E8 - The Words Behind the Songs | with Tim Rice

Wodcast

Legendary lyricist Sir Tim Rice joins the WODcast to discuss his extraordinary career and the intricate craft of songwriting. He shares behi

Key takeaways

• Tim Rice is one of only 27 individuals globally to achieve EGOT status.
• The hit song 'Hakuna Matata' was inspired by a phrase found in a Swahili phrasebook.

Main topics

• Songwriting mechanics
• Musical theatre history

Notable quotes

The words, you can't really change them.

Conclusion

An enlightening look at how the precision of language and the spontane

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:04) Welcome to the WODcast. Speaker 1 (0:06) Here we explore the power and beauty of words. Speaker 2 (0:10) We are your hosts. I'm Ben. And Speaker 1 (0:12) I'm Mabel. And today's guest is none other than lyricist Tim Bryce. We hope you enjoy the episode. Speaker 2 (0:22) You've got your notebook? Speaker 1 (0:23) I've got my notes. Well, cheers. Speaker 3 (0:27) Yes, bottoms up is the expression, I believe. Speaker 1 (0:29) Bottoms Speaker 3 (0:30) up. Bottoms up. Cheers. Congratulations. Bottoms up must come from that. Your swig, you see, the bottom of the glass goes up. Speaker 1 (0:40) It's Australian whiskey. Speaker 3 (0:42) Australian whiskey? What do Speaker 1 (0:45) you think? Speaker 3 (0:46) It's good. Speaker 1 (0:47) Get you going. Get Speaker 3 (0:49) me going. Speaker 1 (0:50) Sir Tim Rice, welcome to the WODcast. It is an absolute pleasure to have you here. Speaker 3 (0:56) Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Speaker 1 (0:58) So you are one of 27 people on the planet who is an EGOT, meaning you have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. Speaker 1 (1:09) and multiple awards in those categories. You have worked with musicians such as Freddie Mercury, Elvis Presley, and Burt Bacharach, as well as Elton John. You're the man that made us fall in love with a warthog with wind, while simultaneously giving us Hakuna Matata, not only to sing, but also to live by. The Lion King is currently the highest-grossing Broadway production of all time. And you never went to university. Well, Speaker 3 (1:37) I kind of went to university. I went to the Sorbonne in Paris only for six months. And I must say I spent more time exploring the rest of Paris than the Sorbonne. Speaker 2 (1:48) But Speaker 3 (1:48) I got French A-level when I was 17 or whatever. And I didn't want to go to university, strangely. And my parents thought I should go. I think I rather disappointed them. Both my younger brothers went in the end. But they kind of said, well, there's this course at the Sorbonne, which is only six months. Maybe you'd like to do that. And so I did. Speaker 3 (2:15) I worked on a petrol pump station to support myself once I got to Paris. And it was, you know, a very important part of my life. The petrol pump station I worked at in England before, in the vacation before I had to get out to Sorbonne. But it was... I look back on that year in Paris, nearly a year, with great affection. It was wonderful. It was the first time I'd really learned anything about any foreign place. Speaker 1 (2:48) And I read somewhere that you said that all of the ideas that you had for Jesus Christ Superstar, for Evita, for chess, for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was seeded from your childhood when you were eight years old. Is that true? Speaker 3 (3:03) Certainly Joseph, Superstar, Evita. And chess, in a way, perhaps not quite so much that one. That was inspired ultimately by the Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky chess match in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1972. But the others, I mean, I didn't know about chess, the game, when I was young, but I wasn't particularly interested in it. But certainly Joseph and Jesus were certainly characters I knew a lot about when I was very young. And Eva Peron. I knew about her when I was young because I collected stamps. And in my stamp collection, Argentina was the first country in my little schoolboy stamp album. I mean, there are some countries that would have come ahead of Argentina in alphabetical, like Albania, but they either didn't have any stamps or this stamp album didn't feel it was worth having a page for Albania. And on the Argentine page, I had a few stamps with this rather beautiful woman on. And I didn't know, I mean, I soon found out who she was, that she was called Eva Peron, a.k.a. Evita. But that was all I knew about her. But I think things you learn or pick up in the first 10 years of your life are more important than in any other decade. And I always think... As Orson Welles in that brilliant film Citizen Kane, the final thing he dreamt about, the final word he said as he was dying was rosebud. Speaker 2 (4:32) Rosebud. Speaker 3 (4:32) Rosebud. And nobody knew. This is the story. I mean, it's fiction. It was all about a newspaper magnate who made millions in America. It was based on Randolph Hearst, who was a real newspaper zillionaire in the 20s or 30s. And this was 1920s and 1930s, I hasten to add. Speaker 3 (4:54) And Orson Welles played Citizen Kane. And Kane, K-A-N-E, was really Hearst under a different name. And when the Citizen Kane, when Kane died at the beginning of the film, his last words were rosebud. And nobody had a clue what he was on about. And it's revealed at the end, it then goes through his life, it's revealed in the end that it was a sledge that he... played on down sliding down hills was called Rosebud. So that character was the final thoughts he had in his, in his life were, were, were something very important to him in his childhood. And I think, I think that's what I will think about when I get to that stage. It'll be something like that. Speaker 1 (5:40) The next musical. Speaker 3 (5:42) Yes. Oh, pity I'm dying. Cause I could, I could have done a good show. Speaker 1 (5:49) It's fascinating. I mean, chess has just done previews in Broadway 40 years after its first release to astounding success. Well, Speaker 3 (6:00) it's a bit early to say that. As we speak, it's in the middle of previews. And I'm quietly confident it'll do all right. But you can't bank on anything. You just don't know. The Speaker 2 (6:12) public will tell you. That's something we've reflected on. Speaker 2 (6:17) you've written those words 40, 50 years ago, not just for chess, but also for other musicals. And everything has changed around the words, right? The cast, the set, the whole production, but what has remained are your words. And I wonder... And the music, of course. But also the music I've been told has changed slightly. Well, I mean, music can be altered Speaker 3 (6:37) and still work. Like the recent production of Evita in London, Speaker 1 (6:41) the Speaker 3 (6:42) orchestrations were very different from the orchestrations of the original production. which was 1978. And it's been done in many ways, but the music in 2025 at the London Palladium with Rachel Zegler was very successful, but it was very aimed at a much younger audience, I feel. And the instrumentation and the machinery and the gadgets weren't even there in 1978, which was much more conventional. And it's always been rock. It's always been... And it's not really dated, if it sounds like I'm bragging, but the original Evita score still sounds great. I mean, Don't Crack Me Argentina is a big, lovely, corny ballad. And the orchestration of that hasn't really changed. But a lot of the other stuff, over different productions in different countries, the music does change a bit. Not the tunes, not the melodies, but the words, you can't really change them, which I suppose is good. Speaker 1 (7:41) Do you feel that lyricists are underappreciated geniuses? Of Speaker 3 (7:46) course. I think it's interesting that, yes, there is a difference, I think. Speaker 3 (7:55) between the public's thoughts about musicals, about that they have a different view of musicians to lyricists. I mean, obviously, they might have a view and say, well, these words are brilliant, these words are awful. But they kind of think, everybody thinks, that there's something about musicians or composers that is special. They're doing something that most people can't do. Well, they're wrong, because anybody can write a tune. Just like anybody can write a word or write, I mean, anybody could write a lyric. I'm assuming they can read and write. But, you know, whatever their language is, whatever their education, people can write, you know, I love you, doll or whatever. It might not be good, but they can do it. But people think, tend to think, composers, oh, I couldn't begin to compose anything. You can. There are only seven. letters in the musical alphabet, A, B, C to E, F, G. There are 26 in the ordinary British or English language alphabet. So you could argue, if we're starting from scratch, if you came on from Mars and you were presented with, this is language, you've got 26 symbols, learn them. This is music, it's got seven, learn them. You'd say, I'll go for the music. It's easier. And I'm not a great composer. I'm not even a good composer, but I could write your tune now within about... You know, it wouldn't be great. You wouldn't go home thinking I've just heard, you know, Mozart. But it would be a tune. And it's not difficult. And I could do the same, you know, I mean, anybody could do that with a bit of confidence. And I could do the same with words. But funnily enough, it's much harder to write instant words. You might get a title, but you've got to sit for words to actually, especially if you've got to write more than one verse. I mean, it's another unfair thing is the composer writes a tune. You know, Don't Cry Me Argentina takes an example. You know, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. He likes that. We'll keep that. And he's written verse one. This is not against Andrew at all. Andrew's a genius. I'm just saying, I'm using that tune. But when you've written as a composer, when you've written verse one, you've also written two, three, four, five, and six, because they're all the same melodically. Whereas the lyrics have got to be probably different, or at least, you know, have some changes every time. Speaker 3 (10:21) Also, in a show like Evita, not only does Don't Cry For Me Argentina have six stanzas or verses, the tune comes back, and it's right that it does, because it's a good tune. It comes back as a rocking tune, Oh What A Circus. But the tune still existed. The only difference between Oh What A Circus and Don't Cry For Me Argentina is the orchestration and the vocals. The actual tune, top line, is... in essence, the same. So in answer to your original question some hours ago, I do think lyricists get a rough deal sometimes. Speaker 3 (11:01) Listen, I'm very grateful and I would not have had any success without great composers like Andrew. But people do have this thing that, oh, he writes tunes. That's something no one can do or not many people can do, but anybody can do it. Speaker 2 (11:16) Do you think that might be because we don't communicate in tunes like on a day-to-day, whereas we use words quite flippantly? Speaker 3 (11:23) Yes, I Speaker 2 (11:23) think, yes, that's a good point. Speaker 3 (11:25) I think people, obviously, you speak with words and talk with words and you read. But to write something like a book or a poem or even words for a musical, that's quite a task. And a lot of people can do it really well. But it's not something that's – I don't think people think, my goodness, how on earth did he grasp the concept of 26 letters and words? They don't think that. But they do think that about music. Speaker 2 (12:00) Yeah, I see the difference that you're describing. And I guess I do wonder, when you write lyrics, where does the phonetics of the word sit? Like, how important is the sound of the word? Yeah, very important. You should have, one of the things, Speaker 3 (12:15) when you've got a great tune, like Don't Cry For Me Argentina, and the rhythm is, whatever speed it's taken out, it's da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. So you can't have, I'm trying to think now, thinking of a word that wouldn't fit, but you couldn't end with, I don't know, what's a word that has a stress on the second syllable? I mean, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. You can't have a word that goes da-da at the end. The words have to fit the emphasis that you would have when you're talking. So it's not, everything has to fit. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. You have to make sure that the words... Speaker 3 (12:57) if you like, emphasize the brilliance, Speaker 2 (13:00) which you hope is there, of the tune. So you always take the sound of the word and you match it with the... But Speaker 3 (13:06) there are no rules. The thing is that there are really no rules. It's, you just have to write something. I mean, certainly in musicals, you have to write something that's plausible, I think, and people can relate to. You don't want to preach. You don't want to be too clever. You just want to tell a story well. And if you tell a story well... And if it's a good story, then I think a lot of thoughts and a lot of messages come out of it, often ones that you don't even intend yourself. Speaker 1 (13:38) So your friend Don Black says you can say more in three lines of a good lyric than you can say in any novel or film. Speaker 3 (13:46) Well, that's a very good point. I would, yes, I mean, that's... Probably, I mean, if you take that literally, which I suppose, I mean, it's not wrong. I mean, obviously, you can say something, especially if it's backed up with a great melody. You can say something fairly, if not profound, but something that people can relate to everyday life. And, I mean, obviously, I wouldn't say that two or three lines of a lyric are as good as Ulysses or 1984. or Jane Austen or whatever, or Nicholas Nickleby. But they can make the same impact. You know, I mean, so many political slogans really can be songs, and people march down the street singing one line, and you get what they're saying, often frighteningly so. But High Flying Adored, which is also in Evita, I don't seem to be concentrating on Evita particularly, but High Flying Adored is a song about... Che Guevara, the character of Che, sings it to Ava and he's saying, well, you've got