Andrew Lloyd Webber was born in Kensington, London, the eldest of William Lloyd Webber, his father a composer and organist, and his mother Jean Hermione Johnstone, a violinist and pianist. His younger brother Julian Lloyd Webber is also a well-known solo cellist. Webber began writing music at an early age, as early as the age of nine. He would also put on "shows" with Julian and his aunt in a toy theater he built for himself after his aunt Viola gave him the idea. His aunt was an actress and took him to see many of her shows. He had also given music to Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats at the young age of 15. In 1965, Lloyd was a Queen's Scholar at Westminster School and studied history for a time at Magdalen College, although he left the course in 1965 to study at the Royal College of Music and pursue his interest in music and drama. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get Original Essay At 17 he was an up-and-coming composer of musicals and was later introduced to 20-year-old pop singer-songwriter Tim Rice in 1965. The former collapsed in The Likes of Us, a musical based on the true story of a man named Thomas John Barnardo. They produced a cassette of their work in 1966 but the project received no support. Although composed in 1965, The Likes of Us was not performed publicly until 2005, when a production was performed at Webber's Sydmonton Festival. In 2008, the rights were released by NODA in association with other groups. The first performance was by some kids from a children's theater group called Kidz R Us. The musical is similar to the Broadway musicals of the 1940s and 1950s; opens with a medley of music from the original show, and the score is reminiscent of some of Lloyd Webber's early inspirations, such as Richard Rodgers, Frederick Loewe, and Lionel Bart. In this respect it is different from the composer's later work, which can tend to be predominantly composed, and closer to opera than a Broadway musical. In the summer of 1967 Alan Doggett, a family friend of the Webbers who had helped work on The Likes of Us and who had been a music teacher at a London school for several years, asked Lloyd Webber and Rice to help them write music for the school choir. Doggett requested something like a pop cantata or something similar to The Daniel Jazz by Herbert Chappell, created in 1963, and also to Jonah Man Jazz by Michael Hurd, created a few years later in 1966, both of which had been published by Novello and were both based on the Old Testament of the Bible. The request for the new music came with a one hundred dollar advance from Novello to start working on it immediately. This came with the result of the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, a version of the biblical story about Joseph. Lloyd Webber and Rice made a fun number of styles of pop music, such as Elvis' rock'n'roll. Along with calypso and country music. The musical became even more famous as it was reviewed by Times Magazine for its fantastic performance. Webber and Rice modified the performance and added new music to lengthen the show. Even more, the expansion eventually occurred into a stage musical and subsequently a two-hour production began to be staged in the West End theater in 1973 following the huge success of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. Rice and Lloyd Webber wrote a song in 1969 for the Eurovision Song Contest called "Try It and See", which he did not win. After the lyrics were rewritten, it was called "King Herod's Song" in the third music they fashioned, Jesus Christ Superstar, which they finished in 1970. The original plan was to follow up JesusChrist Superstar with a musical comedy based on Jeeves and Wooster. books by PG Wodehouse writers. Tim Rice, however, wasn't sure, mostly because he feared he wouldn't be able to do justice to the books he and Webber liked so much. After starting work on the song's lyrics, he left the project and Webber wrote the musical with a man named Alan Ayckbourn, who brought the book and lyrics. It made no impact at the box office and closed after a short three-week run. A few years later, Lloyd Webber and Ayckbourn returned to this project, making a completely remade and more successful version, partially created by Jeeves in 1996. Only two of the songs from the main product which was "Half a Moment" and also "Banjo Ragazzo" . Webber once again collaborated with Rice to write the musical Evita in London in 1993 and later in the United States, the musical was based on the life story of Eva Perón. As with Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita was soon released as a musical album in 1976 and featured the vocal talents of a woman named Julie Covington singing Eva Perón's part. In the song Don't Cry for Me Argentina became famous as the song turned into a hit single and the musical was performed at Prince Edward and was directed by Harold Prince with Elaine Paige in the lead role Evita. A man named Patti LuPone came up with the role of Eva on Broadway in which the actress won a Tony Award. Evita became a hugely successful show that ran in the West End for ten years. Then it came to Broadway in 1979. Rice and Lloyd stopped working together after Evita. During an interview in 2011, LuPone accused Lloyd of writing "shit music". So in 1978, Lloyd Webber began a solo project working with his brother Julian and basing his work on Paganini's 24th Caprice, the music ended up going to number two in the UK pop album chart. The theme was used in the same way as the theme tune for ITV's popular South Bank Show used during its thirty-two year run. That same year, Webber also made a new score for a documentary series called Whicker's World, which the show used from 1978 to 1980. Lloyd was all the rage on This Is Your Life in November 1980 when he was particularly surprised by a man named Eamonn Andrews in television's Euston Road Studios. Lloyd would later be honored again by this television program in November of 1994, when a man named Michael Aspel came to visit him at the Adelphi Theatre. Webber began his next new project without anyone to write his lyrics, so he looked into the world of poetry of the famous T. S. Eliot. In 1981 Cats became London's longest running musical production, lasting around 21 years before closing. Also on Broadway, for 18 years, another record that would later be broken by another Lloyd Webber musical, The Phantom of the Opera. Starlight Express Mad in 1984 was another hit, but the music received negative reviews from critics. It had a record in the West End, but only lasted less than two years on Broadway. The show also toured twice in the United States, as well as touring Australian and Japanese productions, and a three-year tour of the United Kingdom, then moving to New Zealand in 2009. Webber wrote a piece of music called Requiem Mass which he dedicated his father later died in 1982. The music was released in New York in February 1985. Sacred music had been part of Webber's childhood and the music was inspired by an article he had read about poor Cambodian orphans. Lloyd had, on several occasions, written sacred music for the Sydmonton Festival. Lloyd Webber then got a Grammy Award in 1986 for his music Requiem placed in the category of best music.