11 minute read
Don’t cry for me London Library
As he ends his tenure as President of the Library, Sir Tim Rice reflects on his serendipitous route into musical theatre, life as an avowed bibliophile and the golden rules of lyric writing
Photography by Andrew Kimber
Could there ever be a musical about The London Library? Let’s ask a man who knows. Sir Tim Rice, the Library’s outgoing President and one of the world’s leading lyricists, thinks it would be quite a good idea, actually. “The Library could be the basic scene, and you could dip into any era,” he suggests. “Your hero or heroine would be able to go to a shelf and ask ‘What’s this book?’ then, suddenly, the characters would come alive.”
It’s not a project that’s in the works, sadly – but Rice has written a song about the Library. Sung to the tune of Dean Martin’s Memories Are Made of This, it was performed at his final President’s Party earlier this year; it sings the praises of its vast collection: “Name your author, he’ll be here / So will she, let’s make that clear.” (Read the lyrics at the end of this article.)
Rice redefined British musical theatre in the 1970s with shows including Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, in a now-legendary partnership with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, but later works such as Disney’s The Lion King, written with Sir Elton John, and Chess, a collaboration with ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, are also firm fixtures of the musical theatre canon.
He took over the Library presidency from Sir Tom Stoppard in 2017, which he considered a great honour, being familiar with why it mattered: his daughter Eva and son Donald had often used it as a place to study. “I was aware of how important the Library can be to writers – young or established. It’s a great atmosphere. You’ve got a wonderful combination of a) it’s quiet, and b) if you need advice or help or inspiration, it’s on the shelves behind you.” But, he adds, “It’s not only for writers – it’s for readers as well. And writers couldn’t get by without readers.”
He admits that he’s sad that his “reign” as the Library’s President is coming to an end; he’s loved looking at all of the “ancient books”, and credits the place with throwing some great gatherings of like-minded people. The five years have “flown by” – not least because they were, unfortunately, disrupted by the pandemic, though “the Library made a pretty good effort to get back to normal fairly speedily.”
Tim Rice performs with Marty, Kim, and Ricky Wilde at his final President's Party.
Photo: Harry Elletson
We’re speaking on Zoom, with Rice sitting in front of a well-stocked bookshelf at his home in Henley-on-Thames. A self-described bibliophile, he has a vast collection of his own and has been reorganising it since moving house five years ago. “I haven’t quite got to the point of sticking labels on my shelves, but that’s not far off,” he jokes. “As you might imagine, I’ve got a lot of books on the history of musical theatre. I’ve probably got more on rock ’n’ roll, because, really, I consider myself to be a clapped-out rock ’n’ roller rather than a clapped-out musical theatre guy,” he says, with a laugh. He has around 30 books about Elvis Presley, and a similar number on The Beatles, all of which he’s read cover to cover. He’s also a keen cricket fan – he once wrote a short musical about it for the Queen’s 60th birthday – and estimates he owns about 1,000 books on the sport.
Born in 1944, Rice’s talent for writing became clear at school. “Essays were a kind of punishment. People would make you write an essay, a bit like doing 100 lines. I used to get a lot of essays, in my opinion, for not very serious crimes. One of the prefects said, ‘Actually, it’s because we think your essays are quite funny and we like to read them.’ I thought, ‘Well, thanks!’”
The writerly gene runs in Rice’s family. His daughter Eva’s 2005 novel The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets was a huge hit, and her latest will be released next year. His mother Joan was a writer, too, but didn’t publish her first book until she was in her 80s. Eva had shown her grandmother’s wartime diaries to her agent, and they were subsequently published as Sand in My Shoes: War-time diaries of a WAAF in 2006. “It’s about the war to a certain extent, but it’s really about a young woman from age 19 to 23,” Rice explains.
When his children were small, he read them Great Expectations at bedtime, and his fiction tastes span from Agatha Christie to Adrian Mole. His appreciation for great storytelling and humour are key to understanding why his own lyrics are so good. Think of the instant character building in Evita’s Another Suitcase, Another Hall (“I don’t expect my love affairs to last for long”), the hard-won wisdom in Chess duet I Know Him So Well (“Looking back I could have played it differently”) or the witty repartee in The Lion King’s I Just Can’t Wait to Be King (“If this is where the monarchy is headed, count me out”).
He has five handy rules for any budding lyricists: “One: there are no rules. Two: nobody knows anything, but if you know you don’t know anything, you’re ahead of the game. Three: keep it short. Four: story is king. Five: make it funny.” In terms of his process, any writer will be reassured that even Rice is prone to a bit of procrastination. “One always thinks of something else to do, like sharpen your pencils, or put your library books in order.”
The lyricists that Rice admires – Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Eddie Cochran – speak to the influence that rock ’n’ roll has had on his work. The lyrics to Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock, written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, “would be a credit to any Broadway show,” he suggests. Love Potion No. 9, by the same pair, is “a little musical in itself”, with lines such as “I told her that I was a flop with chicks / I’ve been this way since 1956”. And he loves the unique opening line to Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti – “A wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom”; if you heard it on the radio, he grins with pleasure, “You’d go: ‘Hello! What was that?’”
His career in musical theatre happened by accident rather than by design. He was training to be a solicitor – thinking he should get “a respectable job” – when he was introduced to Lloyd Webber in 1965 by the publisher Desmond Elliott. Elliott had turned down Rice’s proposal to write a book about pop music, but was aware of his keen interest in songwriting. He knew Lloyd Webber, then about to start a History degree at Oxford, was “desperately determined to write musicals” and looking for a collaborator.
The pair’s first show The Likes of Us wasn’t picked up, and Rice took a job at record company EMI. But shortly after, a schoolmaster at London’s Colet Court school (now St Paul’s Juniors) who had heard their early work asked if they’d write something for his pupils. The result was Joseph – their first big hit. “Partly because I didn’t know what I was doing, and partly because Andrew did – that combination worked rather well. And we were able to be funny and write lots of humourous music and wonderful tunes, and the kids loved it,” he explains. “I often think that if I’d pursued the traditional way of writing musicals – whatever that is – I doubt if I’d have got anywhere.”
It is characteristic, I discover, for Rice to be self-deprecating. His proudest moment, he says, was the opening night of Evita – the moment he knew that his previous success hadn’t been a fluke. When I ask for his thoughts on the state of musical theatre, he claims to be no expert – but is sceptical about shows that try to follow a formula, such as a recent trend for musicals based on films. The phenomenal success of a show such as SIX the Musical, a pop musical comedy about Henry VIII’s wives that was first spotted at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe, gives Rice “a lot of hope”. He notes that its writers Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss obey the rules he’s mentioned: it’s short, funny and original. “The thing about SIX is I suspect it was an accident – which is not an insult. Joseph was an accident,” he says. “I can’t imagine they said ‘Let’s write a musical and take it to the West End.’ They probably said, ‘Let’s write this fun show and see what happens’.”
A relish for rule-breaking seems to be the common denominator in great new musical voices. “When we turned up in the 1970s, a lot of people thought we were pretty ghastly because we weren’t like Rodgers and Hammerstein. And I thought, ‘Well, they’re probably right.’ But, in fact, the sort of stuff we did turned out to be quite influential for other people,” he observes.
Cheerfully, for audiences, Rice is busy at work on three shows. Aida, his 1998 musical with Elton John, will finally get a London premiere soon, and his 2013 show From Here To Eternity will be revived later this year at the Charing Cross Theatre. And he’d like to bring Chess back to Broadway, where it previously opened in 1988. “It was a bit of a flop, to put it mildly. The word I’m looking for is disaster!” He admits, too, that he’s got “a few new ideas”. A musical about The London Library? We can live in hope.
In 1944 Rice collaborated with Elton John on Disney's animated picture The Lion King.
Photo: Walt Disney Pictures
MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS – LONDON LIBRARY VERSION
Backing vocals in verses: Sweet, sweet memories you’ve given me You can’t beat, the memories you’ve given me
Verse 1
Welcome – make yourselves at home
Please feel free to probe and roam
Around our shelves And lose yourselves
In some fascinating tome
(Sweet, sweet…) (You can’t beat…)
Verse 2
Name your author he’ll be here
So will she, let’s make that clear
And we say each
Book is a peach
Whether new or yesteryear
(Sweet, sweet…) (You can’t beat…)
Bridge 1
This dream of Tom Carlyle’s
Has left us 17 miles
Of books from Genesis to Potter
All those immortal names
Charles Dickens, Henry James
You name him, we guarantee we got her
Verse 3
And no matter what your kicks
Pigeon racing, politics
Romance, pin-ups,
World Wars, World Cups
It’s all right here in the mix
(Sweet, sweet…) (You can’t beat…)
Bridge 2
Then if drama grips you more
Ibsen, Chekhov, Shakespeare, Shaw
Hampton, Hare or Stoppard, Harold Pinter
Molière, Euripides
Lotsa foreign blokes like these
Really it depends on what you’re in-ter
Verse 4
George Eliot, Jane Austen, Brontës three
Christie, Mary Shelley, Harper Lee
V. Woolf, S. Plath
Just do the math
Ladies here are no minority
(Sweet, sweet…) (You can’t beat…)
Bridge 3
But if science makes your day
Heisenberg & Galile –O [Interruption as per Freddie Mercury’s Bohemian Rhapsody]
(“Galileo, Galileo, Galileo, Figaro”)
O and then there’s Hawking’s 11 dimensions
You like Donald? What the… You’re in luck
Donald Bradman, Donald Duck
Plus some other Donalds we don’t mention
Verse 5
Nonetheless please walk the line
Or you’ll get a hefty fine
No shorts no bling
Don’t snog don’t sing
Please get out of here by half past nine
So hear it one more time for Thomas Carlyle
and The London Library!
Verse 6 – up a key
Let us praise what he has done
Here since 1841
He’s tops, he’s class
Let’s raise a glass
To this perfect house of fun
(Sweet, sweet…) (You can’t beat…)
Jessie Thompson is Arts Editor for The Independent
