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Andrew Llyod Webber and Tim Rice - a breach due to CATS
There was a breach (very first one) due to CATS between Andrew and Tim Rice who was once Andrew's partner, he is the lyricist of "Evita", "Jesus Christ the super star", etc.
Andrew and Tim Rice strike a Beatles-style pose during the early days of their partnership
When the tunes for CATS were done, the producing group realised they need a lyricist who could capture Grizabella's down-and-out despair, someone witty, someone clever, someone imaginative. Someone, in other words, very like Tim Rice.
Tim Rice at first couldn't capture the feeling of Grizabella until Elaine Paige's appearance. This got Tim's attention, for a couple of reasons. One, obviously, was personal (they were lovers), the other was business reason because Elaine could sing very well.
Elaine Paige (LHS picture), Trevor Nunn (RHS picture)
However, Tim didn't know that Trevor Nunn the director had already written a lyric for the new song, and that Tim would be competing with the director for a spot in the show. Trevor Nunn had read through Eliot's collected verses twice, trying to imbue himself with the dead poet's style and spirit. From the poem "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" came the notion of memory, which became the title of the song Trevor Nunn was writing:
Memory, turn your face to the moonlight,
Let your memory lead you,
Open up, enter in,
If you find there the meaning of what happiness is,
Then a new life will begin.
Tim Rice's lyric, written in a thirty-six hour white heat, began:
Street lights, and the darkness between them,
Like the good and bad sites,
Of a life almost done,
Shake the memory of my passions returning to me,
None forgotten, no not me.
At first, Tim Rice's lyric was greeted with relief by all, but the final decision as to which lyric to use was Trevor Nunn's. Trevor Nunn was not exactly a disinterested party - if the lyricist stood to make a great deal of money (in fact, he did). Trevor Nunn thought that Tim Rice's lyric was bewildering the audiences and too depressing, so he took his concern to the RUG and Andrew Llyod Webber. At last, they decided after a weekend that they would use Trevor Nunn's lyric, not Tim Rice's. On Friday, Elaine Paige was singing her lover's words; on Monday, she was singing her director's.
Tim Rice was mortified; he knew he should never have gotten involved in CATS in the first place, and his pride was wounded. Andrew and Tim Rice were like a married couple that couldn't stand each other but delays divorce for the sake of the children, they continued to tease the public all through 1981. As late as December, they were said to be working on Tim's latest passion, his show about chess players : "That Is". Tim Rice said to The New York Post, " If I can pass his secretary."
By~ Michael Walsh (From Andrew Llyod Webber)
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Above was the "society news titbit" of CATS. Furthermore, Andrew first met Sarah Brightman in CATS too, she played Jemima in the original West End cast.
Andrew and Sarah in front of the Paris Opera House during a 1987 photo shoot for Vanity Fair
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