It’s interesting that the wondrous ‘Hamilton,’ which I could not be more ecstatic about, has taken a long time to perfect to bring it to Broadway. And it wouldn’t have been possible if it was developed in the commercial theatre from the get-go. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
Well the least favourite question is the one that one’s asked particularly about in Japan is what’s the difference between theatre and cinema and I think, well, that’s about eighty bucks. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
I knew nothing about film at all. I suppose the biggest surprise is all these things. In the theatre we sort of do, I might do two or three key interviews and that would be it. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
I said, look, do you think you could bring Gerry through, and they said yeah, absolutely, they thought that. Joel was very keen to cast him. If all my music team were happy, I was happy. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
I’m a composer, and therefore I know when I’ve written a good tune. When you’ve written a good song is when you know that the lyric is completely coalesced with the song. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
I often think of random melodies. And I pretty much hear in my head what I want to do with the orchestra as I’m writing on the piano. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
We don’t have butlers. Obviously we have people who look after the houses, but I try not to run things formally. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
The moment the doctor said he wanted to do a biopsy, in my heart I thought I’d probably got it. But I also know a lot of people who have also had prostate cancer, so I had a reasonably good idea what to expect. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
Here’s the truth. The proposed top rate of income tax is not 50 per cent. It is 50 per cent plus 1.5 per cent national insurance paid by employees plus 13.3 per cent paid by employers. That’s not 50 per cent. Two years from now, Britain will have the highest tax rate on earned income of any developed country. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
I’m wondering whether to have someone go around with my mobile to completely throw everybody off the scent. I could appear in weird places. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
The fact is that ‘The Wizard Of Oz’ has never really worked in the theatre. The film has one or two holes where, in the theatre, you need a song. For example, there’s nothing for either of the two witches to sing. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
‘School of Rock’ is fun. Hopefully, I’ve fleshed it out with a few catchy songs and kept the spirit of the original movie. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
We felt we had to know something of his back story. I don’t think people in the cinema would just accept that he’s there. I think we had to learn how he (got there). – Andrew Lloyd Webber
When we finally came to start work on this, the joy was it was only Joel and I, we didn’t have to answer to anybody, and we didn’t have to submit a screen play or anything like that. We just wrote it and then made it. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
I’m going to take the kids away over Christmas but I don’t, I’ve written 14 musicals now, I don’t want to rush into doing something just for the sake of doing it. I want to do it when I find a story. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
Two pieces of advice for young composers: Go away during technical rehearsals. And do not have a back operation. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
Corny answer is of course is that everyone who wants musicals are children in different ways, aren’t they? So you think of them in different ways. There are things of mine I’m sorry haven’t come here. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
Because her voice is, it’s like the muscles and it develops all the time. That was the fantastic thing for us. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
I haven’t written a score that’s going to change the Western world or the musical as we presently know it. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
Where I have come unstuck sometimes has mostly been to do with the stories not being quite right or not connecting with a contemporary audience. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
I began to think, now is the time. I found quite a lot of opposition in Hollywood about the idea of doing a film musical and we ended up having to buy the rights back. I’m glad we did because it meant John and I were able to make exactly the movie we wanted. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
I have lived and worked in Britain all my life. Not even in the dark days of penal Labour taxation in the Seventies did I have any intention of leaving the country of my birth. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
I think the thing’s that perhaps sad really is that younger people haven’t come in and I think it must have been absolutely fantastic to have worked in the 50’s when you had all of the great Broadway composers and when West Side Story didn’t win the Tony Award. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
I mean I don’t really think about it. You know, do you know what I often say to myself? I think you’re very lucky in life if you know what you want to do. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
If you know what you want to do, as I always loved musicals, and then to have been lucky enough to be successful with them, I think that’s all you can ask isn’t it? I think I don’t really think too much about it. I am a bit shy socially, yeah, I admit that. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
Negative things, and they were all deliberate and I’m not going to say who they were but I know who they were and it was in the business, and that’s not a good sign. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
I don’t think I am that materialistic, actually. Obviously at home in the country the art collection is important, but we have one big room in the middle of the house where we do everything – the television, the kitchen, everything. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
And it sort of jogged a memory of something that I read at school and I read it, and I thought God this is it. So you never can tell. I could find something this afternoon. – Andrew Lloyd Webber
