(6 of 7)
The music does not outdo the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Ray Charles, Prokofiev, Orff, Richard Strauss or any other of the influences to be found in it. But it does fuse those elements into a new kind of thespic amalgam that has high dramatic point, melodic joy, and rarity of rarities, wit. Tim Rice's lyrics occasionally turn mundane in the otherwise commendable effort to speak in contemporary terms, but his psychologically aware variations on the Gospels are often adroitly arresting. Already beginning to doubt the steadfastness of his friends, Christ tells the Disciples at the Last Supper:
The end
Is just a little harder when brought about by friends
For all you care this wine could be my blood,
For all you care this bread could be my body.
With only two published works to their credit (the other is a children's musical play about Joseph in Egypt), the young team of Lloyd Webber and Rice have pushed forward the frontier possibilities of rock opera and made, just for starters, what Rice calls "a million quid" apiece ($2.4 million). They are becomingly modest about their talents, grateful for their extraordinary luck and sensibly reserved about future plans.
False Prophets
Lloyd Webber, dark, slender and intense, likes to point out defensively that this is his first opera—a defense that only someone who knows Verdi's first opus can fully appreciate. Rice, tall and blond, finds inspiration in the rhyming dictionary, talks like a character out of a book by his favorite novelist, P.G. Wodehouse, and looks like somebody's kid brother home for the long hols. If fame and fortune have not yet disturbed them, it may be because so much of it has come in the U.S. "The LP record is an absolute dud in England," Rice explains. "Only three weeks ago a friend of my mother's said, 'Wouldn't it be wonderful if Tim could make a living out of that song.' "
An incredible skein of dramatic rights, record rights, concert rights, managers' cuts, royalties, subsidiaries and merchandisers' rights (buttons, T shirts) holds Superstar together. But infringement suits and restraining orders, just to keep people from pirating words and music, have cost MCA and Producer-Manager Stigwood $125,000 in lawyers' fees already this year. Their record to date: 15 court actions, dozens of unauthorized shows closed down. With the success of the original LP, Stigwood moved toward developing a stage version and launching touring concerts less than a year ago, only to find that he had been beaten to the punch. By whom? By churches, in cities and towns large and small from New Jersey to New Mexico, who were using Superstar to stir up their congregations.
Such infringements were mostly overlooked, especially at first. But as real pirate shows proliferated, MCA and Stigwood swung into action. Even an order of nuns in Sydney, Australia, were smitten like false prophets for planning their own staged production. "Like all Christians, these nuns believe Jesus Christ is theirs," explained Sydney Impresario Harry M. Miller, sternly adding, "What they are forgetting is that there is such a thing as copyright."
"Hi Kids, It's Me, Jesus."