Word: superstar
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...this one: shy middle-class British kid grows up listening to Mozart and Richard Rodgers, teams with buddy to write school musical, is discovered by slumming music critic, goes on to pen smash biblical epic Jesus Christ Superstar and monster hit Evita, splits with pal, has megatriumphs with Cats and Starlight Express, then comes up with extra-hot spook, The Phantom of the Opera. Along the way swaps bell-bottoms for swank Belgravia flat, 1,350-acre English country estate, choice property on the French Riviera, $6 million apartment in Manhattan, private jet, beautiful second wife and a worldwide musical...
...unlikely superstar. Of average height, his long hair a tousled brown arch across his forehead, the man in the tailored, gray pinstriped flannel suit digging into his sole at La Cote Basque could be mistaken for just another of Manhattan's prosperati were it not for one distinctive habit. Sometimes it comes during pauses in conversation, other times in mid-thought. Ever so softly, but frequently and with total absorption, Andrew Lloyd Webber is humming to himself...
Photos of the 20-year-old Lloyd Webber from the time of Superstar show an awkward, long-haired youth blinking uncomfortably in the spotlight of fame -- the phantom of his own opera. Now, in Britain at least, he is the most prominent musical figure since the Beatles, a fixture on TV talk shows who is fussed over and clutched at whenever he walks down a street or sits in a restaurant. During his partnership with Rice, Lloyd Webber was content to let his more outgoing, voluble associate front for the pair. "Tim was a natural performer," remembers Lloyd Webber...
...that basis the canniest show composer of our time has long since confirmed his standing. But the sure-to-be-smash opening of Phantom will doubtless confirm something else too. The awkward London youth has grown up, conquered Broadway and become what he once only envisioned: Andrew Lloyd Webber, Superstar...
Since 1971, when the iconoclastic Superstar shattered Broadway tradition with raucous electric guitars, grinding dissonances and a subject that was, to say the least, unorthodox, it has been fashionable to dismiss Lloyd Webber as a panderer to the basest melodic cravings of the mass audience, hammering home a few repetitive themes amid overblown orchestral climaxes and distracting technological gimmickry. His scores have been derided as derivative and too dependent on pastiche -- meretricious parrotings of his Broadway betters (Rodgers) and his operatic antecedents (Puccini...