Zitat des Tages von 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.
I'm a ladies' man who can never make love. I'm resigned to that.
It must have been an extraordinary time. I guess the worrying thing about musical theatre to me, is if you look at the London season this year, mine is actually the only one to have come in.
I would have gone right ahead but the only thing, the only phenomenon that's going on now of course, which is different in my experiences, is that you are getting things planted in the Net by people about the Woman in White on the Net. That's not a nice change.
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.
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.
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.
The next few years are going to be horrendous in the UK. The last thing we need is a Somali pirate-style raid on the few wealth creators who still dare to navigate Britain's gale-force waters.
Two years ago I hadn't even thought of the Woman in White, and I was doing a television show and I said I hadn't found a story and the next day somebody rang me and said have you ever thought of the Woman in White.
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.
It never occurred to me that 'Phantom of the Opera' was the sort of subject that I'd want to do, because I just thought it was something that would be a bit jokey. 'Til I read the book.
'The Phantom of the Opera' is the biggest thing I've ever done, bigger even than 'Cats' which, in itself, I never thought we'd top.
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.
At one point I couldn't move or get out of bed or anything. I developed blood clots because I'd been completely inactive. Then they thought - because the pain was so much - I had an infection in the bones, so they gave me pills, which gave me a tummy infection. It's like a French farce.
My wife says I can't remember if she has milk in coffee.
I'm not a critic, and I never talk about other people's work.
I guess we've had a very close relationship because I don't pretend to know about cinema and I think I do know a bit about theatre but he does, he respected that and so we really just had a collaboration which went completely like this.
Two pieces of advice for young composers: Go away during technical rehearsals. And do not have a back operation.
They should go back to the medieval tradition, which is that the nave of the church is always used for local business.
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.
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.
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.
You never know what will happen. There is a thing called zeitgeist. You have to hit it.
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.
I think that the wonderful advantage we have in the film of being able to cast a girl as young as Emmy and which we couldn't do in the theatre of course because no girl of 16 or 17 could sing 8 shows a week, couldn't sing two.
I think back at the time, if it had been 1988, I would have thought Michael and Sarah probably would have been cast but I don't think, I think it's much better that the girl is younger and if Sarah would have been 26 or 27 then.
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.
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.
I want to get every church in the country on Wi-Fi.
Because her voice is, it's like the muscles and it develops all the time. That was the fantastic thing for us.
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.
We try to get the best performance out of the artists. There is no point in saying to them, 'You're useless.'
In Evita I wasn't really hugely involved with it. I gave a little bit of help but they needed a bit of technical help on the movie and so some of my music people went in at the end of the movie and helped out with it.
I've got to find something and if I find something that I like, I'll do it. If I don't, I won't.
If you look at my career... I couldn't possibly have chosen those subjects if I was thinking, 'That's a great commercial idea.' I'm not aware of a great musical where someone has done that.
It doesn't stand up to huge intellectual scrutiny.