Andrew Lloyd Webber

As the famed composer of many of Broadway’s biggest musical hits, Andrew Lloyd Webber chose an unusual path considering his birthplace and musical training. Born in England on March 22, 1948, he benefited from the fact that both his parents were established musicians in their own right. Andrew Lloyd Webber most likely takes his composing talents from his father, who was also a composer, and the strong piano arrangements that underlie much of his work almost certainly benefited from the fact that his mother worked as a professional piano instructor.

Andrew Lloyd Webber began piecing together the music for musicals as a youth, an interest he put aside for some time as he pursued history studies at Oxford. Never being much in doubt as to his musical calling, Webber soon abandoned his courses at Oxford and turned his attention fully to his music. At a very young age, Webber demonstrated that he had made the right choice. While he arranged the music, a young man named Tim Rice wrote the words for his first few hits. Their collaboration began with the smash hit Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which took off when Andrew Lloyd Webber was a mere lad of nineteen.

This religious-themed work blended with the highly secular sound of rock ‘n roll vibe to wow audiences of all stripes. Following this was another Christian-based musical, Jesus Christ Superstar, which repackaged Jesus’ likely public persona in terms more marketable to hip Londoners than the Bible was fetching. While T.S. Eliot fled America for England, Andrew Lloyd Webber crossed the Atlantic the other way, landing his famous 1971 Cats (loosely based on some of Eliot’s poems) on Broadway—the third of his musicals to do so, following Jesus and Evita—and in the process solidifying himself as a versatile, bankable talent.

Perhaps his most famous musical is The Phantom of the Opera, which is the longest-running show on Broadway and for some time featured Webber’s ex-wife Sarah Brightman.