Unmasked

Meantime Tim, nearly four years older than me and understandably ambitious for his own future, was starting a job in the creative department of the world’s top record company. Even if Tim was at the bottom of the ladder, he had his foot in the door. Tim could easily have a hit on his own or with another writer. He might easily lose interest in a younger hopeful whose real interest was theatre, a world far away from chart-obsessed EMI and the white-hot heat of Swinging London. Furthermore I knew full well that Oxford offered nobody who could hold a candle to his lyrics.

Should I go back to Oxford or leave? It was the biggest decision of my life and there was nobody I felt I could turn to for advice. My family would point to two dismal A-level results as my only academic qualifications. I had the odd music grade but no way was I a performer so there was no hope down that alley. The most anyone could say about me was that I wrote tunes, had an oddball love of musicals and a bizarre love of architecture and medieval history. I knew that my family would be appalled if I chucked in the lifeline that Magdalen had offered me.

I took myself away to agonize. What if musicals were on the way out? What if I was no good at them anyway? I knew I was no lyricist. So was it not lunacy to try a career where my music was greatly dependent on the words that went with it and stories that might be lousy? What if the writer of those words, in this case Tim, no longer wanted to work with me? What if that writer didn’t come up with the goods? Most musicals are flops. Why should mine be any different? That is, if I ever got one on.

I went over and over in my head what an Oxford degree would mean for me. I couldn’t imagine a career I’d enjoy where it would do me any good. But my family had no money; they didn’t even own the Harrington Court flat. I would have to make a living somehow, someday. But with or without a degree at what? At least staying at Oxford would stave off a career decision for three years. True I would have to knuckle down and work to get a decent class of degree. But on the flip side of the coin I fretted that I was an exhibitioner who was taking up a college subsidized place that would probably have gone to someone far worthier than I had it not been for Professor McFarlane’s cat. Should I not let that worthier someone have my place?

However, there was the certainty of what a decision to leave would do to the family. Granny Molly would be consumed with anxiety. Aunt Vi and Uncle George would be livid. Mum might just take it on the chin but I couldn’t tell what Dad would make of it. Of all the family I was closest to Molly. I strongly sensed that my increasingly frail Granny would regard my leaving Oxford as an insane, suicidal move. Could it somehow rekindle in her a myriad of associations with the loss of her son Alastair? She cared that much about me. But what if I lost Tim? The thought went round and round in my head and drilled into it like an unmelodic earworm. Finally I made my decision. On July 17, 1966 I wrote to Thomas Boase, Magdalen College’s admission tutor, informing him that I did not want to continue as a History exhibitioner.

I thought my bombshell was received pretty well; a few long faces, a bit of muttering, as far as I was concerned that was about it. I took three school friends to stay at Vi and George’s. They seemed on the sombre side of OK but pretty soon Vi and I were experimenting with olive-oil recipes in her glorious seaview kitchen. It’s only recently that I learned things were not quite as I thought. First my brother Julian remembered that he had never witnessed such a family row as happened after I told Mum and Dad of my decision. Then I discovered among some of Mum’s papers the outline of her autobiography. It seems I was dead right about Granny equating what I was doing with the loss of Alastair. In her view I was throwing my life away and she felt appalled that Dad was doing nothing to stop it. Vi and George were safely out of the way in Italy. It was difficult and costly in 1966 to make international phone calls, you had to book them via the operator, but they made their views patently clear in letters that were kept from me.

Years later, according to Mum, I was staggered to learn that it was Dad who not only defended me but supported my decision. Apparently he strongly argued that in all his experience with students at the Royal and London Colleges of Music he had not come across anyone with such determination to succeed and that it would be completely counter-productive to put roadblocks in my way. With hindsight this is borne out by a conversation that Dad and I had before I took off with my school friends to Italy. First he reiterated that he would not support my trying for the Royal College of Music. I remember his reason, “it would educate the music out of you,” quite a statement from the senior Professor of Composition at the Royal College and the head of the London College of Music to boot.

Secondly he strongly felt that I should take a course in orchestration. The orchestra, he opined, provided the richest palette of colours in music if you knew how to use it. I was thrilled when Dad said he would fix for me to take a part-time course at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. I was fascinated by the tone colours of composers like Britten and how a high romantic like Richard Strauss could take the orchestra to ever more overripe extremes. I remember thinking that learning orchestration is like learning the basics of cooking: just as I knew from Vi how to make a soufflé or a mayonnaise, now I would learn how to make my orchestral ideas a reality. That Guildhall course has stood me in good stead. It is the only academic course I have taken seriously.

MEANTIME TIM WAS SETTLING in at EMI. I suspect he was too busy finding his feet to worry about my decision and I often wonder if he realized just how big a factor he was in my making it. But the fact that he had a toe in the door of the world’s number one record company could open doors for both of us and I was keen to coat-tail. Tim was assigned to the department of one of EMI’s most successful old-time arranger/producers, Norrie Paramor.

Norrie was a supremo of the pre-Beatles old guard. He was the guiding light behind the legendary British pop star Cliff Richard who has the distinction of having a number one hit in five different decades. Norrie was still a very major force in the British record industry even if younger musical Turks had overtaken him. But come mid-1966 Norrie’s star at EMI was again in the ascendancy. This was because the cream of EMI’s top producers had left to form an independent company, disgusted by the low pay and derisory royalties (if any) they got in return for making EMI untold millions. Stars like Beatles guru George Martin had had enough.

This left good old reliable Norrie in pole position. And with artists like Sinatra again pulverizing the action with songs such as “My Way,” the top brass at EMI might have been forgiven for thinking they made the right call in letting go the George Martins of this world. So Tim was in the right place at the right time. I suspect that old-school Norrie Paramor saw in the contemporary pop ears of the very personable Tim Rice a presentable way into a young world that was no more his natural habitat. Furthermore Tim wrote lyrics. It wasn’t long before Tim was being allowed to produce acts that EMI wanted to drop but was obliged to record in order to see out their contracts.

Pop was changing fast in the last half of the 1960s. 1965 had ushered in “fusion,” the idea that any instrument could go with anything. As early as 1964, Sonny and Cher had featured an oboe on “I Got You Babe.” Paul McCartney sang “Yesterday” accompanied by a string quartet. In 1967 Sgt. Pepper took things still further, including adding the merest hint of a narrative structure. By the end of 1968 even the Rolling Stones were recording with the London Bach Choir. I was learning the rudiments of classical orchestration at exactly the time as its marriage with rock was romping all over the zeitgeist.

In that summer of 1966 the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” kicked off a genre that was to spawn perhaps the ultimate Sixties “fusion” single, Jimmy Webb’s six-minute “MacArthur Park” with Richard Harris. Then there was the concept single. The most successful was “Excerpt from ‘A Teenage Opera,’ ” a sort of mini-opera in itself with a kids’ choir. The “Teenage Opera” never was completed but the idea hugely caught the spirit of the moment. None of this passed me by.

THE UNWANTED ACTS TIM was assigned to humanely lay to rest were pretty dire – with one notable exception. This was a handsome 23-year-old singer called Murray Head. EMI had unsuccessfully tried to launch Murray and had put a fair bit of clout behind him. But now he was “de trop” and Tim was ordered by Norrie to cut his last contractual single. Murray had, however, been cast as one of the leads in a Roy Boulting movie titled The Family Way opposite John and Hayley Mills. Paul McCartney composed the soundtrack and Murray had written a song called “Someday Soon” that was supposed to feature in the film. This was the song Tim recorded.

Murray had a light tenor rock voice, really rather lyrical yet passionate and earthy when he wanted it to be. Tim was very good about letting me meet Murray who must have thought me highly curious. I was hopelessly out of place and felt very shy in his dope-filled flat. But he would often accompany himself on guitar. What struck me was his incredibly musical riffing. It was always melodic and always highly individual. I shared Tim’s belief that given the exposure Murray and the song would get from the movie, Tim might have produced his first hit. Unfortunately this was not to be. Most of “Someday Soon” ended up on the cutting-room floor. But I agreed with Tim. Murray was very special.

1967 dawned with still no Likes of Us script from Leslie Thomas, though I vaguely remember a synopsis appearing that had no relation whatsoever to what Tim and I had written. Hopes of a theatre production pretty much evaporated. I continued to take my orchestration lessons. Mum negotiated that we rented an additional flat at Harrington Court, primarily so she could move John Lill in. To be fair it also had a decent room for my increasingly arthritic granny. There was one spare room which Mum wanted to rent. I suggested offering it to Tim, who accepted, and at a stroke a ménage à trois was created to rival South Kensington’s weirdest. Add me and my turntable next door, Julian on cello and Dad on electronic organ and new meaning was given to the words “bohemian rhapsody.”

AT THE END OF February I got a letter from the music master of Colet Court School, the junior part of St Paul’s School in Hammersmith. His name was Alan Doggett. Alan had taught Julian at Westminster Under School and had become friendly with our parents. Alan was openly gay but not, he pointedly professed, a predator of little boys. Indeed Julian, who was not bad looking himself, knew of no such baggage at the Under School. But nonetheless Alan made no secret of having adult gay relationships. He also loved early classical music.

This caused Julian and me to have a private joke at his expense. There was a flat near ours in Onslow Gardens whose occupant left the window open in summer from which emanated hugely precious harpsichord music. You could see enough of the decor to know that it was not the home of a rugger ace. Julian and I used to call places like this doggett houses. Alan proposed that I compose a “pop cantata” for his charges. His choir had premiered and recorded two such epics already, The Daniel Jazz by Herbert Chappell and Jonah-Man Jazz by Michael Hurd. Their main attraction was telling a Bible story in light pop music, nothing too dangerous, just enough novelty to make parents smile and keep a class of unmusical kids out of detention. Lyrics were not their strong point. Apparently the educational publishers Novello and Co. had done very well with them. Novello published Dad’s church music and he confirmed that this was true. The Daniel Jazz was their top seller.

So on March 5, if an old diary doesn’t lie, I met with Alan for a drink. He explained that he wanted something for the whole school to sing but there must be a special role for the choir and school orchestra. There could be soloists too, but he reiterated that it was vital that there was something for everyone to perform, even the tone deaf. Skirting around why he thought I was the right bloke to compose for the latter, he suggested a collection of poems by American poet Vachel Lindsay called “The Congo” as ideal fodder for me to musicalize. One of them read like lyrics for the Eurovision Song Contest – I quote: “Rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle, / Bing. / Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.” “The Congo” is full of similar nonsense words based on Congolese chants. Somehow I wondered if the poem would ring true in the hands of the very white pupils of a posh, fee-paying West London preparatory school, although I could see that kids could have a lot of fun making silly percussive noises with it. However I broached Alan’s offer with Tim.

Tim wasn’t instantly ecstatic at the thought of writing something for a bunch of 8–13-year-old school kids. It was a bit of a comedown from hopes of a West End premiere and the white-hot heat of EMI in the year that company launched Sgt. Pepper. But Tim had schoolday memories of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and Gilbert’s witty lyrics in particular. Also the notion of a “pop cantata” did chime with what was happening at the time. We liked the idea that there would be no script – not that we ever had experience of one, since Leslie Thomas had still failed to deliver anything for the increasingly dust-gathering The Likes of Us. So we tossed a few ideas around. At first we felt another Bible story wasn’t cool. Maybe something from English history? I don’t remember if the subject we subsequently toyed with, King Richard I and his minstrel Blondel, surfaced at the time. We certainly combed our history books but nothing grabbed us. A James Bond themed idea was temporarily our frontrunner but it was soon shown the egress as we thought it would date and anyway it needed a plot.

Salvation came in the form of The Wonder Book of Bible Stories. Books like these are excellent source material for musicals. They save a lot of reading time and effort. The plots are nicely condensed, the print is big and there are lots of pictures to bring important moments to life. Tim fell on the story of Joseph and his coat of many colours. I liked the idea. It had the primal ingredients of revenge and forgiveness. There could be humour, particularly if Joseph himself was made out to be a bit of an irritating prick who in the end turns out to be OK. And then there was Pharaoh. I wondered what would happen if we built and built Pharaoh’s entrance and he turned out to be Elvis. Plus there is a nice happy ending when Joseph is reunited with his dad and family. It seemed a natural.

At first Alan Doggett wasn’t convinced. This would be the third biblical cantata the school would have done. Couldn’t we think of something more original? But he melted when one evening I played him the opening two songs. He beamed at Tim’s turn of phrase:

And when Joseph tried it on

He knew his sheepskin days were gone

His astounding clothing took the biscuit

Quite the smoothest person in the district

It’s the use of everyday colloquialisms that makes Joseph’s lyrics so great. It was 1967, we were writing a “pop cantata” and who cared whether rhymes were perfect. Confirmed bachelor Alan melted still further when I introduced him to Tim. Soon Joseph was slated for the Colet Court End of Easter Term Concert, 1968. The work that launched our careers was under starter’s orders.

8 Elvis with Mellotron and Tambourines (#ua656de99-a461-5b66-a30a-10e6ca97eedb)

From Easter 1967 our pop cantata simmered leisurely on the back burner but with The Likes of Us in the deep freeze Tim and I started writing pop songs. The first Rice/Lloyd Webber song to be commercially released was “Down Thru’ Summer.” The artist was Ross Hannaman and the arranger/producer Mike Leander who had arranged “She’s Leaving Home” for The Beatles. Ross was a contestant in the London Evening Standard Girl of the Year, 1967 competition. Those were the days when such contests were only just beginning to be deemed un-PC. We had noticed in Ross’s blurb that she sang. Tim asked his bosses if he could sign her if she won the competition. Surprisingly the answer was yes. So we piled off to hear her sing in some club where we encountered a very pretty teenager with an OK folksy voice, very much in the Marianne Faithfull mould. Tim immediately fancied her but she had two blokes who managed her, one of whom was her boyfriend, so Tim was temporarily stymied.

You could vote as many times as you liked for your favourite Girl of the Year provided you voted on a coupon in your Evening Standard, presumably a marketing wheeze to sell more newspapers to the competitors’ nearest and dearest. Tim and Ross’s manager found a heap of unsold Standards that were about to be pulped and duly voted with the whole lot of them. Her resulting victory was so obviously false that Angus McGill, the witty veteran doyen of Fleet Street diarists who organized the competition, had to declare Ross a joint winner. He couldn’t disqualify her because the rules said you could vote as many times as you liked. But he hadn’t reckoned on someone hijacking the odd thousand unsold copies in a recycling plant. Actually Angus was amused. The contest was hardly serious and he liked the idea that one of the winners might become a pop star. I was introduced to Angus and soon we became real friends. I would often meet him in his Regent’s Park flat from where we would drive to his shop Knobs and Knockers which sold exactly what was on the ticket.

The tune I wrote for Ross was tailor-made for her wispy soprano, a wistful folk ballad that I heard in my head simply arranged for acoustic guitar and a small, sparely scored string section. Tim provided a suitably obtuse flower-powery lyric. “Down thru’ summer you would stay here and be mine.” It was the Summer of Love, after all. The recording session was not at Abbey Road but Olympic Studios, studio of choice for the Rolling Stones and in those days boasting one of the best sounding rooms for an orchestra in London. Little did I guess when I pitched up that morning what a huge part Olympic was to play in my life. Unfortunately Mike Leander’s perception of my little tune could not have been more different from mine. Instead of an acoustic guitar and chamber strings, Mike had arranged the song for a full out galumphing electric rhythm section plus a thrashing drummer whose unsubtle playing was so loud that it spilled over the microphones of the entire orchestra. Nothing could have been more at odds with how I heard my tune and I sat in the corner of the studio, disconsolate.

I thought the B-side, a sort of “Semi-Detached Suburban Mr James” rerun called “I’ll Give All My Love to Southend” (we were in the “Winchester Cathedral” era), fared rather better, even though Tim and I had a “beat group” in mind rather than a pretty folksy girl soprano. I always liked the tune of “Down Thru’ Summer” and reused it as the middle section of “Buenos Aires” in Evita. When the melody accompanies Eva’s premonition of her fatal illness in Act 2 the arrangement isn’t far from how I had heard Ross’s single.

Angus arranged various promotional stunts for Tim and me and the Evening Standard joint winners ranging from a day at Royal Ascot to a night in Mark Birley’s newly opened Annabel’s. This may have made good copy for the Standard but was hardly likely to ingratiate our hopeless single on the record-buying public. Amazingly Tim swung it that we got a second chance with Ross. The song was titled “1969” and the lyric was about someone having a trippy premonition – “ a Chinese band marched by in fours,” that sort of thing. The chorus went “Hey, I hate the picture, 1969.” Tim the soothsayer didn’t predict 1969 to be a bundle of laughs. This time the tune was only partially by me because we decided to make something out of Beethoven’s “Für Elise.” I added what I thought was a rather hooky chorus and a spooky descending tritone linking section. This time the arrangement by ex-Shadows drummer Tony Meehan was far closer to my intentions and I don’t find it totally unlistenable to today. The B-side, “Probably on Thursday,” had a really lovely wistful lyric even if, like so many of Tim’s songs, it told a pessimistic story: “You’re going to leave me, possibly on Wednesday, / Probably on Thursday.” Twenty years later I rewrote the melody of the verse and recorded the song with Sarah Brightman.

That summer we wrote a song for Joseph that we thought might just be a pop hit. Most pop lyrics emanating from the Summer of Love displayed a somewhat opaque side – witness that legendary pop-synth fusion album Days of Future Passed by the Moody Blues or any of Donovan’s hits. The song was “Any Dream Will Do” and the lyrics were no exception. But more of this anon.

A STOCK CHARACTER IN pop showbiz films is the record company postboy. Invariably this character delivers mail to the top executive brass and refuses to leave their offices until they listen to some act he’s discovered. Just to get him out of the door, the top brass reluctantly go to one of the act’s gigs. The act, after various cliffhanging story twists, turns out to be pop’s answer to the Second Coming. EMI had such a postboy. His name was Martin Wilcox. I don’t know if he ever blagged his way into the top honcho’s offices. But he did get as far as Tim Rice. The act he was peddling had a suitably psychedelic name, the Tales of Justine. Its guiding force was a teenager called David Daltrey, naturally presumed to be a distant relative of Roger Daltrey of The Who but I’ve never seen any proof. He lived in Potters Bar in Hertfordshire, not that far from Tim’s home in an area that by 1967 was a sprawling monotone London suburb. Maybe as an escape David had written songs with titles like “Albert (A Pet Sunflower).” He also had a pleasant singing voice and was friendly with an outfit called the Mixed Bag, who did competent cover performances of current hits.

Tim managed to get EMI to sign the Tales of Justine, “Albert (A Pet Sunflower)” was the first single and Tim winged it with his bosses that I arranged it. Albert owed a debt to British music hall, so I stuck a Sgt. Peppery brass band on top of the group which made the record rather fun. We all thought it was catchy enough to be big. Tim and I also signed the band up to ourselves as managers – we called ourselves Antim Management – and we added them to our roster of one, Ross Hannaman, who had ditched her previous team, possibly because she’d had a brief fling with Tim. Unfortunately Ross’s stay with Antim didn’t last long. She shacked up with the begetter of “Excerpt from ‘A Teenage Opera’ ” Mark Wirtz who immediately issued a press release informing the world that we would hear a new Ross Hannaman. In fact we heard nothing at all, the pair got married and were divorced two years later.

Antim Management was undeterred by Ross giving us the heave-ho. Being cutting-edge representatives of our clients, we now designed and printed up some psychedelic sleeves for the Tales of Justine’s “Albert.” One night after hours we inserted all the promotion copies into these sleeves. Our theory was that since no EMI single ever had special promotion covers radio producers and reviewers would think EMI’s entire might was behind this release.

Unfortunately the head of EMI’s promotion department, a thirtyish guy called Roy Featherstone, was extremely unimpressed as was the British public. Sales were zilch. Roy gave Tim a hell of a roasting. I was therefore pretty scared when I got a message from Granny at Harrington Court saying that a Mr Featherstone had called and wanted to see me in his office. I was unprepared for a smiling Roy Featherstone and the offer of a cup of coffee when I quivered into his office two weeks later. Tim had recorded quite a few songs with David Daltrey, and I had done all the arrangements. Mr Featherstone said he thought the songs were OK but the arrangements were terrific, particularly one called “Pathway” where I had experimented with all sorts of effects. He would like to help me get a few more arranging gigs with other artists. This was the first time anyone in a record company had noticed my music, even if it was only my orchestrations. The timing couldn’t have been better because Tim had just hit me with news that had left me axed as if by a pole.

Norrie Paramor announced that, like George Martin and the other top EMI producers before, he too was leaving EMI and setting up on his own. He wanted Tim to go with him as his key man. It was an offer Tim could not refuse. Nor should he have done but it was clear that Norrie, despite hints from Tim, did not envisage a role for me in his new venture. Furthermore he employed instead ex-Westminster boy Nick Ingman as arranger and composer, with whom Tim was to write B-sides and the like. Ironically Nick had been the lead singer of the group that performed “Make Believe Love” at my Westminster concert for Peter and Gordon.

I was very alarmed. Tim was turning 23, had a job with real prospects and entrees into songwriting. I was 19, had chucked up Oxford for Tim and a musical that was never going to be produced. At least Roy Featherstone had thrown me a sort of lifeline and in fact I was to have a great relationship with Roy. But it was not until ten years later. My only real lifeline was a Friday afternoon school concert.

FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 1968 was a grey, drab, drizzly day but not over-cold for the time of year. Around 2 pm a gaggle of two hundred or so parents, mostly mothers as it was a weekday afternoon, gathered with no particular sense of anticipation in the rather cramped entrance hall of Colet Court School. Conversation centred on their fervent hope that this special end-of-term concert of Joseph and His Amazing (Technicolour) Dreamcoat was short enough for them to drive their children home before the weekend rush hour. One young mum commented that Johnny Cash was marrying June Carter that afternoon, US time. They were probably surprised, after they were ushered onto those hard low chairs you only find in school halls, by what was on the stage.

Lloyd Webber and Rice had fielded the entire Antim Management artists’ roster. Stage centre was a pop group rig, drums and amplifiers manned by Potters Bar’s very own cover band, the Mixed Bag. Seated next to a mike stand was no less than Potters Bar’s star vocalist and songwriter, David Daltrey. There was an elephantine keyboard contraption looking like an electronic organ which I had badgered the school to hire called a Mellotron. These now long-extinct dinosaurs were a forerunner of the synthesizer and much loved by the Moody Blues. They didn’t generate their own sounds but used a cumbersome battery of pre-recorded tapes. Seated in serried ranks was the school orchestra, augmented by a few student mates from various colleges of music. Behind all this were two groups of boys. The first batch were the 30-strong school choir and the second the three hundred or so kids who couldn’t sing or were tone deaf or both. Some of these had tambourines. Lurking backstage was Tim, gearing up for an Elvis impression as Pharaoh. So there was a mildly curious buzz from the parents in between anxious glances at watches, hoping the whole thing would crack on and finish PDQ.

The headmaster, a suave traditional cove called Henry Collis, ascended the stage and made a brief speech which decidedly hedged its bets on the forthcoming entertainment. He then introduced Alan Doggett in a fashion that suggested that if things went tits up it was all Doggett’s fault and he needn’t turn up on Monday. Alan bounced on stage, sporting a natty bow tie, raised his conductor’s baton and off we went, straight into the story at bar one because the now signature trumpet fanfare introduction didn’t exist in those days.

Joseph and the Amazing (Technicolour) Dreamcoat (the word “Technicolour” included a “u” and was for some reason billed in brackets) was away to the races.

THE CONCERT WAS A total blast. The yummy mummies forgot about the weekend rush hour and virtually the whole 22-minute cantata was encored. Everyone loved Tim’s Elvis impression as Pharaoh but it was the piece as a whole that was the star. Some mothers clamoured for a repeat performance on another day so that their other halves could hear it. For the record, here is the hugely condensed plot of what we performed that afternoon.

Jacob had two wives and twelve sons. Joseph, his favourite and a dreamer, irritatingly predicts to his brothers that one day he will rise above the lot of them. When Jacob gives Joseph a coat of many colours it is the final straw. They decide to kill him. Luring Joseph into the desert, they encounter some roving Ishmaelites. A sudden twinge of remorse and a chance to make a shekel or two prompts them to sell Joseph as a slave to be taken to Egypt. They dip Joseph’s coat in goat’s blood, telling his grieving dad he was killed bravely fighting. Joseph gets chucked into gaol, presumably as an illegal alien, where he sings his big ballad “Close Every Door.” His interpretation of his cellmates’ dreams catches the attention of Pharaoh who is having nightmares. Joseph interprets these as signifying seven years of impending food glut, followed by seven of famine. Pharaoh makes Joseph boss of a rationing scheme to provide for the bad years. Joseph’s famine-stricken brothers pitch up in Egypt, begging for food. They don’t recognize their brother but he recognizes them and puts them to a test: he plants a cup in Benjamin, the youngest brother’s, food sack, accusing him of stealing. The brothers rally to his defence, offering themselves up for punishment instead. Realizing they are now responsible citizens, Joseph reveals to his astonished siblings who he is. Jacob is brought to Egypt to be reunited with the son he thought was dead. A happy ending is enjoyed by all.

This simple primal tale had everything. Tim had made a brilliant choice. I didn’t realize it at the time but in my attempt to write music that would never allow its kid performers to get bored, I was unwittingly creating what was to become my trademark, a “through-sung” musical, i.e. a score with little or no spoken dialogue where the musical structure, the musical key relationships, rhythms and use of time signatures, not just the melodies, are vital to its success. Nothing in Joseph was random. I wrote it by instinct as I had no experience. But the fact that there was no spoken dialogue meant that I was in the driving seat. Once Tim and I had agreed the essential elements of the plot and we had decided where the key songs would go, it was down to me to control the rhythm of the piece. Of course spoken dialogue can be invaluable – on many occasions it is by far the best way to express dramatic situations – but for me my through-composed shows are the most satisfying.

It is the strength of the heart of Joseph that allowed it to expand like Topsy into a stage musical with its various pastiche set pieces. This central core has its own, if naive, musical style and above all a real emotional centre. The only pastiche in the Colet Court version was “Song of the King” which turned Pharaoh into Elvis. I have to claim that as my idea. I thought we needed something to lighten the mood after Joseph’s “Close Every Door” in which Joseph sings that Children of Israel are never alone, one of the simple central messages of the piece. Unusually the title was also my idea, although hardly original. It was inspired by the Alan Price single “Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear.” “Technicolour” got added as it seemed a cool way of saying “many colours.” Moreover Technicolor dreams, with all their 1960s connotations were definitely the stuff of the moment.

Thrillingly, after the concert there was an on-the-spot offer of publication. Unbeknown to Tim and me, Alan Doggett had invited the team from Novello and Co., the top classical music publisher who had strayed highly successfully into the educational market with The Daniel Jazz. They also published much of my father’s church music and I wonder if he too had a hand in their giving up a Friday afternoon to hear our effort. Anyhow they wanted to sign Joseph there and then. We referred them to Desmond Elliott.

DESMOND HAD SHOWN SCANT interest in our pop cantata. In fact he had shown scant interest in anything I was doing. For a long while his attention had been more or less exclusively devoted to a school friend of Tim’s called Adam Diment. Adam was a novelist who had written a couple of alternative James Bond type books with titles like The Dolly Dolly Spy and The Bang Bang Birds featuring a character not unlike Austin Powers. Desmond persuaded Adam to grow his hair, got publishers Michael Joseph in such a tizzy about him that they paid him a massive advance and then fielded him on TV chat shows around the English-speaking world dressed in “mod” outfits. London bus sides proclaimed “If you can’t read Adam Diment love him.” For a brief while Adam made a heap of money and was quite a celebrity.