Andrew Lloyd Webber

Andrew Lloyd Webber has built his worldwide musical theatre empire on being fashionably unfashionable, but is still searching for his next hit show.

“I have to have a story,” he says. “The majority of records have no melody at all now,” he says. “Musicals are such an incredibly collaborative thing that, in the end, any one ingredient, particularly the look of the show, can bring the show down,” he says. “It’s no good just saying I want to write a musical about refugees. “I wish I knew,” he says. At the heart of all these productions lies a succession of killer melodies. “Sometimes I’m just playing around on the piano and I’ll find a phrase I think is good or strong. Despite having been in Sydney only a couple of days, he had already found time to take in the Gothic Revival charms of St Mary’s Cathedral. The theatricality of things and performance go back as far as I can remember.” The majority of records have no melody at all now. In his 2018 autobiography Unmasked (“autobiographies are by definition self-serving and mine is no exception”), he describes a bohemian upbringing populated by an endless parade of eccentric relatives and family friends. At my old age, I actually think that productions I don’t have anything to do with seem to be rather better than the ones I do.