Elder gays, tell me why you hate Andrew Lloyd Webber

The coming snobbery, 90% affected, 10% informed, will be vastly entertaining.

He stole more from me than Webster stole from Gary Coleman!

Only for the most basic of Datalounge reasons: he's ugly as fuck.

The early shows were great, but he really became rudderless when he ended his long-term partnership in the late 70s with Tim Rice. He became lazy and more interested in refurbishing Victorian churches than in writing really intelligent shows. After "Evita," everything depended on spectacle.

He has some terrific songs in almost all of his later shows, but very few of the scores hang together or seem very original.

Watching his shows are like eating ice cream. Fun for the moment but forgettable 5 minutes later

I liked Evita and Phantom.

I sort of enjoyed Sunset Blud

The rest was junk

Wait... I thought they liked him. They're always going on about Patti Lupone and Cats and all that.

Whistle Down The Wind has some magnificent material, as good as any of his best stuff, with the bonus of a brilliant lyricist in Jim Steinman. Some truly excellent sequences. A shame the show is so rarely performed, but the plot is problematic.

I’m already ducking to avoid the tomatoes in saying this, but another problematic show with some gorgeous material is Love Never Dies. I don’t dislike the plot as much as most, but were I choose a score to listen to for pleasure I would place it above Phantom. Theatrically, Phantom works much better, of course, but Love Never Dies is not as bad as phans and ALW haters make it out to be, at least not as represented in the filmed Australian production.

Because he foisted Sarah Brightman on the world.

I've always loved ALW. Early shows are great and nothing wrong with Spectacle!

“Joanna”

His insulting attempts at ripping off or reworking better European shows, chiefly ELISABETH (with the inferior EVITA) & the Maury/Yeston PHANTOM (with POTO).

His insipid arias are another. ‘I Don’t Know How To Love Him’ ruined Mary Magdalene as a character and JCSS as a show.

Finally, T.S.Eliot was insufferable, priggish, and twee enough, without driving the point home in musical theatre form.

Fucking an underage girl, marrying her, then fucking around on her and finally dumping her for Sarah Brightman.

i just prefer Maxwell Sheffield...that is all!

[quote] His insulting attempts at ripping off or reworking better European shows, chiefly ELISABETH (with the inferior EVITA) & the Maury/Yeston PHANTOM (with POTO).

Yeston and ALW were writing their Phantoms at the same time. I do believe ALW's premiered first. And Evita predates Elisabeth by a good decade.

R12, he ripped of a 2017 musical in 1978?

I saw the original London productions of Evita, Phantom of the Opera, Song and Dance, Cats, Sunset Blvd., Whistle Down the Wind, and The Beautiful Game. I have seen other productions of those, along with By Jeeves, The Woman in White, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Joseph. As an actor I have done Superstar, Evita, and Joseph. I am not an ALW hater. At his best he is a talented melodist, but he does "borrow" from classical composers, and has a very bad habit of repeating himself (listen to "English Girls" and "Tyre Tracks and Broken Hearts" or "Literary Men," "When You Want to Fall in Love," and "Unexpected Song").

What I hate is that he has become so powerful that no one of name/talent wants to work with him (no one can control him). There is no producer or lyricist who can stand up and say, "No, Andrew, you can't reuse that tune," or "No, Andrew, this isn't the time for a big ballad." Of all his recent-ish work, The Beautiful Game was the best. He worked with a brilliant writer, Ben Elton, and the director's only failing was casting actors much too old for the leads (they sang well, at least). ALW has tremendous talent, but is short on theatrical taste. The more he rewrites, the worse things get.

[quote] He worked with a brilliant writer, Ben Elton

A brilliant TV writer, absolutely. But anyone who writes "We're the team that rocks/We're the dogs bullocks" can’t be called a brilliant lyricist.

I always ignore the lyrics in an ALW musical. Much safer. I should have referred specifically to the show's book.

R18, don't know what you mean.

Because I paid to see "Aspects of Love."

Because of the insipid, trite, cringingly awful lyrics to "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina."

[quote]When You Want to Fall in Love," and "Unexpected Song"

In all fairness, "Unexpected Song" was used because Bernadette Peters wanted a new song for herself. I believe "Unexpected Song" was the original lyric. It was rewritten as "When You Want to Fall in Love" (The better song in MHO) for the fully staged version. When BP wanted a "new " song, they simple switched back to the original lyrics.

As for ALW referencing other composers, at least in the case of POTO, I would be pretty pissed if a musical about opera didn't reference opera. (And who knew Puccini isn't in public domain?).

That said, ALW is a horrible man. There was an earlier musical based on Whistle Down the Wind, which I have heard is better than the ALW version. ALW bought the rights telling the creators that he was going to produce it, but actually it was to kill it.

I don't find Webber's borrowing from great scores a problem. Tarantino gets praised for ripping off other movie makers and his films are considered critical successes.

If you "borrow" and have no talent but are still successful I can see why it might anger some people but Webber is talented. I'm not a big fan of any of his work except Jesus Christ Superstar, the music and the vocals in the original concept album is some of the best rock music of that time imo.

The man is talented but I do have a difficult time understanding why he picked the subject matter he did. Not a fan of any of the stories he chose to tell including the current Cinderella. Why would anyone retell that story one more fucking time?

OMG, have you heard the dross he’s turned out for CINDERELLA?

It’s a shite sandwich with Covid sprinkled on top.

Appalling.

There are lots of sites on you tube listing and demonstrating his plagiarism of melodies and harmonies. I wish they had transposed the ripped off pieces to the same keys that Webber uses to demonstrate it even more clearly.

he needs to come out

^^^ Please God, no!

Because of what he did to La LuPone.

R9 and R21 win!

Wonder if his affinity was more for rock music but he didn't think of himself as that type so he went another direction.

Could be he lacked true inspiration because he wasn't working to make the kind of music he really loves. Rock has always been as much about image as the music and Webber is not the rocker type.

[quote] There was an earlier musical based on Whistle Down the Wind, which I have heard is better than the ALW version. ALW bought the rights telling the creators that he was going to produce it, but actually it was to kill it.

I believe this is somewhat misleading. Lloyd Webber got the idea to make a musical of the lovely British film "Whistle Down the Wind," but discovered that others held the rights and had already had their version tested somewhere (at a festival?). So ALW made a deal to acquire joint rights to the property, with the proviso that he set his version not in the UK, so he chose Louisiana for his version. The "Whistle Down the Wind" musical created by the original set of authors is still available for performance; I've heard a tape and it sounds more like Benjamin Britten than ALW.

Because he is ugly as sin. Like actual sin.

While he's not a particularly interesting composer, he is a gifted and witty writer of pastiches. To dismiss him as a plagiarist or to complain that he copies other composers is missing the point, as that's his great and lucrative skill and pretty much always has been. It's a talent, for sure.

ALW's problem is that he has as much dramaturgical intuition as he has sex appeal. Which is why almost every new musical he's written since he became wealthy enough to produce them himself (anything post-Phantom) has been a hot mess. Almost always, about the third of the material in any if these scores will be great - Whistle Down the Wind, Aspects of Love, The Woman in White, even Stephen Ward had its moments - but they're all supremely unsatisfying as dramatic stage works. But if I was as wealthy as he is, I'd probably follow my bliss and pursue whatever creative projects I wanted to as well. £1.2 billion is a lot of fuck you money.

He is, of course, also a Tory. I can easily hate him because of that.

So he's the George Lucas of musical theater?

Evita is an interesting idea for a show. The others are not.

He has a good melodic sense. He should have worked more on content.

UGLY AS SIN

The settlement prevents me from saying.

But come, swim in my Sunset Blvd pool.

[quote]Why would anyone retell that story one more fucking time?

Why not?

Joke that was going around at the time.

Q: Why did Roger Moore quit during the rehearsals of Aspects of Love? A: Because when ALW found out he couldn't sing, dance or act he wanted to marry him.

I can't believe I never heard that one, R40! Made my day.

R26 Or put another way...(given how litigious he's been known to be I'm surprised they got away with this)

God awful music...shrill and unsingable.

I loved ALW when I was a kid. Grew up in Denver and saw every one of his shows that came through the Buell Theater there, went on a school trip to NYC and saw a few there, too.

Then I grew up.

He was a major financial backer and fundraiser for Margaret Thatcher. That's enough for me to hate him.

CATS!

ALW is the anti-Sondheim.

The only time I liked him was during his Kennedy Center Honors tribute concert. It was kind of touching watching him trying to hold back the tears (even if it made him look like he was suffering a stroke). Or perhaps it was Betty Buckley massacring his song that made him feel like crying...

Like R44, I really enjoyed his shows as a child, and even somewhat into young adulthood. But then I studied music in college and the exposure to the works of what are considered great composers, as well as hearing the works of contemporary, new talents, really showed how mediocre ALW's music really is in comparison. It's not that his music is bad, it's just not particularly interesting aurally. While I haven't really kept up on his post-POTO shows (like R44, I grew up), every time I her something of his it strikes me as simplistic. He basically writes pop music for the theater. While I wouldn't go so far as to say I hate him, I really dislike the way he's made out to be some great, gifted, highly-venerated composer when his output is on the same level as the bozos who write insipid pop tunes.

I actually met him and got his autograph during previews of "Whistle Down the Wind". It was a totally forgettable show, but gave Boyzone a hit when they needed one.

And yet born on the same day of the year, R47.