I think back at the time, if it had been 1988, I would have thought Michael and Sarah probably would have been cast but I don't think, I think it's much better that the girl is younger and if Sarah would have been 26 or 27 then.
Andrew Lloyd Webber
The arts are the one thing that appeal right across all forms of politics, race, creed - everything.
People like to put you into a box. I'm afraid I don't sit in a box.
Together, we can nurture the talent of the future and bring the empowering force of music and the arts to a new generation.
'The Phantom of the Opera' is about love. It's as simple as that.
You never know what will happen. There is a thing called zeitgeist. You have to hit it.
I don't know what really makes a great musical or not. In the end, you write it, and you write it because you want to write it.
There's no getting around it: Writing is hard, while working with young performers is nearly always a joy.
'Phantom of the Opera' started in my little 100-seater converted church in Britain with a stage where we did what we did. But it was the score itself was what made it.
My wife says I can't remember if she has milk in coffee.
I have always tried with my shows - win, lose, or draw - to take the boundaries of music as far as I can.
You're the luckiest person in the entire world if you know what you really want to do, which I was lucky enough to know when I was very young. And you're the luckiest person in the world if you can then make a living out of it.
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.
I mean I don't really think about it. You know, do you know what I often say to myself? I think you're very lucky in life if you know what you want to do.
Two pieces of advice for young composers: Go away during technical rehearsals. And do not have a back operation.
It's interesting that the wondrous 'Hamilton,' which I could not be more ecstatic about, has taken a long time to perfect to bring it to Broadway. And it wouldn't have been possible if it was developed in the commercial theatre from the get-go.
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.
In Evita I wasn't really hugely involved with it. I gave a little bit of help but they needed a bit of technical help on the movie and so some of my music people went in at the end of the movie and helped out with it.
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.
I loved medieval architecture when I was very small; I don't know why.
I'm a ladies' man who can never make love. I'm resigned to that.
I got known as the school swot, which wasn't me at all.
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.
I guess the thing is that we remained huge friends after the original Phantom movie, when we decided it wouldn't take place and we just saw each other socially over the years so we were friends.
We try to get the best performance out of the artists. There is no point in saying to them, 'You're useless.'
I do want to write again. I hope to. But it's also important for me to realize, as I get older, that I don't have to be doing everything all at once.
A couple of back operations didn't cure anything, but instead, things got worse and worse and worse.
I put a hell of a lot of myself into 'Love Never Dies,' and I felt quite drained afterwards.
They should go back to the medieval tradition, which is that the nave of the church is always used for local business.
I think that the wonderful advantage we have in the film of being able to cast a girl as young as Emmy and which we couldn't do in the theatre of course because no girl of 16 or 17 could sing 8 shows a week, couldn't sing two.
If you just want ten songs to fit somebody else's script, then I'm not really the composer for that.
I think Michael Crawford realised, I think we all realised, once we'd gone the route of casting a very young girl, you can't really cast a 65 year old man opposite. Slightly different resonance I think. No, we weren't going to go there. We'd have Jack Nicholson in the lead.
What strikes me is that there's a very fine line between success and failure. Just one ingredient can make the difference.
Sometimes I get the story wrong, or it's the wrong story, and then things don't work.
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.
My love of musical theater was certainly not typical. I mean, it was considered to be very, very abnormal, in fact!
I haven't written a score that's going to change the Western world or the musical as we presently know it.
I began to think, now is the time. I found quite a lot of opposition in Hollywood about the idea of doing a film musical and we ended up having to buy the rights back. I'm glad we did because it meant John and I were able to make exactly the movie we wanted.
And it sort of jogged a memory of something that I read at school and I read it, and I thought God this is it. So you never can tell. I could find something this afternoon.
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.
What I can't tell is, I don't know if there's a subliminal resistance to the idea of a sequel to 'The Phantom of the Opera' anyway.
I've got to find something and if I find something that I like, I'll do it. If I don't, I won't.
Well the least favourite question is the one that one's asked particularly about in Japan is what's the difference between theatre and cinema and I think, well, that's about eighty bucks.
'School of Rock' is fun. Hopefully, I've fleshed it out with a few catchy songs and kept the spirit of the original movie.
Music, architecture and pictures have always been my passions, and all that material wealth has meant for me, is being able to have some of the pictures I liked.
If you look at my career... I couldn't possibly have chosen those subjects if I was thinking, 'That's a great commercial idea.' I'm not aware of a great musical where someone has done that.
I often think how lucky we were with 'Jesus Christ Superstar.'
If you know what you want to do, as I always loved musicals, and then to have been lucky enough to be successful with them, I think that's all you can ask isn't it? I think I don't really think too much about it. I am a bit shy socially, yeah, I admit that.
Two years ago I hadn't even thought of the Woman in White, and I was doing a television show and I said I hadn't found a story and the next day somebody rang me and said have you ever thought of the Woman in White.
'The Phantom of the Opera' is the biggest thing I've ever done, bigger even than 'Cats' which, in itself, I never thought we'd top.
