Q&A with Tim Rice ahead of tour  

Liz Nicholls

Liz Nicholls chats to the multi-award winning, internationally renowned lyricist Sir Tim Rice who returns to a theatre stage near you this spring with Tim Rice My Life In Musicals I Know Him So Well 

This incredibly special show which toured earlier this year has proved so popular that 33 new dates have been added. During the show, which visits Reading Hexagon, Guildford’s G Live, Aylesbury’s Waterside Theatre, Oxford’s New Theatre and Wycombe Swan in April and May, Tim reflects on his illustrious career at the heart of musical theatre. 

Tim, who is associated with writing the lyrics for so many of the world’s great musicals – Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, as well as the Disney productions The Lion King, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast, will share anecdotes behind the songs –  the hits and the misses along with stories of his life. There will be live performances from his wonderful catalogue of songs with leading West End singers and musicians led by Duncan Waugh. 

Q. Hello.. How would you like to be addressed? “I think ‘my liege’… no only joking, Tim is fine!” 

Q. You were born at Shardeloes in Bucks, weren’t you? “Yes, not that I remember it! It was just at the end of the war… the second world war, not the Boer War! My mother had been in the WAF during the war, where she met my father; they got married in Egypt in 1942. Shardeloes is a wonderful stately home, a country house, and it was commandeered from the family who kindly gave it to the war effort so it became a wartime hospital. Quite a grand place to be born! Now I live in Buckinghamshire (just!), in the Hambleden Valley which is beautiful, with very nice pubs which I like going to. Not all on the same night, very often, I might add!” 

Q. What’s your first memory of music? “That’s an interesting question. Well, I was listening to Boom Radio yesterday from 1954, and I realised I knew every song, including the Winifred Atwell instrumentals. I would have been nine, and even ones I’d sort-of forgotten were in my brain, after all. These were songs I’d have heard on my parents’ radio.” 

Q. It’s Record Store Day this month; do you still love vinyl? “I do! I’ve got about 3,000 singles and probably 1,000 albums, and I’m still adding to that collection. I often dip randomly into my shelves and pull out a record by an act who’ve only had one hit and it’s very interesting listening to stuff from another time, either from the 1990s or even before I was born. If you play something on your phone it’s nearly always in the background, but if you’re playing a record, you stop, appreciate the cover, the artwork. When I was a teenager we’d get together for the sole purpose of playing records. We’d be very careful, if possible, not all to buy the same ones; we could probably only afford to buy one single a month. I’d check with a friend – ‘have you got Elvis’s latest? If you have I won’t buy it but I’ll buy Cliff’s instead’. It was a different era and playing a hit record was an event, something you shared.” 

Q. What was the first record you bought? “The first pop record I bought was Tommy Steele singing the blues which was a number one record, and a cover of Guy Mitchell, a really big American singer who used to sing pretty corny songs. In those days the big British acts – Marty Wilde, Cliff Richard, Billy Fury – would often cover American hits. Guy was a good singer but sang it very straight. Tommy was the first rock and roll singer Britain ever produced and I preferred his version, and still do!” 

Q. Did you enjoy school? “Yes I did on the whole. I was quite bright so I got by without doing too much work which is probably an appalling thing to say! I look back on my schooldays very warmly. I was part of a pop group, very much based on Cliff Richard and the Shadows; this was just before The Beatles and they were very big and influential. I used to enjoy concerts, classical stuff. Looking back, performing with friends was quite a formative experience and I wasn’t too bad at it. I was never going to be a pop star but I learned a bit about controlling an audience which was fun.” 

Q. You’ve worked with such legends. Have you ever been starstruck? “Yes, almost every time! When you’re working with the likes of Elton [John], Alan [Menken], Bjorn & Benny, you think, my God, I’m working with the best here, I’ve really got to pull my finger out! You have to be slightly in awe of their talent.” 

Q. You’re working with Andrew Lloyd Webber right now aren’t you? “Yes, on a fantastic comedy spoof called Sherlock Holmes and the 12 Days of Christmas written by two very talented writers; Humphrey Ker & David Reed, which premieres at the Birmingham Rep in November. They’ve written the piece and it works as a straight-forward comedy. They asked me to write some music, and I asked Andrew and he agreed. We speak a lot. I first met Andrew in 1965 when I was a failing law student trying to be a pop singer on the side.” 

Q. If you had a magic wand what would you wish? “Ooof. Well, I like to think you’d think of your family of course. But something else: I’d ban solar panels from covering beautiful green farmland. I go down to Cornwall a lot and it’s very depressing seeing fields covered in plastic. By all means, stick them on roofs, but if I had a magic wand, whoosh, they’d vanish from the fields!”