Tim Rice: How to get ahead in musicals

Like almost everyone else in the insane world of musical theatre, I don’t know how to create a hit. This hasn’t prevented me from contributing to, even originating, some. Most of these successes have come about by happy accident and could so easily have been disasters or stillborn but for matters or events beyond my control or totally unexpected. I suppose I could arrogantly claim that there was usually some artistic merit to the shows that did make it (and little to those that eventually flopped) but there must be many writers with wonderful musical ideas out there who have never had that vital unpredictable break. Like Napoleon, we all need lucky generals. Perhaps my greatest piece of good fortune (apart from meeting Andrew Lloyd Webber in the first place) was the initial universal rejection of Jesus Christ Superstar by West End theatre producers, indeed by theatre producers anywhere. There were no takers within the ranks of the Cameron Mackintoshes of the day (which, in 1969, did not include Cameron Mackintosh) for a musical about the last seven days in the life of Jesus, as seen through the eyes of Judas Iscariot. The only interest anyone showed in Superstar came from Brian Brolly, who had just launched the newly formed UK arm of the American record giant MCA. As a second best, Andrew Lloyd Webber and I settled for a record — a cast album of a show that didn’t exist. Restricted by the dimensions of a vinyl double album and without the need to worry about staging, size of orchestra or cast, and needing to make the music appeal in the first instance to record-buyers rather than to theatregoers, we created a debut version of our work some way removed from how we had originally imagined it on stage. For starters, we ditched any plan to have spoken dialogue — on record that would become unbearable after one play, so Superstar became a sung-through piece, non-stop music, billed as a rock opera.