Andrew Lloyd Webber/The Making of Cats

Andrew Lloyd Webber (2016)
My first memory of TS Eliot's "Old Possum's Book Of Practical Cats" is of my mother reading the poems at bedtime when I was six. In the 1930s Eliot had written the poems for his godchildren and so I joined a long line of kids put to bed with these brilliant verses written for children but with a firm nod to their parents.

I loved those poems and I often would read them again. They invariably made me happy.

It was in 1978 that I first thought about setting the poems to music partly because I wanted to discover of I could write melodies to existing words.

Up to that time I had principally worked with Tim Rice. Although we collaborated on the structure of our shows, the music came first and Tim's words came later.

So I tried my settings of four of the poems at my Sydmonton Festival. They went down well enough for me to think of developing the whole of "Old Possume" as a concert piece rather on the lines of "Peter and the Wolf".

Because my instincts are those of a musical dramatist, I began playing around with a more theatrical order of the poems but at no time did I think of turning them into a full blown musical, although, I vaguely toyed with the idea of a companion piece to my "Variations" album, my first first solo hit that I wrote for my cellist brother Julian and rock band.

All this changed when my complete draft was performed at Sydmonton in 1980. I had invited TS Eliot's widow and she brought with her an unpublished poem "Grizabella The Glamour Cat". She told me that her husband thought it was too sad to publish in a children's book.

I well remember reading the short poem in front of her. My heart raced. Something in me was already saying that I wasn't dealing with a concert piece anymore.

For the story of "Grizabella" brought a different and emotional heart to the anthology and that to me spelled theatre. I asked Valerie if there was anything else.

What Valerie unearthed next was the clincher. She produced a poem about dogs and cats and a letter from Tom that suggested this was going to be the opening of entertainment which ended with the animals getting up into a big balloon that took them "Up, up, up past the Rusell Hotel, up, up, up, to the Heaviside Layer". Also along the way there was to be some sort of Jellicle event. The poems speak of a "Jellicle Ball".

The concert piece was no more. In the late 1970s dance was exploding in Britain. The British hitherto were supposed to be incapable of modern dance. But seemingly out of ether came Arlene Phillips' groundbreaking sexy and witty dance troupe Hot Gossip which caused that custodian of British TV morals Mary Whitehouse apoplexy. Wayne Sleep's dance show "Dash" was attracting a young audience all over the country. The newly opened Pineapple Studios in Covent Garden was heaving with wannabe dancers.

I had wanted to be a part of this for some time. I even sounded out Arlene Phillips about choreographing my album "Varietions" for Hot Gossip. Eventually "Varietions became the dance half of "Song and Dance."

I wondered if the cat poems could give me that opportunity. One of them is about a Jellicle Ball. Could this be my first chance to compose dance music for theatre?

Then there was the unpublished poem. It was pure fun "off duty" Eliot featuring a character called "The Man In White Spats" who was to guide us through Eliot's fantasy world of poor little (Pollicle) dogs and dear little (Jellicle) cats. Masochists can hear me play and sing my setting of the poem on a compilation album called "Now and Forever".

After he wrote the letter, Eliot decided to make the anthology about cats alone. The only one of his dog poems to be featured was "The Battle Of The Pekes and the Pollicles", presumably because of the tense dog induced situation Eliot described was sorted by "The Great Rumpuscat".

My first serious discussion about a stage musical was with Cameron Mackintosh. Cameron had produced several shows in the West End and some successful touring productions for the Arts Council. He was unique among the then West End producers in being, like me, passionate about musicals. But he had not produced any big hits, so there were more than a few raised eyebrows in the West End when it was gossiped that I wanted to develop the idea of the cat poems as a musical with Cameron.

It was Cameron who suggested Gillian Lynne as choreographer and our initial discussions with her led us to Trevor Nunn who, as head of the Royal Shakespeare Company, had recently worked with Gillie on a hugely acclaimed production of "The Comedy Of Errors".

This led me meeting another of Trevor's collaborators, the designer John Napier It was little wonder that I had to raise a second mortgage on my house. Investors were few and far between, until the first preview when mysteriously promised but unreceived money appeared from nowwhere.

To further add to the certainty that disaster was inevitable, Judi Dench, who Trevor had persuaded to play "Grizabella", snapped her Achilles tendon during rehearsals. Although she tried valiantly to return during our technical reahearsals, she fell badly. Trevor would not allow her to continue.

It's the stuff of legend now that Elaine Paige, who had played "Evita" so wonderfully, stepped into the role. Somehow, although we pushed back our opening night, we previewed on time. By the time we opened on May 11th 1981, "Memory" was climbing up the charts and "Cats" was away.

Yet even the opening night was nearly fatally holed by a bomb scare which thankfully was not transmitted to the cast until just before curtain call.

This famously turned both audience and fully cat costumed cast out onto the London Streets until the all clear was given. But we had at least got through the entire show. I often wonder what would have happened if the warning had come earlier and the critics had never got to hear "Memory".

Looking back it is hard to overestimate how well Eliot's poems lend themselves to music. They are full of irregular metres, and defined choruses that, I believe only an American could have written, particularly in the 1930s. It's almost as if they were meant to be lyrics; Valerie Eliot once confided in me that her husband was very fond of the hit songs of his day and often wrote his "off duty" words to them.

"Cats" went on to become, in its day, the longest running musical in both London's West End and on Broadway.

In the summer of 2014 an opportunity arose to bring "Cats" back into London for a Christmas season at the London Palladium. Over the past few years the idea of a completely new production had been mooted. But I felt this was a chance to reunite the whole original creative team and we had a hugely successful season which kept being extended. This resulted in an offer from our old friends at the Shuberts and the Nederlanders to produce the show on Broadway once again.

Andy Blankenbuehler, who had previously directed a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat approached me to say that he would love to bring a fresh vision to Gillian Lynne's choreography and this was the clincher for our US Producing partners to proceed.

This new production has given me the chance to tidy up some loose ends and also turn The Pekes and The Pollicles into Gus the Theatre Cat's performance rather than Growltiger's Last Stand, a section of the show I was never musically satisfied with. The show has been given a real new twist thanks to Natasha Katz's fantastic lighting.

So here we are embarking on our second life on Broadway.

I am thrilled to be able to introduce TS Eliot's timeless verse to a new generation.