tim Rice: It took me a while to decipher the lyrics from the Rolling Stones version of Bobby Troop's great song, which was how I became aware of it, although Nat King Cole was the first to have a hit with it in 1946.

[9:41] Tim Rice: I hadn't sung it for about five years, which is a shame, as I've now learned the words and wouldn't have needed my crib sheet.

[9:47] Tim Rice: And next, a photo of Jeff Chang, Taiwanese superstar.

[9:53] Tim Rice: Now, the reason I have a photo of Jeff Chang, one of the most famous and popular singers in the Far East, is that Gary Barlow and I recently wrote two songs for him: Gary the Music, Me the Words, which he's recorded in English.

[10:06] Tim Rice: Otherwise, my contribution would not have been particularly significant.

[10:10] Tim Rice: I've no idea whether Jeff Chang's English language recordings will ever be issued over here, although they are, of course, easily available now on YouTube and the like, having had a lot of views in the Orient.

[10:20] Tim Rice: One of the songs is called Lorelei, and the other A Matter of Love.

[10:25] Tim Rice: Here's the demo that Gary himself recorded of A Matter of Love.

[10:30] Tim Rice: Oh, such a clear cut case.

[10:35] Tim Rice: A smile and the time and the place.

[10:40] Tim Rice: And the noise and the heat and the rush on that crowded street, no escape from a fine romance one more round, one more passion a dance, but our lives were changed for good.

[11:08] Tim Rice: I'd go back then now if I could, if only I could a matter of love, the shattered fame, the scattering dreams, the clatter of lust, the truth of despair, a matter of love, a lesson for life the hurt that I caused as I watch you, not lover nor why I relive our tale every day.

[12:09] Tim Rice: What I didn't do didn't say, but I wanted maybe not most if only I'd seen it was just a matter of love.

[12:29] Tim Rice: Yes, a matter of love, a shatter of fell, the scattering dreams, the clatter of loss, the truth I despair, the matter of love, a lesson for life a hurt that I caused as I watched you, not lover, no why I'm looking back at us the way it should have been, the things I should have seen, but I let you leave me, I let you leave me.

[13:27] ♪ Musical number: "Heaven on Their Minds" — performed by Murray Head ♪

[13:27] ♪ Musical number: "Heaven on Their Minds" — performed by Murray Head ♪

[15:11] Tim Rice: Further stuff on my kitchen mantelpiece includes a 1993 Disney calendar, an Elvis teapot, ten rules for a howling success, kicking off with rule number one, invest in yourself on your body, a small globe of the planet Mars, and nearer to home, a souvenir postcard pack of historic Taunton. There's a small wooden box which I can't open. Some early artwork for the forthcoming 50th anniversary celebration reissue of the original Jesus Christ Superstar album, which first appeared in October 1970. The 50th anniversary package will be coming out this October, and mathematicians among you will have noted that this would in fact be 51 years since the double LP's first release. It was all set for October 2020, but Covid held everything up and added a year to preparations.

It will, I hope, be an interesting collection for Superstar fans, containing, in addition to the entire 1970 recording, suitably remastered, bonus tracks, outtakes, photographs, thoughts and memories from the principals, including Ian Gillen, Murray Head, Yvonne Ellerman, Victor Brox, Mike Darbo, and engineer Alan O'Duffy. Oh yes, and me and Andrew. I recommend the vinyl version, the way many old codgers, aka veteran performers, prefer to purchase their music these days. In the early part of 1970, Murray Head's single of Superstar proved fairly successful in America, so Andrew and I thought it would be a good idea to release another track from the forthcoming album to keep interest going until the October release.

We thought "Heaven on Their Minds" was the best candidate, but then shot ourselves in the foot or feet, my fault almost entirely, by changing some of the words, attempting to make them less controversial in order to obtain maximum radio play. What we really achieved was to decrease the impact of the song by about 75%, and it duly and deservedly flopped. However, this emasculated version will be part of the 51st anniversary collection, sung by Murray Head, whose vocals were certainly not to blame for the disc's demise.

[17:32] ♪ Musical number ♪

[21:45] Tim Rice: I've now completed 50 podcasts, wandering through various memories of shows and films with which I've been involved. I only intended to do 10 or a dozen shows in the first instance, but the interest and support's been good, and I still feel I've got plenty more I could waffle on about. But I'm going to take a break as I have one or two other writing commitments coming up in the summer of 2021. I shall return with a second series of Get Onto My Cloud before very long. And frankly, unless you've listened to all 50 shows already, why not listen to some of the other 49 which are still up and running? Like nearly everything, I fear they will still be available until the end of time. A ghastly thought. But I would be delighted if one or two of you listening to this show caught up with some of the back numbers. Any thoughts, comments, suggestions for the next series would be gratefully received.

[22:39] Tim Rice: Which has been an enjoyable exercise for me. Sometimes enabling me to see things I've done over the years in a new light. Sometimes a song seems better than I thought it was at the time. Sometimes worse. And above all, I must thank Peter Hobbs for his excellent assistance and brilliant production throughout the series. I haven't a clue how he gets it out into the ether, but he does every Monday morning. I hope you'll consider getting back onto my cloud when series two kicks off. But in the meantime, I'll leave you with the stones and Route 66.

[23:16] ♪ Musical number: "Route 66" — performed by Tim Rice ♪

[25:40] Tim Rice: That was episode fifty of my podcast, Get Onto My Cloud. Written and presented by me, Tim Rice. And produced for the last time in this series by the wonderful Peter Hobbes.