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

[0:02] Tim Rice: Welcome to episode 44 of my podcast Get Onto My Cloud.

[0:17] Tim Rice: I think the question I've been asked most often, when people realize that I've made a living by writing words for songs, is which comes first, the words or the music.

[0:29] Tim Rice: With most theatrical songwriting partnerships, the music tends to come first, perhaps inspired by a title, but that way round, the composer is allowed to flow freely, which is good, forcing the lyricist to be concise, which is also good.

[0:44] Tim Rice: But there have been striking examples of brilliance emerging from the words being first out of the blocks.

[0:50] Tim Rice: W. S. Gilbert and Oscar Hammerstein to name but two.

[0:54] Tim Rice: I haven't a clue what the order of play is for those rare birds like Cole Porter, who are masters of both words and music for the theatre.

[1:04] Tim Rice: The first time I ventured into songwriting, I wrote both words and tune.

[1:09] Tim Rice: I think I instinctively knew that my lyrics were better than my melodies.

[1:14] Tim Rice: But I enjoyed making the most of my three and a half chords on the guitar and as many as five on the piano to impart a few simple tunes to accompany my words of teenage angst, which by and large at least rhymed.

[1:28] Tim Rice: Almost by mistake, one of my songs was actually recorded by a third party and released on a 7-inch 45 RPM gramophone record.

[1:38] Tim Rice: Those terms are totally obsolete today, but back in 1965, it was quite something to have your name on the label of a commercially released pop single, which, for generations X, Y, and Z and/or millennials, that was a round, flat plastic object, roughly 17.78 centimeters in diameter, with a hole in the middle, which, when placed around a spindle on a gramophone turntable and requested to revolve at 45 revolutions per minute, enabled a piece of pre-recorded music to be heard with crystal clarity when a needle was simultaneously and sometimes even automatically placed into the grooves of the revolving platter.

[2:16] Tim Rice: Technically, of course, there was only one groove on each side of the disc.

[2:19] Tim Rice: Oh, never mind.

[2:21] Tim Rice: The point is, on the strength of this one recording, which was featured in the very first Get Onto My Cloud podcast, I considered myself a songwriter, even though the song in question was a flop.

[2:34] Tim Rice: However, it did eventually lead me to another songwriter, a 17-year-old named Andrew Lloyd Webber.

[2:41] Tim Rice: And although he hadn't actually had a record released of any of his songs when I met him, he'd written several musicals, and the extracts he played me showed me that he was pretty good.

[2:52] Tim Rice: His music was far more sophisticated and original than my three chord efforts.

[2:57] Tim Rice: I was delighted when he suggested we work together on a show of his that needed new words, with our roles clearly defined.

[3:04] Tim Rice: He would write the music, and I would write the words.

[3:08] Tim Rice: The first show we wrote together, way before Joseph, was a musical, for which Andrew had already written most of the score.

[3:16] Tim Rice: I'm never quite sure whether the term musical score includes words, if there are any, but generally it seems to mean the music alone.

[3:24] Tim Rice: That first show we worked on was called The Likes of Us, and told the story of the Victorian philanthropist Dr. Thomas Bernardo.

[3:31] Tim Rice: As the music was virtually all written, clearly, in this case, it had to precede the words, which I hastened to provide as speedily as possible, to impress this teenage musical maestro, who was clearly heading for great things.

[3:47] Tim Rice: So my first experience of songwriting with another was music before lyrics.

[3:53] Tim Rice: When writing a musical, I've since realized that the most important thing to get right before any songs are actually created is the story, the plot.

[4:02] Tim Rice: On reflection, I don't think that Dr. Bernardo's story was very well told by us in The Likes of Us.

[4:09] Tim Rice: But at the time I was so convinced of the merit of the tunes, I gave the story very scant consideration.

[4:16] Tim Rice: Obviously, I had to know the situation in which each song was placed, who was singing it and why, and what we wanted the finished song to achieve character or plot wise.

[4:27] Tim Rice: But as far as the overall thrust of the story went, I was lamentably unconcerned.

[4:35] Tim Rice: Being new to the game and new to Andrew, I do not recall making any suggestions to him about the music, which anyway I thought was absolutely marvelous.

[4:44] Tim Rice: I assumed every melody he gave me was just what the show needed, and I did my best to make every syllable fit.

[4:52] Tim Rice: By and large, they did.

[4:53] Tim Rice: But because the overall construction was not right, the show never got beyond demo recordings.

[4:59] Tim Rice: However, it did show us, and indeed our friends and families, that we had the potential to achieve something as songwriters, albeit not with Dr. Bernardo.

[5:10] Tim Rice: Once we were established, thanks to Joseph and Jesus Christ Superstar, knew each other extremely well, and had had the odd argument, which is only to be expected in any long-term relationship, we would each express views about the other's contribution, forcefully at times, but perhaps by and large, I hope, tactfully.

[5:30] Tim Rice: Generally speaking, if Andrew objected strongly to a lyric, I would at least contemplate a change.

[5:36] Tim Rice: And if I was sometimes critical of a melody or more often of an orchestral arrangement, my thoughts sometimes made Andrew pause.

[5:45] Tim Rice: But our roles were still clearly defined and we remained a team.

[5:49] Tim Rice: The working format was still the same, except we were by then well aware that we had to get the story and overall structure of each musical into good shape before actually embarking upon writing any scenes or songs.

[6:03] Tim Rice: Thus, story, music, words.

[6:08] Tim Rice: Nearly all of the songs from The Likes of Us were written in 1965 and 1966, but there was one number which did not see the light of day in finished form until 2005.

[6:20] Tim Rice: We decided that year to present a private production of our first ever show to an invited audience at Andrew's annual Sidmonton Festival, and a very strong cast was assembled to deliver it.

[6:33] Tim Rice: Unlike our subsequent works, such as Joseph, Superstar and Evita, which were all sung through operatically, The Likes of Us was a more conventional piece of musical theatre, in that chat was scheduled to take place between each song.

[6:48] Tim Rice: As we'd never really settled on the dialogue for the non-musical bits, I wrote a narrative linking the numbers and making what sense of the plot I could.

[6:57] Tim Rice: Stephen Fry accepted our invitation to act as master of ceremonies for the performance and added numerous samples of wit and wisdom to the yarn, often dipping into the real-life tale of the two young musical writers.

[7:11] Tim Rice: Andrew reminded me, I think accurately, that there was one tune he'd written for the show to which I'd never added a lyric: a song for Bernardo's girlfriend and eventual wife, Ciri, who, in true Sound of Music mode, wonders in which direction her life is going.

[7:29] Tim Rice: I've often been accused and often quite rightly of being late to produce my lyrics, missing deadlines.

[7:35] Tim Rice: But I think taking 39 years to deliver words in 2005 that I should have handed in in 1966 is my most sluggish performance to date.

[7:46] Tim Rice: But in the end, I rather liked the result.

[7:48] Tim Rice: I had to imagine how I would have tackled the lyrics had I actually got round to it at the time, as a lyricist new to the game and very influenced, as we both were by what was big at the time.

[8:00] Tim Rice: The Sound of Music, of course, and the works of the great Lionel Bart.

[8:04] Tim Rice: I called the song, This is my time.

[8:08] Tim Rice: And I think both words and music are true to that era just before rock broke into theatre, helped no end by a lovely vocal from Sally Ann Triplett.

[8:24] Tim Rice: This is my time in the sun, my springtime.

[8:28] Tim Rice: Look at me, bright and gay.

[8:37] Tim Rice: Never afraid to say.

[8:50] Tim Rice: I'll fall in love a hundred times.

[8:54] Tim Rice: I shall refuse to believe in the blues today.

[9:00] Tim Rice: Am I wrong when I feel that my bravest of dreams will come true?

[9:09] Tim Rice: Am I wise to reveal all that I'm longing to do?

[9:19] Tim Rice: Oh this is my time as it is for those whose tale has not yet been told.

[9:29] Tim Rice: Those who like me are optimists, those who have got a heart that will not grow.

[10:23] Tim Rice: Am I wise to reveal all I'm determined to do?

[10:34] Tim Rice: Oh this is my time, but it's not forever.

[10:40] Tim Rice: One day I know I'll be sharing my time and happiness.

[10:49] Tim Rice: Memories too with somebody who loves me.

[11:00] Tim Rice: Sharing my time with somebody who's meeting.

[11:30] Tim Rice: With just a few exceptions, such as the argument between the young Eva Duarte and Agustín Magaldi in Evita, and some of the lines in Jesus Christ Superstar, but very little.

[11:40] Tim Rice: All the songs and scenes Andrew and I wrote together were music before lyrics.

[11:44] Tim Rice: And it worked very well that way.

[11:47] Tim Rice: Some of Andrew's tunes were so strong without words, it seemed a pity to risk spoiling them with a lyric.

[11:53] Tim Rice: For example, the melodies of Don't Cry for Me, Argentina, Gethsemane, and Memory.

[11:59] Tim Rice: That last one, not one of my lyrics.

[12:01] Tim Rice: But in the end, as those examples show, an inspired tune will usually bring out the best in a wordsman.

[12:08] Tim Rice: And vice versa. It can work just as well the other way around, as I discovered when I teamed up with Elton John. I first realized that Bernie Taupin's wonderful lyrics were written before Elton's majestic melodies when Elton was going through a brief period of writing with other lyricists and accepted an offering of mine entitled The Legal Boys, which appeared on his Jump Up album in 1983 without setting the world alight. That one, by the way, is featured in Get Onto My Cloud Podcast number three. So when I received the wonderful news that he'd agreed to work with me on Disney's The Lion King, the animated feature movie, one of the first things I asked him was whether he had any great melodies lying around which might fit the Lion King's story.

Elton said no. I thought about asking him if he had any average melodies lying around which might work for the Lion King, as even a mediocre Elton melody would probably have been better than a good one by almost anybody else. But before I could put that tactless question to him, he told me categorically that he never wrote anything without a lyric in front of him. This was good news in that it gave me more freedom as far as rhyming patterns, verse structure and story considerations were concerned, but bad news in that I had no excuse not to get off my arse and write a lyric, unable to say I was waiting for a decent tune before I could do any work. As it turned out, getting the words right first worked very well for the movie, as storylines were constantly being changed, characters written in and out of the tale, musical scenes and dialogue scenes continually being swapped around, all these decisions being made at script meetings, usually at Disney's headquarters in Los Angeles at 7 a.m., at which my presence was crucial, the lyrics in effect being part of the script.

Thus, every time I sent a lyric to Elton, there was a pretty good chance it would end up in the picture. As it turned out, we did write quite a few songs that ultimately failed to make the cut, but far fewer than would have been the case if the tune had come first. And of course, Elton's busy touring and recording schedule anyway made it impossible for him to come to more than a very few Lion King meetings. Thus the formula of story words music worked very well, as they have done throughout Elton's illustrious career with Bernie.

[14:31] Tim Rice: When writing words with no tune to hand, my first task, after noting which character was singing and what the point of the song was, was to establish a rhyming pattern and overall structure for the song. In writing each line I could use as many words or syllables as I liked, but I only really had that freedom for the first verse, as subsequent verses would have to fit the same pattern. If I'd written, say, what I thought was a clever but fairly easily obtained triple rhyme in verse one, I had to find another one in verse two and three and four, which might not be so simple. Once the lyric was finished, and having had the director's and scriptwriter's approval, I sent it off to the great man in those days by fax.

A couple of days later, no more, a cassette appeared, with Elton's unmistakable piano and vocals giving life and melody to my labours. While waiting for these exciting moments, I would often sing these brand new lyrics to a very simple tune of my own, not dissimilar to the ones I was writing in 1965 when I saw myself as the new Donovan. It also helped to make sure that the words were singable, as sometimes a line that looks okay on paper can be difficult for even a great singer to interpret clearly. I would get rather attached to some of these tunes, and when first playing Elton's cassette, would find the first two or three bars rather at odds with what I expected. However, any ludicrous thoughts that my tune had any merit at all compared with his disappeared pretty pronto by about bar four, and by the end of the demo, it was clear the film was going to be blessed with yet another great Elton melody.

[16:13] Tim Rice: I did actually witness one of the most famous songs from The Lion King, perhaps the most famous, being written. We'd had a couple of goes with an opening number for the movie, which had to be dramatic, make a big impact. I knew that the scene would feature all the animals of East Africa, but my first attempt at the lyric, which mentioned most of them, was too light-hearted, came out a bit like a shopping list. In response, Elton provided a good and sympathetic tune, but like my lyric, not what the directors, Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff felt was right for the scene. They were much happier with my second bash at the lyric. So I called Elton to find out where to send the words, but as for once we were both in London, he said he'd record the demo in a couple of days' time and not to bother to send it now, just bring it along to the studio.

When I arrived just after lunch at Air London Studios on Oxford Circus, Elton had set up his keyboards with one of the regular members of his touring band, Guy Babylon, also a master of the keys. Throughout the session, they were continually experimenting with rhythms to accompany the hitherto unheard words, and unheard melody for that matter. I handed over the manuscript, and he began singing the words over and over. Every pass contained a slight alteration or sophistication and made an exciting, powerful anthemic tune stronger each time round. After a while, Elton wondered if it were possible to have one more line. The chorus of the song was already a compelling, muscular crescendo building on the faith, hope, and love lines.

I hadn't expected this. I'd rather hoped that my job was done, but from somewhere came up with the phrase, On the Path Unwinding, which fitted perfectly just before the climax of the chorus. That one extra line really made a difference, so I was relieved I turned up at the session. After no more than an hour, or perhaps an hour and a half at most, Elton had a terrific demo of what sounded to me like a perfect opener for The Lion King and a hit. The song he'd just written was, of course, Circle of Life. It was an astounding experience to be present at the creation from a standing start of a piece of music which has resonated around the world, thanks, of course, to the Disney team behind the movie, Rob Roger and producer Don Hahn, and to Hans Zimmer and Lebo M, who orchestrated and established Elton's genius in an African context, while Elton's own single release of the song stormed the charts and radio stations. Thus, story, words, music.

[18:56] Tim Rice: Here is Circle of Life, as performed by the original Broadway cast in 1997. The lead vocalist, the formidable Sidi Leloca, and the company Ensemble.

[20:40] ♪ Musical number: "Circle of Life" — performed by Tim Rice ♪

[23:50] Tim Rice: That was episode forty-four of my podcast, Get Onto My Cloud. Written and presented by me, Tim Rice, and produced by who else? Peter Hobbes.