Unmasked: A Memoir by Andrew Lloyd Webber - Review
Unmasked: A Memoir is Andrew Lloyd Webber's account of his childhood and the beginnings of his career, up until the mid-1980s and the release of Phantom of the Opera. This book was a surprising gift from my wife, who knows I am no fan of Lloyd Webber's musicals. Reading reviews of the book, however, she thought I might find the behind-the-scenes stories of Lloyd Webber's musical productions interesting, as my own parents actually met in their late teens while performing in various community theater productions, coincidentally right at the time Lloyd Webber was getting his start. She also figured there would be some juicy gossip about backstage hijinks and general cattiness from Lloyd Webber, who has a reputation for being demanding, arrogant and something of a perfectionist with his work.
Andrew Lloyd Webber came of age in a place and time- London, in the late 1950s and 1960s- where high culture was being crowded out by low culture at a rapid pace, and the middle-brow was under attack from both the elite art establishment and the pop-culture barbarians. Yet, there was still enough high culture- opera, classical music, traditional art- that it wasn't yet uncommon for a middle-class boy such as young Andrew to be exposed to it. In fact, he was the precocious child of a professor of music at the Royal College of London. Yet he was immersed in the burgeoning world of pop music and the still-mainstream American musical. In fact, he knew from an early age that he wanted to make musicals, creating a puppet theater where he would put on little shows for friends and family.
This precocity led him to have the sort of trouble following a traditional career path as you would expect. Bad at his academic subjects due to distraction, he excelled at writing little plays for school pageants. His mother pushed him and his younger brother, Julian, into performing music at a young age. The vignettes of his family are touching in places, but there is an obvious reserve about those people closest to him- there isn't too much dirty laundry on display here, although there are hints here and there of unflattering episodes.
We read about his early start, composing a few songs for what became Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, as a children's musical to be performed at a Christmas pageant. And what do you know, people just love it, so much that he and his lyricist, Tim Rice, put some flesh on its bones and turn it into a real show. This is often the pattern of Lloyd Webber's early career, where he has a little idea for a song, and then this gets put onto a record with some of Rice's lyrics, and people love it so much that he gets the money to fill it out into a small performance at a festival someplace, and that builds interest which in turn allows him to expand it gradually into a full show.
He was only 19, for example, when he put together the original Joseph. His astonishing success at such an early age is part of his legend, but it is his drive, ambition and above all his hard work which made it possible. He never had a single project, he was always writing new music for this or that show or play or pop song while also developing his earlier material into fully-formed pieces. He has seemingly no trouble meeting people in important or interesting fields that help him move forward. One gets the sense that London in those days was eager for bright young talent, and there was less gate-keeping or barriers to entry in the world of music and theater.
The scenarios of this early period are varied and highly interesting. A couple of Biblical works, a show based on P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves books, an undeveloped animated Thomas the Tank Engine television show which eventually became Starlight Express, along with one-off collaborations with pop musicians and television shows. His choice of projects is, to my mind, curious, but I suppose this is why I'm not in a creative field- no innate sense for what would work. Later, he would bring out shows about the wife of a dictator, singing and dancing cats, and a rock opera (Evita, Cats and Phantom respectively). There are purely orchestral pieces, such as his Variations and Requiem. You can't rightly pigeonhole Andrew Lloyd Webber into one genre.
I find the descriptions of the technical problems he encountered some my my favorite parts of the book. Andrew Lloyd Webber is known for staging these huge productions, and it is important to remember that he had to pioneer a lot of technology to make them work. The sound design of his shows proved a particular trouble spot, since nobody had ever had to mike singers, a full orchestra, and a rock band all at the same time. He fretted over how to arrange his longer pieces such that the sound would be loud enough on vinyl records- for the louder the sound, the wider the grooves and the shorter the available time on each side. The production problems of his shows, including a few disastrous opening nights, are engaging and provoke sympathy from anyone who's ever been involved with live theater.
Along the way, we are introduced to many people who help or hinder his work. Tim Rice was his earliest creative partner, and Lloyd Webber tells us the most about his working and personal relationship with him. Various business partners, financiers, and producers are brought into the story, and they are lightly treated- again, as with his family, we are given a fairly simplistic treatment of each one's personality and behavior. There is less juicy gossip than my wife hoped, and on the whole I find Lloyd Webber to be mostly gentle in the stories of these people, even if they were antagonistic or detrimental to him personally. The sort of raucous hedonism one associates with the acting world are alluded to but not explained in detail, which may be a shame to some readers but not to me.
Likewise, his marriage to an extremely young woman named Sarah (they started dating when she was 16 and he 22, and married two years later) is portrayed with affection, but we get little depth into her character. We have short scenes of their life together during the whirlwind of his activities, and very affecting account of Sarah's near-fatal diabetic episode, but not too much beyond this. Always with this memoir, Lloyd Webber pushes the personal to the back to make room for the rollercoaster of his professional life. But there is an interesting subplot that is handled in a most amusing way.
Throughout the first two-thirds of the book, a shadowy figure appears again and again. At a cast party after a show, or during auditions, or on the street, we encounter the person of Sarah Brighton. She was a minor talent in and around London during this time, first as part of a pop group called Hot Gossip and later in minor roles on stage. The way Lloyd Webber handles the mention of her is, to me, very funny- her name appears in a way you would describe a foreboding sense of doom, her very name a foreshadow of some approaching catastrophe.
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| Leggy homewrecker, Sarah Brightman |
Of course, Sarah Brightman would cause Andrew Lloyd Webber a major public scandal when he divorced his wife and the mother of his children to marry her. He admits to other affairs but says that Sarah Brightman was his first "serious" affair. He declaims how he had fallen in love with her and it was the real deal, and not just that she was a frisky adulteress (she was cheating on her husband with another man at the time she met Lloyd Webber) who by the way is 6 years the junior of his wife and 12 of him. Why, he hardly noticed her before, and in fact, didn't think she had a great singing voice much at all until after they were sleeping together! Amazing how things just happen!
It is a cliché, the older man who marries the girl singer (or dancer, or actress) and is determined to prove to the world that he married her for her artistic talent and not anything so sordid as that her bottom looked fantastic in those miniskirts she liked to wear. The image of Orson Wells as Charles Foster Kane clapping ferociously, scowling like a demon, while his young actress wife attempts to sing opera to the disdain of all is the template. But by God, nobody is going to say that about Andrew Lloyd Webber!
via GIPHY
In truth, Sarah Brightman has a decent voice, and is suited to the music Lloyd Webber wrote for her. He immediately put her in the staring role in Phantom of the Opera, and it made her a star. But he is obviously embarrassed by what people thought of him and I say rightfully so. His children appear little to not at all after this episode except to make clear that they liked Sarah B and they also especially continued to like his musicals. It's frankly sad. The marriage lasted 6 years, when her affairs with other men became public. They had no children together which is undoubtedly best for all concerned.
I have often said to friends that adultery has much to commend itself in the world of opera. How many soaring arias and grand diva moments were composed by men for some lusty soprano. My queen, my goddess, how I worship you, I will make the whole world fall in love with you through the power of my music, now remove those petticoats please baby. And sometimes, it works. Shabby behavior winds up remembered little to not at all, and even my own church has performed Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Pie Jesu" which he wrote for her. As a footnote, he learned his lesson, and ended up marrying a woman who most decidedly is not in show business and they are still married to this day.
Throughout his career, he has worn his musical influences on his sleeve, and here I think is why so many people disrespect him (including me). His classical and operatic motifs seem pretentious in a production like Cats, and his rock and pop pieces grate in Phantom. As a bit of a snob (or perhaps pretensions to snobbery?) I find this sort of middle-brow pap highly annoying. Yet, I think this is being ungenerous to Lloyd Webber.
First of all, I believe he has real talent for composing. He's no J.S. Bach but for the medium of the stage musical he brings genuine skill. He can bring many different styles of music to a single work, and there are dashes of brilliance. His "Pie Jesu", as mentioned above, has a spare accompaniment with a marvelous little organ section. The fact that a lot of his numbers fall closer to the hokey side doesn't change this.
Second, I know a lot of people, including my marvelous and highly sophisticated wife, who started to love classical music and opera because of Andrew Lloyd Webber. He has just enough shmaltz to bring in the average joe off the street, but just enough class to make them open to higher culture. The journey from Webber to Puccini to Mozart is a well-traveled one.
On whole, the book is easy to read, with a breezy, conversational manner that can only be described as "Very British." If he had a ghost writer, it would explain the tone, as it reads like the text was dictated from Lloyd Webber himself into the book.
(As an aside, comedian Paul F. Tompkins' over the top impression of Andrew Lloyd Webber always gets a laugh from me, and now I have an excuse to direct you to videos of him doing it.)
For super fans, this book will be a no brainer purchase. For anyone who has an interest in musicals generally, the production process of his shows is well told and will be worth the time. For general readers who perhaps are looking for sordid tales in Swinging London, it may be a disappointment.
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