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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
© Andrew Lloyd Webber 2018
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Cover illustration © Bob King Creative Ltd.
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Andrew Lloyd Webber asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Excerpts from ‘That’s My Story’ – Lyrics by Tim Rice, published by EMI Music Publishing Mills Music Limited and reproduced with the kind permission of Sir Tim Rice. Excerpts from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – Lyrics by Tim Rice © The Really Useful Group Limited. Excerpts from ‘Come Back Richard Your Country Needs You’ – Lyrics by Tim Rice, published by Novello and Company Ltd and reproduced with the kind permission of Sir Tim Rice. Excerpts from Jesus Christ Superstar – Lyrics by Tim Rice © The Really Useful Group Limited. Excerpts from Evita – Lyrics by Tim Rice © Evita Music Limited/Universal. Extracts taken from ‘Rhapsody on a Windy Night’, The Poems of T.S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems and ‘The Naming of Cats’, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot © Set Copyrights Ltd and reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber. Excerpts from Aspects of Love – Lyrics by Don Black & Charles Hart © The Really Useful Group Limited. Excerpts from The Phantom of the Opera – Lyrics by Charles Hart, Additional Lyrics by Richard Stilgoe © The Really Useful Group Limited.
Title page art courtesy of Bob King Creative Ltd.
While every effort has been made to obtain permission from the photographers and copyright holders of the pictures used in this book, the author and publishers apologise to anyone who has not been contacted in advance or credited.
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Source ISBN: 9780008237615
Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008237622
Version 2019-03-19
“The unworried Unmasked proves as readable as his hits are watchable.”
—Washington Post
“An autobiography that has … wit, surprise, contemporaneity, audacity, and an appealingly shrewd sense of the occasion.”
—The New Yorker
“I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats!”
—Vanity Fair
“Mr. Lloyd Webber’s charmingly idiosyncratic, surprisingly endearing, and ruthlessly entertaining autobiography.”
—Wall Street Journal
“Unmasked (the title is a play on Phantom’s signature facial gear) will tickle music and theater geeks. It’s an insider’s inside account, highly readable, thanks to Lloyd Webber’s affable, intelligent voice”
—USA Today
“Unmasked is a gripping insight into a rich and intensely creative life.”
—BBC America
“An enlightening look into Andrew Lloyd Webber’s early life and professional career.”
—Broadway World
“Is there is nothing Andrew Lloyd Webber can’t do … This memoir proves that he can write stylish and witty prose too.”
—Sunday Times (London)
For my fabulously un-PC Auntie Vi, most of whose sayings I could not possibly share in 2018.
CONTENTS
4 A Whiter Shade of Something That Didn’t Taste Very Nice in the First Place
5 “Mr Lloyd Webber, Do You Like Cats?”
6 Enter Timothy Miles Bindon Rice
7 Teenage Operas, Pop Cantatas
8 Elvis with Mellotron and Tambourines