![]() And we had a country and western song, a French song. Comic songs like Mud, Glorious Mud by Michael Flanders, but also the pop music of the day.” Their imperative as they wrote was “making it fun for us and for people who might be listening, so we ended up saying ‘wouldn’t it be funny if the Pharaoh was like Elvis,’ and Andrew wrote a good Elvis pastiche. Rice’s approach to writing lyrics was driven by his love of popular music. With Joseph we had a cracking story and that inspired Andrew’s tunes, then I wrote words for those tunes.” “We knew the key thing that makes a musical a success is the story and everything must come from that. Rice and Lloyd Webber approached the task in the same way they approached all their work at the time. Well that was definitely a bit of a come down in one sense - we were aiming for the West End - and there was no money involved, but we would hear people sing our work, which was something we had never had before, so we decided to do it.” He knew that we were writing and suggested that, while we were waiting to take Broadway by storm, we might consider writing something for his kids to perform. It was a bit ludicrous really, what we were trying to do.” However, an unlikely commission from Alan Doggett, the music teacher at Colet Court School in Hammersmith, provided an unparalleled opportunity that would come to reap dividends for the duo. “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. Australian singer Jon English released a version a single in Australia in 1973.Fifty years ago, in August 1972, a new musical premiered at the Haymarket Ice Rink in Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. The lyrics have even been incorporated into a Seder service for educators in New South Wales. Destroy me completely/Then throw me away" reflect the well-documented Nazi practices of tattooing numbers on imprisoned Jews and working them to death (or gassing them) in concentration camps, then burning the bodies or burying them in mass graves. ![]() Lyrics such as "Just give me a number/Instead of my name. ![]() In addition to voicing Joseph's despair at being jailed for a crime he did not commit, the song appears to contain oblique references to the Holocaust of World War II. Along with "Any Dream Will Do", it is one of the most popular songs from the musical. It is the penultimate song of the first act of the musical, sung by Joseph while imprisoned for his supposed relationship with Potiphar's wife. "Close Every Door" is a song from the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
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