“We didn’t have any experience in musical theatre. Rice laughs now at how ambitious they were. He had been writing his own musicals since he was nine years old.” He was obsessed by musical theatre, was determined to be the next Richard Rodgers, the next Lionel Bart. Immediately, I thought, ‘well he’ll have to change his name if wants to make it’, but when we met he banged out a few tunes on the piano in his parents’ flat and it was clear to me he was a great talent. While trying to sell the idea for a book to Elliot, he mentioned that he was also writing songs and Elliot said “you have to meet this young composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber. Rice was working at EMI records at the time and was trying to write pop songs, but wasn’t having much luck. Rice met Lloyd Webber in the mid 1960s, after an introduction from literary agent Desmond Elliot. On the phone from the book-lined study in his Oxfordshire home, Rice relates the unlikely origin story of their debut success. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat was to become one of the most popular pieces of modern musical theatre, and a calling card for its creators, who would go on to craft several contemporary musical theatre classics. The creators of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, as the musical was wordily titled, were astonished by the success of their collaboration, which had grown from a slight 15-minute sketch they wrote for a local London school. At only 35 minutes long, the performance was unusual for a piece of musical theatre, but its catchy tunes caught on and an expanded version of the show transferred to the West End the following year. Directed by Frank Dunlop of London’s Old Vic, the sung-through musical featured an exciting blend of pop-rock music from a young composer called Andrew Lloyd Webber, and a spiritually-charged Biblically-inspired story crafted by lyricist Tim Rice. Fifty years ago, in August 1972, a new musical premiered at the Haymarket Ice Rink in Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh International Festival.
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