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[0:00] Tim Rice: Hello, this is Tim Rice, and this is episode 58 of my podcast, Get Onto My Cloud.

[0:17] Tim Rice: In April 1965, when I was 20 and failing my law exams with remarkable consistency, I took an idea for a book on the history of the pop charts to a dynamic independent publisher, Desmond Elliott. As I recounted in Get Onto My Cloud episode 41, still available, Desmond was not interested in that idea. He was wrong about that, as the Guinness Book of Hit Singles proved a dozen years later. But Desmond helped me in what turned out to be a much more valuable way by introducing me to a young composer, just 17 years old, Andrew Lloyd Webber. This was done by letter from me to Andrew. No emails, mobiles, or internet in those days. Thank goodness. In the words of the late Ral Donner, you don't know what you've got until you lose it.

And how I miss the slower, less frantic, less desperate, less private methods of communication these days. But I digress. My letter of the 21st of April 1965 is today framed and on the wall in one of the smallest rooms in one of Andrew's largest properties. Or at least it was last time I went there for a personal moment. It went as follows. Dear Andrew, I have been given your address by Desmond Elliott of Arlington Books, who, I believe, has also told you of my existence. Mr. Elliott told me that you were looking for a with-it writer of lyrics for your songs. And as I've been writing pop songs for a short while now, and particularly enjoy writing the lyrics, I wonder if you consider it worth your while meeting me.

I may fall far short of your requirements, but anyway, it will be interesting to meet up, I hope. Would you be able to get in touch with me shortly either at Flaxman 1622 in the evenings or at Wellbeck 2261 in the daytime? Pettit and Westlake solicitors are the owners of the latter number. Hoping to hear from you, yours, Tim Rice, 11 Gunter Grove, London SW10. And I've just noticed that Flaxman 1622 and Wellbeck 2261, the numbers are anagrams. How weird. Hadn't realized that in nearly 60 years. Anyway, in Gunter Grove, I shared a pretty basic flat with a varying selection of chums and occasionally strangers in the basement and ground floor of number 11, which even then was a bit like living on the hard shoulder of the M1.

Within days, Andrew and I were beavering away at The Likes of Us, a project that for over two years we were convinced would be a long-running hit in the West End and on Broadway. Desmond became my agent as well as Andrew's, and through his good offices, we obtained a music publishing deal with Bob Kingston's Southern Music, like most music publishers those days, based in London's Tin Pan Alley, Denmark Street. We were each paid a staggering sum of 100 pounds in exchange for the publishing rights, and Southern also paid for demo recordings of the work to be made. We were introduced to another successful book publisher, Ernest Hecht of Souvenir Books, and signed a very impressive document with Desmond and Ernest as theatrical producers for our show, including clauses that promised us first-class airfares to New York for the Broadway opening.

Desmond told the world about us, or at least the Daily Express, whose William Hickey column of the 22nd of January 1966 announced with uncharacteristic accuracy and prescience. After Rogers and Hammerstein, Lloyd Webber and Rice, a long-distance forecast which could be right. Andrew Lloyd Webber, 17-year-old Oxford undergraduate son of William Lloyd Webber, 51, director of the London College of Music, has collaborated on a full-scale musical with his friend, Tim Rice, 21. Andrew has been given time off by his college Maudlin to complete the 14 songs for the show, which is set in the 19th century. Indeed, Andrew was so confident that we were on the road to musical theatre triumph that he abandoned his place at Maudling College, Oxford after only one term, in order to dedicate himself full time to writing with me.

I don't think I appreciated his sacrifice at the time, even though it was becoming clear to me that my days as a trainee solicitor were numbered. My status at Pettit and Westlake slumped to a new low when I was ordered by my boss to tear up a pile of old documents on her desk. Yep, her desk. The firm had no shredding machine. Such gadgets may well not have even existed then, and all destruction of legal documents was a hand job, so to speak, and it was about the only task of which I was by then considered capable. Almost inevitably, I ripped up the wrong pile, manually converting 20 or 30 brand new wills and title deeds into confetti. Just as shredding machines did not exist, neither did word processors, nor photocopiers, at least in our office.

The originals had to be reassembled. All other work in the office was suspended for a fortnight, as every secretary, clerk, and junior, all highly amused, set about sticking the pieces together again. This gigantic jigsaw puzzle was eventually completed, but long before that I bit the bullet and handed him my notice, minutes before I would have anyway been shown the door. To say I left under a cloud was putting it mildly. My cloud and I left Pettit and Westlake in May 1966 after two and a half years of staggeringly incompetent service. Meanwhile, my father had come up Trump's in fixing an interview for me at EMI Records. He knew a man who knew a man, in Manchester Square, just a few hundred yards from Pettit and Westlake, who were in Baker Street.

A day or two after I was lost to the law, I heard that EMI would accept me as a management trainee at the stratospheric wage of 16 pounds a week. I bought a new suit, four pounds down and four pounds a month for a year, and resolved that I'd turn the corner. And round about that time I moved in with Andrew and his family into their apartments in Harrington Court, South Kensington. Our musical was taking shape, and with both of us under the same roof, we were able to write all hours. Its subject was the life of the 19th century philanthropist, Dr. Thomas Bernardo, who founded the children's homes that bear his name, a worthy, but perhaps not wildly exciting subject at first glance. Or second as it turned out.

However, Andrew's optimism was infectious. We were on the way to musical theater fame and fortune. Look out, Lionel Bart. It's easy to be careless, let a lifetime hurry by, live aimlessly forever, and be nothing till you die. I would have let this happen, but suddenly I found my little world invaded by a strange and lovely sound. Softly through the roar and rush of day when the still of night draws me from the depths of somewhere far away, a strange and lovely song I shapes and clouds of men, spin my troubles through the ail the key and find the harmony of a strange and lovely song so race before all my dreams were a pattern, fading colours of gray and brown and blue, but these patterns are changing to pictures, and I feel that I am changing to I wander through a haunting haze touched by sounds I cannot see.

I shall one day understand such a strange and lovely song to me. The first ballad that Andrew and I wrote together, strange and lovely song from our musical entitled The Likes of Us that was going to take Broadway by Storm after having conquered the West End, of course. That version was sung by the late Danny Street, a superb vocalist, who is then everybody's number one choice as a demo disc singer, notably of ballads. As he was better than many of the singers for whom he was demonstrating songs, and as he was a good looking nice guy, I'm still baffled half a century later why he never became a household name. Maybe he sensibly didn't want to. As I've recounted, particularly in Get Onto My Cloud episode two, still available, life at Harrington Court ranged from the bohemian to the sophisticated, as the four great musical talents that were the Lloyd Webber family operated with simultaneous gusto and verve, not quite 24 hours a day, but not far off.

William Lloyd Webber, Bill, father of Andrew and Julian, was a highly gifted composer whose romantic classical works were underappreciated during his lifetime, although his sons have done much in recent years to bring them to a wider audience.

[11:25] Tim Rice: His wife Jean was an outstanding piano teacher.

[11:28] Tim Rice: Andrew's younger brother Julian was already in 1966, aged 15, a cellist of outstanding ability.

[11:36] Tim Rice: And Jean's star pupil, who had also moved into the Harrington Court musical menagerie, was John Lill, shortly to win the Tchaikovsky Prize in Moscow, which set him off on a magnificent concert pianist career.

[11:50] Tim Rice: While John pounded and Julian scraped, and while Andrew's granny Molly watched television at deafening volume, while Bill played the organ, and while Jean taught an endless succession of would-be John Lills, while Siamese and Burmese cats yowled and prowled, Andrew and I pursued our assault noisily on musical theatre.

[12:10] Tim Rice: With Desmond Elliott, we went to see a host of rival shows, emerging from nearly everyone with the arrogant and erroneous view that the likes of us was miles better.

[12:20] Tim Rice: And if this was the kind of competition we were up against, our prospects were good indeed.

[12:25] Tim Rice: In fact, we were right in that many of the musicals we saw were pretty ropey, but utterly wrong in believing our work to be better.

[12:34] Tim Rice: Our deal with Southern Music entitled us to make a demo recording of the entire show to play to potential investors and directors.

[12:43] Tim Rice: And it included the song I played just now featuring Danny Street.

[12:46] Tim Rice: Another top session singer of the day was Jackie Lee, who had a big hit in 1968 with the song White Horses.

[12:54] Tim Rice: And she sang the opening song of the likes of us, entitled Twice in Love Every Day, in the role of a lady of the streets with a heart of gold, following our narrator, David Marks's brief introduction.

[12:54] Tim Rice: The likes of us is the story of Dr. Thomas Bernardo, the fiery young medical student who abandoned his plans to go to China as a medical missionary when he discovered how the poor children of London lived.

[13:19] Tim Rice: The musical opens in the Edinburgh Castle Gin Palace.

[13:25] Tim Rice: I've been in love with them all.

[13:27] Tim Rice: Every man is dirty or city.

[13:31] Tim Rice: There's many a blue guy recall.

[13:54] Tim Rice: Twice in love every day.

[13:57] Tim Rice: And I like it that way.

[14:00] Tim Rice: Twice in love every day.

[14:02] Tim Rice: Woohoo.

[14:04] Tim Rice: Ladies, don't face me and sneer.

[14:07] Tim Rice: And think of your husband's affection.

[14:10] Tim Rice: When the husband you're clutching so dear.

[14:13] Tim Rice: I probably had a connection.

[14:17] Tim Rice: Keep your I don't have time.

[14:23] Tim Rice: Keep your lovers.

[14:26] Tim Rice: I'm changing mine.

[14:29] Tim Rice: I hang every fruit on my mind.

[14:33] Tim Rice: Twice in love every time.

[14:36] Tim Rice: And I like it that way.

[14:39] Tim Rice: Twice in love every time.

[14:44] Tim Rice: Don't knock us for lovers of love.

[14:47] Tim Rice: I serve the suit with twice so tender.

[14:50] Tim Rice: We get your profellas before.

[14:53] Tim Rice: You forget all the tricks we remember.

[14:59] Tim Rice: I don't have time.

[15:06] Tim Rice: I'm changing mine.

[15:09] Tim Rice: Come on, husbands.

[15:12] Tim Rice: Get in the line.

[15:14] Tim Rice: Twice in love every day.

[15:17] Tim Rice: And I like it that way.

[15:20] Tim Rice: Twice in love every day.

[15:24] Tim Rice: Keep your game in time.

[15:37] Tim Rice: I've got so much love in love.

[15:41] Tim Rice: Twice in love every day.

[15:44] Tim Rice: And I like it that way.

[15:47] Tim Rice: Twice in love every day.

[15:55] Tim Rice: Jackie Lee and Twice in Love Every Day.

[15:58] Tim Rice: One of the songs in the likes of us, in which I felt the lyrics, despite a few dodgy rhymes, came close to matching the precocious promise of the music.

[16:07] Tim Rice: My comic lyrics for the show were by and large much more successful than the serious ones.

[16:11] Tim Rice: I was strongly influenced by the brilliance of lyricist Michael Flanders, who, with the composer Donald Swan, had featured prominently in my parents' record collection.

[16:21] Tim Rice: Flanders and Swan's greatest hit was probably the hippopotamus song, Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud, just one of the stunning selection of witty songs that had turned the pair into West End musical stars, as performers as well as writers.

[16:35] Tim Rice: Paddy Roberts, the Ballad of Bethnal Green, was another writer operating in the same vein, whom I admired.

[16:43] Tim Rice: But although some professional reactions to our score seemed genuinely positive, we gradually began to realize that the likes of us might not be our overnight passport to musical theatre success.

[16:56] Tim Rice: One or two people, not just friends, who nobly sat through the entire demonstration record, encouraged us to keep at it, but without actually saying so in so many words, maybe try something else.

[17:10] Tim Rice: For a while, we had a go at writing a few one-off songs, something that neither of us have ever found very easy.

[17:16] Tim Rice: Nearly all the hit songs I've been involved with over the years have been part of a larger work and would never have been written out of the blue.

[17:25] Tim Rice: Who would ever contemplate Don't Cry for Me Argentina as a title for a song, let alone a number one hit single, unless they were writing a two-hour musical about Eva Perón?

[17:36] Tim Rice: When working with specific characters in a dramatic situation, it's possible to produce an original way to say things such as I love you, which have been said so well by so many before, and so badly by even more for that matter.

[17:50] Tim Rice: Either part of I Know Him So Well from my show Chess is a relatively straightforward love lyric.

[17:57] Tim Rice: But the fact that the song is really two lyrics in one, sung simultaneously by women, each with a perspective of the man diametrically opposed to that of the other, makes it unusual, and only came about because of the needs of the show.

[18:12] Tim Rice: And it was another number one.

[18:14] Tim Rice: But such erudite thoughts about songwriting were far from our minds as we attempted to break into the record market through my new contacts at EMI.

[18:23] Tim Rice: Unfortunately, not at senior executive level, but Martin the Postboy liked our stuff.

[18:29] Tim Rice: The attempts were fun, but never really got us anywhere.

[18:33] Tim Rice: I've already played a few in past podcasts and will undoubtedly inflict a few more upon you in future episodes.

[18:40] Tim Rice: In the end, it was a commission from a schoolmaster that set us on the road that suited whatever talent we had best.

[18:47] Tim Rice: And that commission also produced a number one hit, which, if anything, was the antithesis of what the two of us felt in the mid-60s when we had a definite dream.

[19:15] Tim Rice: What I thought I knew.

[19:20] Tim Rice: Far, far away.

[19:24] Tim Rice: Someone was weeping.

[19:28] Tim Rice: That's the world was sleeping, any dream will do.

[19:36] Tim Rice: I wore my coat with golden lining, bright colors shining, wonderful and new, and in the east the dawn was breaking, and the world was waking, any dream will do a crash of drums, a flash of light, my golden cloak flew out of sight, the colors faded into darkness.

[20:55] Tim Rice: Still hesitating, any dream will do.

[21:07] Tim Rice: It goes my amazing colored coat, give me my That was the very first recording of Any Dream Will Do by the Joseph Consortium.

[21:29] Tim Rice: The great, sadly late David Daultrie lead vocal, the Collic Court School choir and the mixed bag.

[21:36] Tim Rice: There have been quite a few others since, but I still have the softest of spots for that recording we produced in 1968.

[21:45] Tim Rice: I sometimes wonder what would have happened if Desmond Elliott had liked my book idea of the history of the pop charts back in 1965.

[21:54] Tim Rice: Would he have suggested I call Andrew?

[22:15] Tim Rice: And produced as only he knows how by Peter Hobbes.