The memoir of English composer Andrew Lloyd Webber was released on March 6, 2018. I have grown up listening to the stylings of the musicals of Lloyd Webber from an early age (I am slightly older than the composer’s first child), and was interested with the autobiographical thoughts of musician that I would come to learn. Disappointed in Unmasked: A Memoir I was not.
(English composer Andrew Lloyd Webber).
The release of Unmasked: A Memoir last March coincided with the composer’s seventieth birthday. The book takes us with wit from his birth near London through his school days, early compositions, the release of his first musical with Tim Rice in 1972, and finally through the release of The Phantom of the Opera in 1986.
(The Phantom of the Opera iconography).
Before getting there, the book takes us through the wayward educational experiences of Lloyd Webber as a history student and son of the musical director of the London College of Music. Partly through the connections afforded by William Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice and Andrew released Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in 1972. The musical telling of the Old Testament story of the Coat of Many Colors from the Book of Genesis was geared to children, gained success, and has grown over time.
(English composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and English lyricist Tim Rice).
The pair of Rice and Lloyd Webber followed that initial success with the musical version of the passion and trial of Jesus Christ with the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. The music evolved first as an album’s worth of music that later evolved into the play and film. The work came as Lloyd Webber was dating Sarah Hugill, who would would become his wife, mother of two children by Lloyd Webber, and later his first ex-wife.
(English composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and his first wife, Sarah Hugill).
During their more than 11-years of marriage, Lloyd Webber gives a mostly favorable account of the life of a composer, husband, and father in Unmasked: A Memoir. From the telling, the story of the marriage was happy if not complicated a bit by Sarah’s diabetes coupled with the medical advice surrounding that diagnosis coupled with pregnancy. A lesser musical came during this period, followed by a successful collaboration between Rice and Lloyd Webber on the musical Evita, the telling of Eva Perón’s early life, rise to power, charity work, and eventual death. Lloyd Webber also had solo project Variations during this period.
It was toward the end of that period, when the professional collaboration between Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice began to end. Lloyd Webber would have success with the T.S. Eliot and themes offered through the work Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. With some relationship mishandling and the use of source material outside Tim Rice‘s camp, Lloyd Webber began finding success outside the collaboration with Rice. As the show was staged and Lloyd Webber had risked much to get it working, his love interests also began to seek alternative expression.
(English composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and his second wife, Sarah Brightman).
The composer and husband took a mutually keen interest in the soprano singing, dancing, acting, and then-married Sarah Brightman. It was a professional review of another that helped focus Andrew Lloyd Webber on Sarah Brightman. It was Lloyd Webber who would choose to cheat on Sarah Hugill and then announce that he would be leaving his first wife for his second. Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the leading role in the musical The Phantom of the Opera for Sarah Brightman.
(The most well-known musicals of English composer Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s career during the period covered by Unmasked: A Memoir).
The man that is Andrew Lloyd Webber is, perhaps, revealed in a bit more vibrant quality of “technicolor” in Unmasked: A Memoir than he likely would prefer. There is much to Lloyd Webber‘s life after the book concludes, including a third marriage with three additional children, that simply are not covered for concerns around brevity. If nothing else, we certainly have gotten to see an intimate portrait of one of the most commercially successful composers of our lives, if not longer than that.
As a fan of some of his musicals, I found enjoyment in reading this memoir while learning more about the man. My overall rating is 3.75-stars on a scale of 1-to-5 stars.
Matt – Saturday, January 5, 2019
Matt Lynn Digital 