“We all dream a lot – some are lucky, some are not. But if you think it, want it, dream it, then it’s real. You are what you feel.”
“Maintaining our standard; that’s our challenge day-in and day-out.”
“I always think ‘Pity the Child’ is a goodie. And I’ve always liked a song called ‘Heaven Help My Heart,’ which is quite a corny number.”
“September is my favourite month, particularly in Cornwall. I felt, even as a child, that if you get a wonderful day in September, you think: ‘This could be one of the last, the summer is nearly over.’ If you get a wonderful day in May, you think: ‘So what, there’s more coming.’”
“I worked in a petrol station on the A1 one summer. I enjoyed it except when I was on latrine duty.”
“I do enjoy Singapore very much.”
“And all the good you’ve done will soon be swept away, You’ve begun to matter more than the things you say.”
“There is already huge public interest in stage musicals.”
“I have a fear of doing stuff that’s not very good and being remembered for that.”
“I recently declined to support a Conservative function because I’m so incensed about these wind turbines. Like all so-called climate-change doubters, I am very pro the environment, but I strongly believe that it is something that can only be cured locally. Some insane overall scheme isn’t going to cure all the problems.”
“Very few artistic partnerships last more than 10 years, and if they do they tend to go down the tubes.”
“You’ve got to have a young element in a show. Any project needs youth and dynamism as well old codgerdom and experience.”
“I love trains. I don’t even mind First Great Western, which is a stupid name because it implies every carriage is first class, but they’re not.”
“Digital is a disaster. No digital radio has the correct time and they don’t even agree with each other.”
“I have radios everywhere around the house, very old battered ones that I’ve had for years and years. None of them are digital.”
“To find a new British composer who is really good is rare.”
“I am sure if you went back to the days of ‘My Fair Lady,’ they would have had one public dress rehearsal, and that is it. And in a way, I would like to go back to that. Now you have people tweeting and blogging immediately, so you may as well regard your first preview as your opening night because you are going to get reviews.”
“I hate doing interviews. I get really bored talking about me.”
“I have always been obsessed with America, the geography, the history, and, of course, the music. I’ve been lucky enough to have travelled through the country a lot, and, in a kind of anorak way, I’ve noted which states I’ve visited and which ones I’ve been to most often and all that sort of detail.”
“In the world of musical theatre, if everyone says it’s a good idea, you wonder why nobody has done it before.”
“I love the history of popular music. I love to know what people are listening to, even if I don’t like it.”
“I hope ‘Chess’ will hit the big screen. It seems a natural to me. Good venues, tunes, and politics.”
“I always wanted to swim the Channel, which is insane.”
“I love watching ‘Pointless.’”
“I would like to write a play.”
“In the Bible, there is absolutely no motivation for Judas, other than that he is sort of a 100 percent figure of evil. And it seemed to me that that was probably not the case.”
“I would love to write a song with the Everly brothers. But it’s probably best not to work with someone you admire: they’ll just show up your inadequacies.”
“I went to religious schools. I wasn’t that enthusiastic, by and large, but it sunk in.”
“I must have written 15 lyrics for ‘The Lion King,’ and only five or six were used. Some were scenes that disappeared, some were earlier versions of songs that didn’t work, or else the characters changed.”
“The biggest lesson I had in my life was failure.”
“When I went to do law, I kind of drifted through that and thought, ‘I can pass these exams.’ And I didn’t – I failed three times, and each time I did worse and failed by a bigger margin. And that taught me so much.”
“I think failure is the best thing for some people. It tells you whether you’re in the right job or the wrong one.”
“It’s a cliche, but most people are good at something, and most people are good at what they’re enthusiastic about.”
“One of the problems with musicals and opera is you can’t ever hear all the words.”
“There was so much on ‘Superstar’ that we didn’t intend. I mean, there were things that we did which were innovative, but some of them were forced on us because we couldn’t get anybody to do the show. ‘Evita’ was much more sophisticated. That doesn’t make it better, but it does make it different. We knew what we were doing.”
“I like to write in fairly everyday language – I’ve always tried to write lyrics that, if people would speak the words, it wouldn’t sound like a song.”
“Two songs I like are ‘High Flying Adored’ and ‘Another Suitcase Another Hall,’ both from ‘Evita.’”
“I am sure if you went back to the days of ‘My Fair Lady,’ they would have had one public dress rehearsal, and that is it. And in a way, I would like to go back to that.”
“If you now have 20 previews, you will regard 19 of them as super-rehearsals, which is fine, except you are being watched by thousands. I remember suggesting on more than one show over the years, ‘Let’s not have any previews.’ But no one agreed with me. If you could do that, however, it would be a great gimmick – no previews, just opening night.”
“Most of my friends tend to be people who I’ve known since I was at school.”
“Although I’ve got lots of pals in showbiz, I haven’t got that many close friends.”
“He’s a very natural chap. The public David Essex is the same as the private one. He’s laid-back, charming, funny. There’s no side to him.”
“I think Barry Gibb would be a wonderful person to work with. Because he just writes good tunes.”
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