Last week, Britain’s most famous composer recounted his dazzling rise to the musical stratosphere and, in moving detail, the dark moments which pulled him to the brink of suicide. Today, in the second and final extract of a gripping autobiography, he reveals his heartfelt regret at leaving his young family – and recounts the explosive romance with stage star Sarah Brightman which changed his world for ever.
The 1980s had dawned, Cats was on its way to becoming the kind of global hit you can only dream of. Yet what happened next in my private life would lead to a musical that not only eclipsed Cats but changed the path of my life – and the fortunes of the vast battalion of theatre-owners and producers, City financiers, shysters, lawyers and executives who have profited handsomely out of The Phantom Of The Opera. Quite simply, I fell in love with a member of the cast of Cats.
Some friends counselled that I was an incurable romantic who poured affairs of the heart in double measures. Almost everyone was appalled by what I did next – publicly confirming that, after nearly 12 years of marriage, I was leaving my wife and my children, then aged five and three.
This is one of the parts of my life that I have been dreading writing about the most. What you are reading is the umpteenth rewrite. That is the best I can say.
I had met my first wife, Sarah Hugill, at a party thrown by a friend in Christ Church, Oxford – I was only 21 and she was even younger, a slip of a 16-year-old schoolgirl.
Lloyd Webber with Sarah Hugill in 1971, the year she became his first wife
Sarah’s father Tony had individually won the Croix de Guerre for bluffing a German commander into surrendering an entire French village. He had served in the 30 Assault Unit set up by James Bond author Ian Fleming. Tony wasn’t over-keen on Fleming. Nonetheless he gets a big name-check in Casino Royale and is supposed to be one of the role models for James Bond himself.
Falling in love with Sarah didn’t take long. I asked her to dinner at a bistro. I thought she was ordering ludicrously small, simple things. She didn’t know whether she was supposed to pay her share of the bill. That did it. I had to see her again.
I had bought an Earls Court flat and – just a few hundred yards from Sarah’s school – it came in very handy. Since she was supposed to be revising for her summer exams, she had loads of free time, and most days she would clock into school and promptly come round to me. Fairly soon I gave her a spare key. There are worse things when you’re 21 than a pretty schoolgirl waking you up in the morning.
Come March, it was time to meet her parents. Thanks to the manners Auntie Vi drilled into me, I got on well with my elders and Tony and Fanny Hugill were no exception.
Love may well change everything but in my case it had me writing fast and even more furiously. Superstar’s structure was advanced enough for me to break the score down into record sides. I proposed to Sarah in late 1970, which was a stupid formality; we had long presumed we would get hitched as soon as she legally could.
I had the cash to buy a smart BMW 2002 so, as an unofficial engagement present to Sarah, I gave her my old Mini, which she promptly drove into the back of a lorry on Earls Court Road.
Our wedding service was simple and beautiful. Despite the fact I managed to spill champagne all over her wedding dress, Sarah glowed with incandescent triumph. We were insanely in love, and we drove away from the reception to great cheers from the guests. It was only halfway to our honeymoon hotel that I noticed Sarah was crying. I pulled the car over and took her in my arms as the reality of what I had done hit me. I had taken a girl aged barely 18, straight out of school, and propelled her away from her family into a new life that happened to include being the wife of the composer of the first British musical to premiere on Broadway – a debut that was now just weeks away.
I was going through my adolescence in my early 30s
Sarah had never even been to America. All I could think of to say was how much I loved her. For the first time in my life I felt responsible for something whose outcome I could not control. Despite this, the first years of marriage were joyful. Sarah proved a supermum to the two children we had together, allowing me to grasp every career opportunity thrown at me. Unfortunately it wasn’t the only opportunity I grasped. Whatever else money can’t buy, it can buy you freedom and with freedom comes the chance to play. By 1981 and aged 33 I found myself feted for the smash-hit musical Cats – which happened to feature some of the most attractive girls in London.
I loved having fun with our gorgeous-looking singers, but it wasn’t with them that I strayed. During the summer I began an affair with a girl who was teaching at, of all places, Westminster School. She was a distinct improvement on the master who had taken a shine to me years ago. I wasn’t in love and I truly hope she wasn’t with me.
It never crossed my mind that I would leave Sarah, but she found out about it and I was devastated, not so much for myself, as for what I had done.
Looking back, I suppose it was inevitable that I was going to have a serious affair at some point.
Sarah and I were so young when we married and, with all that was happening, it was as if I was going through my adolescence in my early 30s.
Lloyd Webber with Sarah Brightman in the 1980s
It was choreographer Arlene Phillips who, four years earlier, prophesied that Sarah Brightman would have an impact my life. Arlene – who also directed the dance troupe Hot Gossip – had eyeballed me and said: ‘There’s a girl in Hot Gossip who’s going to change your life. She has a voice from heaven. Her name is Sarah Brightman.’
Sarah was cast in Cats yet it was almost four years before I realised just how incredible her singing was when I went to see a children’s opera she was starring in.
I was poleaxed by a captivating soprano voice and magnetic stage presence, gifts that would see her cast as the star of Phantom Of The Opera just a few years later.
Afterwards, I aimed for her dressing room, which she was sharing with both a hamster she was looking after for some sibling or other and with Mike Moran, a sought-after keyboard player. They were clearly an item and were going back into town to the Zanzibar club. Sarah suggested I joined them – and I did, a split-second decision that changed my life.
Over plates of congealed cacciatore, we both fell in love
At the Zanzibar I discovered that Sarah’s real ambition was not to dance but sing. She told me she was married to the son of an eminent brain surgeon. However, marriage hadn’t stopped her having an affair with one of the Cats keyboard players. Sarah was fondling Mike’s hand; clearly she liked keyboard players with flying digits.
Our relationship was sealed on a brief trip together to northern Italy, where Cupid beckoned on an autostrada in the sheeting rain. We were driving from Milan to the coast at Portofino and I planned to stop off for a decent lunch en route. But the rain was so gruesome that the autostrada was virtually closed and there was nothing for it but to stop in a motorway cafe for congealed chicken cacciatore. It would be 4pm before we left, but neither of us noticed time pass. We talked and talked about music, and about each other. Her father Gren was a property developer. Her family was not rich but well off enough that she and her two younger brothers and three sisters were educated privately.
Sarah’s mum Paula had been a dancer who once graced the stage (properly clothed, I stress) of Murray’s Club, today remembered as the Soho haunt where Stephen Ward met Christine Keeler. Apparently she kept baby Sarah in a carrycot backstage. By the time we got to Portofino, I knew there was no alternative: I was in love. We stayed at the empty Splendido Hotel, where Sarah wore a white miniskirt that elicited whistles from windows of houses that I swore were uninhabited. I was a little embarrassed but I loved talking music and I loved the looks I got from the waiters in our deserted hotel. And of course I loved the sex.
By the time we left, I had proposed. Well, in truth it wasn’t so much a proposal as a ‘we’re in love, we’re both married, what the f*** do we do about it?’ We decided Sarah would meet my mother, I would meet her parents and if we survived that test I would break the news to my wife. I don’t think my mother was surprised. Ever the bohemian, I suspect she thought homespun family life had overtaken me too young and that a bit of turmoil would do me good. Most importantly, Sarah liked cats which meant she had to be all right. Sarah B’s parents were a bit nonplussed but I guess resigned to the fact that their eldest daughter might get up to anything.
It took two false starts before I told my wife I was leaving her. If someone can be both devastated yet resigned, that’s what she was. There were moments when I wavered. My wife even suggested she turned a blind eye and let me lead a double life to keep the marriage intact. But I couldn’t lead my life like that. I’m not the sort of person who can duck and dive. Besides, I was head over heels in love with Sarah B, as my friends now called her.
I decided against everyone’s advice to come clean publicly, openly taking Sarah B to the post-opening party of Daisy Pulls It Off – a play I’d seen, bought and revamped that ran for 1,180 performances, toured for two years and is still staged all over Britain – and letting a press statement hit the fan.
Sarah 1 (as my ex became known) stayed with the children at our home in Sydmonton, Hampshire, while Sarah B moved into the flat in London. A good divorce lawyer should be firm but sympathetic. Mine turned out to be a right pig. But by mid-March 1984, our respective divorces were finalised and on March 22, my 36th birthday, Sarah and I quietly married at the register office in Kingsclere, the village next to Sydmonton.
Our plan was to get through the first night of Starlight Express a week later and then break the news.
There was a particular reason for keeping schtum. That night the Queen, Prince Philip, Prince Charles and Princess Diana were all coming to a charity gala of Starlight Express in aid of the Centre for World Development Education. To have both the Queen and the heir to the throne come to the theatre was virtually unprecedented, and we didn’t want anything to overshadow that.
Over the coming years, our careers continued to thrive but our marriage was not without its problems, and it was while it was going through a rocky patch that friends introduced me to Madeleine Gurdon. Madeleine is the daughter of an Army brigadier and was coming to the end of a career as a professional equestrian when I met her. She had – still has – a mind like a razor, and I adored spending time with her. There had been publicity about Sarah’s affair with the original Phantom keyboard player, and hugely fond of her as I still am, things weren’t the same for me after that. Sarah was shattered when I said I was leaving her but we continued to work together.
As for Madeleine, she and I have been married now for 27 years and counting. She has stood by me like a rock through some grisly career moments and four missing years thanks to health problems that took me to a pretty dark place. It is no secret that most people assumed I would not compose again. Then I turned the corner. I decided to give up alcohol and went back to my roots with a new work, School Of Rock, based on the Jack Black/Mike White movie. It is the first of my musicals to premiere on Broadway since Jesus Christ Superstar.
As I approach my 70th birthday, I look back and think again how lucky I have been. You are very lucky if you know what you want to do in life. I am doubly lucky that I not only have made a living out of my passion but a hugely rewarding one.
As I write this, I haven’t found a subject for a new show. But I’ll find it. I have to get back to workshops and rewrites, out-of-tune rehearsal pianos and sweaty rehearsal rooms, dodgy previews and the blind panic of opening nights.
I am having dire withdrawal symptoms. Even if I haven’t got near to writing Some Enchanted Evening, I hope I’ve given a few people some reasonably OK ones. I’d like to give them some more.
Unmasked is published by HarperCollins on March 8 at £20. Offer price £16 until March 25. Pre-order at mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640; p&p is free on orders over £15.