I think the thing's that perhaps sad really is that younger people haven't come in and I think it must have been absolutely fantastic to have worked in the 50's when you had all of the great Broadway composers and when West Side Story didn't win the Tony Award.
I would have gone right ahead but the only thing, the only phenomenon that's going on now of course, which is different in my experiences, is that you are getting things planted in the Net by people about the Woman in White on the Net. That's not a nice change.
I'm going to take the kids away over Christmas but I don't, I've written 14 musicals now, I don't want to rush into doing something just for the sake of doing it. I want to do it when I find a story.
It must have been an extraordinary time. I guess the worrying thing about musical theatre to me, is if you look at the London season this year, mine is actually the only one to have come in.
Negative things, and they were all deliberate and I'm not going to say who they were but I know who they were and it was in the business, and that's not a good sign.
Superstar was made so early in my career I had nothing to do with it at all. The first time I saw it was the opening screening.
We felt we had to know something of his back story. I don't think people in the cinema would just accept that he's there. I think we had to learn how he (got there).
When we finally came to start work on this, the joy was it was only Joel and I, we didn't have to answer to anybody, and we didn't have to submit a screen play or anything like that. We just wrote it and then made it.
The next few years are going to be horrendous in the UK. The last thing we need is a Somali pirate-style raid on the few wealth creators who still dare to navigate Britain's gale-force waters.
I'm a composer, and therefore I know when I've written a good tune. When you've written a good song is when you know that the lyric is completely coalesced with the song.
Well we'd just seen Gerry. I think he wanted somebody who had that authority and was handsome. The thing is, he's a big hunk isn't he? All I can say, if you look at his chat line, or the Phantom website, it's quite worrying. Because the girls really seem to love him.
Here's the truth. The proposed top rate of income tax is not 50 per cent. It is 50 per cent plus 1.5 per cent national insurance paid by employees plus 13.3 per cent paid by employers. That's not 50 per cent. Two years from now, Britain will have the highest tax rate on earned income of any developed country.
I have lived and worked in Britain all my life. Not even in the dark days of penal Labour taxation in the Seventies did I have any intention of leaving the country of my birth.
What strikes me is that there's a very fine line between success and failure. Just one ingredient can make the difference.
I often think of random melodies. And I pretty much hear in my head what I want to do with the orchestra as I'm writing on the piano.
We don't have butlers. Obviously we have people who look after the houses, but I try not to run things formally.
I don't think I am that materialistic, actually. Obviously at home in the country the art collection is important, but we have one big room in the middle of the house where we do everything - the television, the kitchen, everything.
The regrets in the theatre have always been the shows that you know ought to have worked but for one reason or another haven't.
People in Britain always think of 'Jesus Christ Superstar' as a musical - it wasn't.
The moment the doctor said he wanted to do a biopsy, in my heart I thought I'd probably got it. But I also know a lot of people who have also had prostate cancer, so I had a reasonably good idea what to expect.
