Tim Rice

After studying for a year in Paris at the Sorbonne, Rice joined EMI Records as a management trainee in 1966. When EMI producer Norrie Paramor left to set up his own organization in 1968, Rice joined him as an assistant producer, working with, among others, Cliff Richard and The Scaffold.

Rice became famous for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cricket, The Likes of Us, and additional songs for the 2011 West End production of The Wizard of Oz. Joseph and Superstar were additionally known as two of the first hit musicals that drew their sound from the rock and pop music that became embedded in culture in the 1960s.

For The Walt Disney Company, Rice has collaborated individually with Alan Menken and Elton John, creating productions including Aladdin (winning an Academy Award for Best Original Song, Golden Globe and Grammy Award for Song of the Year for "A Whole New World" in 1992) and The Lion King (winning an Academy Award and Golden Globe for "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" in 1994).

In 1996, his collaboration with Lloyd Webber for the film version Evita won Rice his third Academy Award for Best Original Song with the song "You Must Love Me". Rice has also collaborated with Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson of ABBA on Chess and with Rick Wakeman on the albums 1984 and Cost of Living. In 2009, he wrote the lyrics for Andrei Konchalovsky's critically panned reimagining of The Nutcracker, set to the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.[10]

Rice reunited with Andrew Lloyd Webber in 2011 to pen new songs for Lloyd Webber's newest production of The Wizard of Oz which opened in March 2011 at the London Palladium. Rice has since, however, rejected working with Lloyd Webber again, claiming their partnership has run its course, and they are "no longer relevant as a team".[11]

On 9 November 1979, Rice hosted a highly publicised edition of Friday Night, Saturday Morning on the BBC which had a heated debate on the newly released film Monty Python's Life of Brian, a film that had been banned by many local councils and caused protests throughout the world with accusations that it was blasphemous (as the lyricist of Jesus Christ Superstar, Rice himself had been accused of blasphemy a decade before). To argue in favour of this accusation were veteran broadcaster and noted Christian Malcolm Muggeridge, and Mervyn Stockwood (the Bishop of Southwark). In defence of the film were two members of the Monty Python team, John Cleese and Michael Palin.[12]

He has also been a frequent guest panellist for many years on the radio panel games Just a Minute and Trivia Test Match. Rice also made an appearance in the film About a Boy. The film includes several clips from an edition of the game show Countdown on which he was the guest adjudicator. His other interests include cricket (he was president of the MCC in 2002) and maths. He wrote the foreword to the book Why Do Buses Come In Threes by Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham, and featured prominently in Tony Hawks's One Hit Wonderland, where he co-wrote the song which gave Hawks a top twenty hit in Albania. On 2 December 2010 he addressed the eighth Bradman Oration in Adelaide. In October 2011, and November 2016 to February 2017, Rice was guest presenter for the BBC Radio 2 show Sounds of the '60s, standing in for regular presenter Brian Matthew who was unwell.[13]

Beginning in the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in partnership with Broadway Podcast Network, Rice has presented Get Onto My Cloud, a podcast retrospective of his career.[14] A number of episodes feature verbatim excerpts of his autobiography, and all include various recordings of his, and other associated musicians’, work.

He released his autobiography Oh What a Circus: The Autobiography of Tim Rice in 1998, which covered his childhood and early adult life until the opening of the original London production of Evita in 1978. He also took part in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six Books for which he wrote a piece based upon a book of the King James Bible.[15]

Rice was the president of The London Library, the largest independent lending library in Europe from 2017-2022.[16]

Along with his brother, Jo, and the radio presenters Mike Read and Paul Gambaccini, he was a co-founder of the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles and served as an editor from 1977 to 1996. In September 1981, Rice, along with Colin Webb and Michael Parkinson, launched Pavilion Books, a publishing house with a publishing focus on music and the arts. He held it until 1997.[17][18]

Rice is a patron of the London-based drama school, Associated Studios[19] and is also a patron of Thame Players Theatre along with Bruce Alexander.[20]

Rice was made a Knight Bachelor by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994[21] (entitling him to the address "Sir Tim Rice" or "Sir Tim"), was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1999, and was named a Disney Legend in 2002.[21]

In 2008, Rice received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[22]

He is a fellow member of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.[23]

Rice was a supporter of the Conservative Party, but in 2007 stated that the Conservatives were no longer interested in him and that his relationship with the party had "irrevocably changed."[31] Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, both supporters of Margaret Thatcher, attended her funeral in 2013.[32]

Rice raised funds for the Euro No campaign in 2000.[33] In 2014 he was a donor to the UK Independence Party.[34] In May 2016, he told The Spectator that he would vote for Brexit in the following month's referendum on the issue, saying: "It would be good to spend one's final years as part of a truly independent nation once more." He said he had voted to remain in the European Economic Community in 1975 "from a standpoint of ignorance".[35]

Describing his religion, Rice stated in a 1982 interview, "Technically I'm Church of England, which is really nothing. But I don't follow it. I wouldn't say I was a Christian. I have nothing against it." Conversely, he also stated that he adapted the biblical stories of Joseph and Jesus to musicals because "I'd always rather take a true story over an untrue one."[36]

According to The Sunday Times Rich List of the UK's richest millionaires, Rice is worth £155 million as of 2020.[3]

In 2015, Rice expressed his indebtedness to the journalist Angus McGill as "the man responsible for Andrew Lloyd Webber and I having our first song recorded". Speaking at McGill's funeral,[37] Rice told a tale from his days at EMI about trying to rig the results of the London Evening Standard Girl of the Year competition in 1967. As "glorified office boy", Rice was writing songs with Lloyd Webber and desperate to find anybody to record one of their songs. Rice and colleagues filled in 5,000 entry forms overnight voting for the contestant who was a singer, and delivered them to McGill, who supervised the competition. Rice said it was "a disgraceful act of dishonesty on my part... without actually breaking the rules". As a result, the Standard proclaimed two Girls of the Year and Rice's choice, Rosalind ("Ross") Hannaman,[38] was signed to EMI, where she made her first record. Rice said at the funeral: "I owe [Angus] an awful lot, which is just one of the reasons why I'm here today."