Sir Tim Rice has had an incredible career, writing hit song after hit song for a string of successful musicals. Now, he is touring the country and will be visiting Reading’s Hexagon Theatre to look back on some of his favourites.
He says plans to share entertaining and amusing stories about his collaborations with composers such as Andrew Lloyd Webber, Elton John, Alan Menken, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson.
Among the shows he has composed for are Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Chess and the Disney productions The Lion King, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. He also had a hand in the title music for the James Bond movie Octopussy.
And there will be some of the songs too: a band will play and four singers will provide the words. Sir Tim Rice will also join in at various points.
“But not a lot you’ll be glad to hear,” he promises.
“I sing when I talk about I Don’t Know How to Love Him, which is the romantic ballad from Jesus Christ Superstar. Andrew wrote the tune about three years before Superstar.”
Originally titled Kansas Morning, Sir Tim says the lyrics were pretty grim and despite hoping it would top the hit parade, it never got recorded. It was, he feels, a blessing in disguise.
“The words were not my finest hour. They were terrible. But the tune was fantastic and when I wrote some decent lyrics it became a great song.
“In the show I perform Kansas Morning which to put it mildly makes the point that a bad lyric can kill a good tune. And raises a big laugh.
“Audiences will be relieved to know that I Don’t Know How to Love Him is also in the show, sung superbly – but not by me.”
The show was piloted last year and was such a success that he is back on the road, visiting 38 venues with Reading – on Friday, April 11 – as the first stop.
“It’s meant to be a sort of fireside chat with songs most of which most people will know,” he says.
“It’s lovely that stuff I wrote half a century ago is still hitting home.”
Afterwards, Sir Tim Rice will be hanging around the auditorium and for good reason.
“It’s really nice to meet people – the ones who like my stuff anyway,” he jokes.
“At most shows someone I haven’t seen for years comes to say hello backstage afterwards – maybe an old school friend or a performer in one of my early shows – and that’s always a delight.
“The fans and friends are terrific; a very nice group of people coming round backstage who always seem to dig up photographs and record sleeves either that I’ve never seen, or not since the early seventies.”
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The show will also give people an insight into Sir Tim Rice’s creative processes.
As an example, he cites Evita.
“When we were creating it,” he says, “both the composer and the lyricist had to know what was planned for each scene before a word or a note had been written. Was it a love song, an argument, a seductive number, a huge crowd anthem – all had to serve the plot – and the characters.
“I think Evita is Andrew’s best score. Time and again he would come up with a melody and ideas for orchestration which was perfect for the storyline. Story is always king. In musical theatre anyway.
“A good musical, like a good play, needs to establish where it’s going, or might go, and what the characters are going to grapple with, pretty early on. If you can get that settled in the first five or 10 minutes of the show, then you should be off and running.”
Sir Tim Rice’s collaboration with Sir Elton John was a special time for him.
“He’s unlike most of the composers I’ve worked with in that he will only write a melody when he has a lyric to inspire him. It can be difficult writing with no tune to inspire, but I enjoy the freedom from rhyming patterns, fixed numbers of syllables, set structure of verses and so on, all of which you are stuck with if you have the tune first,” he says.
“I really enjoyed the thrill of hearing Elton’s first demo recording of words I had written without musical inspiration and time and time again he came up with a winner. He always knew what kind of melody was needed, be it anthemic for Circle Of Life or comic for Hakuna Matata. I like to think that the lyrics inspired him.”
With so many songs in his locker, does Sir Tim Rice have a favourite? Selecting just one, he says, is difficult – comparing it to having a favourite child.
“It sounds very arrogant to say so, but there are quite a lot I like. I would not say any one of them is the best, though. I like High Flying, Adored from Evita, and Heaven on Their Minds from Jesus Christ Superstar works well, too,” he says.
Sir Tim’s life could have taken a very different path. Back in his formative years he spent a couple of summers working at a petrol station.
“At the end of one stretch, the forecourt manager asked if I would fancy becoming a car salesman because he thought I had some potential in that field,” he recalls.
There was a slight problem: “I was never a petrol head. No idea how engines work.”
Thankfully, when he was 19, he was introduced to Andrew Lloyd-Webber and the chemistry was instant: “We immediately hit it off. It was pretty clear to me that he was really rather good. I didn’t know much about theatre, which was perhaps a plus because I wasn’t completely tied down by a feeling that I had to do a show in a certain way.
“I think the combination of my ignorance and his expertise in the area worked quite well. We eventually stumbled upon a style that wasn’t quite like anyone else’s.
“We were very lucky. We found each other, and it just worked. You can’t really audition for it.”
When is Sir Tim Rice coming to The Hexagon in Reading and how much are tickets?
Sir Tim Rice’s My Life In Musicals: I Know Him So Well is at The Hexagon in Reading on Friday, April 11, from 7.30pm.
Tickets cost £33.50 or £40.50.
They are available by calling the Reading Arts box office on 0118 960 6060, or logging on to: https://whatsonreading.com/timrice2025
For more on Sir Tim Rice, log on to: www.sirtimricelive.com
Additional words: James Rampton
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