Andrew Lloyd Webber on Recording ‘Sunset Blvd.’ Live — And Nicole Scherzinger’s ‘One of a Kind’ Performance

The hottest composer in musical theater right now may well be one of its most veteran legends. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s sweeping scores have ruled Broadway for decades, and lately his shows have seemed irrresistible to theater’s most inventive directors — from the sensational Cats: The Jellicle Ball (taking the literal felines out of the picture and transferring the story to the ballroom scene) in downtown Manhattan, to a high-octane new Starlight Express in a specially-designed London theater far from the West End, to, most prominently, Jamie Lloyd’s starkly minimalist SUNSET BLVD. on Broadway, starring former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger in a monumental performance that’s already won her an Olivier award.

SUNSET recently opened at the St. James Theatre to largely rave reviews, and now Lloyd Webber is hoping an even wider audience will hear the show precisely as he imagined it when, on October 25, The Other Songs (the indie entertainment company founded by his sons Billy and Alastair Webber) releases SUNSET BLVD: The Album. In a departure from original Broadway cast recording tradition, the album was recorded entirely live at the Savoy Theater in London without, Lloyd Webber proudly notes, any technical audio “enhancements” — his effort for any listener to experience the production precisely as they would in the theater.

Ahead of the album release, Lloyd Webber — whose new musical adaptation of film The Illusionist is in the works — spoke to Billboard about the recording process, his abiding love of vinyl, Scherzinger’s performance and much more.

So many people worldwide have been introduced not only to your work, but to musical theater itself, through recordings of your musicals. What do you see as your responsibility when you record your shows?

Well, every case is different, isn’t it, really? I mean, Jesus Christ Superstar over 50 years ago was recorded as an album because nobody wanted to produce it in the theater, so the only way we could get it heard was to record it. [Today] you have Lin-Manuel Miranda who has just done his new show with The Warriors, recording it first. There’s no rule at all. But when you’ve got a production which is as good as the current SUNSET BLVD., it was pretty obvious that we should record that in the theater. This is the first time that I’ve ever recorded [a cast album] in the theater, because I thought that this was such an extraordinary experience for an audience that we should just do it, warts and all.

So essentially, you recorded a live performance as it was?

It is recorded as it was performed. It was completely, completely live. We [recorded] five performances, but basically we took one which was the best. Nothing was done in post-production, other than mix it. I decided that I wanted to produce it like I did Jesus Christ Superstar years ago, as a kind of musical radio play, [where] there wouldn’t be anything other than what you heard if you were actually in the building itself. Because I’m very proud of the sound that we have on SUNSET BLVD. I’m the first person in theater history to have introduced a sound desk into a theater back with Jesus Christ Superstar, and sound, to me, is incredibly important.

Have certain advances in audio recording technology made this kind of album possible?

Absolutely, because the radio microphones now are so directional that they’re not picking up outside sounds, and so you don’t get lots of extraneous noise. One of the great things in the show that’s now becoming kind of famous — the walk-around [outside] in the beginning of the second act where [actor Tom Francis] goes out into the street — I mean, the sound is exactly the same as it would be in the theater. Fundamentally, when you’re making a recording of a piece of work, you really want it to be as authentic as you possibly can make it.

And this is exactly as it was in the theater. I’m very proud of the fact that we didn’t do any enhancement at all. I mean, a lot of people would talk about how you compress a vocal; I’ve never done that in my career. I’ve always felt that if you’re mixing a show, you ride the vocal rather than compress it, and on this album, there’s no compression at all. We recorded a little bit of atmosphere in the theater as it was happening, which meant that we didn’t have to put reverb or anything on any of the vocals, because I just felt that it was essential that we had a little bit of the feeling of the theater itself.

Knowing now that you can record a show in this way, is it something you would want to see applied more widely?

Certainly, there are some shows where I think it works probably better than others. Some of the cast albums that I’ve had over the years, which I haven’t necessarily produced [myself] of course, I find that some of them are great, but they don’t quite have that energy that happens when something is being done live and it’s with you. But at the same time, what you don’t necessarily want to have on a live album is masses of applause. The way I’ve written [SUNSET], applause points are kept to the minimum, because I always feel that what you really want to do is lead an audience through, and then allow them to applaud at certain points.

So in SUNSET, there is no applause point at all until you get to the end of “With One Look” which is 35 minutes into the show, and Phantom of the Opera is exactly the same — I don’t allow anybody to applaud until the end of “The Music of the Night,” because I want people to concentrate on the music. You don’t want the whole thing to get derailed by, you know, masses of applause. I try and through-compose as much as I can. So I think the SUNSET album allowed us to do exactly what I was hoping for: if you listen to it, I hope it’s not like listening to a live album in one sense, where you’ve got lots of applause all the way through, because there are only very few moments, but it’s also very much like listening to it as you would have heard it in the theater — pure, I think, is the word I would like to use.

You posted a little behind the scenes video on Instagram of the vinyl-making process at Abbey Road Studios. Can you tell us a bit about that process?

Well, that’s not a difficult one for me to talk about. Because of course, when I started out, vinyl was everything, and I learned very early on that how an album was cut was absolutely vital to the sound. The louder the music is, the wider the groove has to be, so if you’re dealing with a show like — I mean, the most difficult vinyl cut I have ever had to do was the third side of Evita, which was basically 29 minutes and also contained “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina,” “Rainbow High” and a lot of the big bits, and I think we certainly did seven passes on the cut of that, because to compress that amount of sound into one side of an album was incredibly difficult. I would literally sit over the guy who was cutting the record and just say “we need to expand the groove here, and then we could contract it here,” because if the volume is not great at one point, you can then earn a bit of a right to expand the groove. It’s a very technical process.

Of course, I was incredibly cool 10 years ago, because my kids said, “Dad, you’ve got this fantastic vinyl collection, and you’ve got this incredible turntable, you’ve got turntables in all the houses.” And I said, absolutely, yes. “You’re so ahead of the curve, Dad!” Absolutely, absolutely. [Laughs.] There’s something extraordinary about vinyl. It always struck me that it was inevitable that vinyl would come back, and all I can say is the quality of the vinyl recording of [SUNSET] is just extraordinary.

What is your turntable of choice?

D’you know, I don’t know! But it’s the same one I’ve had for years and years and years and I’ve got them in all the houses. Apparently it’s incredibly wonderful. It sounds fine to me!

SUNSET is the latest of a few Andrew Lloyd Webber shows that’s gotten a true reimagining recently. Cats: The Jellice Ball recently was a sensation here in New York – I’m hoping it will see an extended life somehow…

We would love The Jellicle Ball to have a new home. I mean, obviously it can’t just be shoehorned into a Broadway theater. But there’s a very interesting thing that’s happening now. It seems to me that what’s opening up is the possibility, the inevitability, of the fact that people don’t necessarily want to go into Times Square — you know, the hassle and everything, and then it’s not all that nice there, necessarily. I think we’re seeing the possibility that people will go to see live entertainment and theater, really, where it’s happening, and not necessarily feel that they have to be made to go to some conventional theater, which I think is incredibly exciting.

It’s refreshing to see how you’re willing to give someone else’s new vision a chance with your work – it seems like you’re not terribly precious about creative control.

Yeah I mean, with The Jellicle Ball, I had a bit of a hand, and my music team was kind of over[seeing] what they were going to do with the music, which actually they got absolutely right, and so long as the music’s fine, then my work can breathe. You know, I don’t want somebody taking my music and altering it. With The Jellicle Ball, they kept the music and they kept the essence of what T. S. Eliot wrote, but gave it a new interpretation, a new production, and I think that’s thrilling. Why would I want to stop that? I’m excited whenever that happens.

Jamie Lloyd is doing a version of Evita in London this coming summer, and working with a director like Jamie, for me, is a wonderful thing, because he can talk from a different perspective than I do. The consequence of that with SUNSET BLVD., for example, is that we took the score a lot darker, in a lot more dangerous way than the original. But that is the joy. I’m a collaborator. The most important thing to remember about musical theater is it’s all about collaboration.

When Jamie first spoke to you about his ideas for the show, how did he describe his concept to you?

Well, he didn’t, really. He just said that he was very keen to have Nicole Scherzinger star in it. And I said, well, if you get Nicole to agree to do it, I’m more than happy, because I’ve known Nicole for 15 years now, more actually. She did a wonderful performance of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” on a TV program, and I think many people thought, literally, she’s the most exciting performer, and I got her to do Cats in London. But the thing about Nicole is that she’s always had this other career, being on The Masked Singer and doing X Factor and all these things as a panelist. So when Jamie said that she’d love to do it, I said, well, if she’ll do it, it’ll be the best thing that ever happened. Get her on stage, and I’m with you.

One thing about Nicole is that once she’s committed to something, she is the most incredible company member and leader of any performer I know. And do you know what? I suppose something that hasn’t been said, and I suppose I could say, is that of course she mentored Liam [Payne], from One Direction. On the Wednesday when he died, she was still texting him that day, and [that evening] the reviewers came in [to SUNSET], she’d just heard that he died. And the fact that she even did the show at all is extraordinary. I mean she is an amazing, amazing woman. She is without any question one of the finest performers I’ve ever worked with.

For so many people, her performance in SUNSET is a total revelation. But as you said, you’ve been a Nicole believer for over a decade now.

I’ve known that she’s one of a kind. I don’t think there’s any singer I know who can interpret and act through music in the way that she can. I mean, I’ve known some very, very great ones, but she’s absolutely extraordinary.

Certainly in terms of her beginnings in the music industry, it’s perhaps not what any of us would have expected!

No, but you’ve got to remember, people start, you know, somewhere where they have to get a job, don’t they? Look at Harry Styles.

When I walked out of the show, I wondered if we’ll see Nicole do more theater, or if this is a kind of lightning-in-a-bottle, once-in-a-lifetime role kind of thing. Have you two spoken about what comes after this for her?

I don’t know, you’d have to ask her that. But all I could say is, I would love to work with her again. It’s always got to be the right role, the right thing. And I think she’s completely made this role her own.