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In his wine cellar, 1997Alamy<\/p>\nThe last time Andrew Lloyd Webber sold off his wine collection, in 2016, he announced that he hadn\u2019t had a drink in two years. He had been collecting since he was 15, after being introduced to burgundy by his glamorous Aunt Vi, and drank wine every day \u2014 now he had given up \u201ccompletely\u201d. His extraordinary cellar stacked with Roman\u00e9e-Conti 2005 (\u00a315,000 a pop) and Ch\u00e2teau P\u00e9trus 1982 (\u00a350,000 a case) had been emptied, part of it auctioned by Sotheby\u2019s and the rest sold privately. \u201cIt\u2019s all gone,\u201d he told the London Evening Standard. \u201cI have a very strong will.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was bravado, Lloyd Webber says now. The truth is he stopped drinking for 18 months, while producing School of Rock on Broadway in 2015-16, but then went back to it. \u201cI was doing what they call \u2018white-knuckling\u2019, without any backup, and I started to worry that I wasn\u2019t being creative.\u201d He had written Cats, Evita and all his greatest hits in the era of the long lunch, and associated composing with a glass or three of wine. \u201cAnd I thought, \u2018But I\u2019ve said to everybody that I\u2019m not drinking.\u2019 So I started to drink secretly.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lloyd Webber comes out with this in a rush, five minutes into our conversation, because after many years of lying about alcohol he wants to come clean. We are sitting in his office above the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and although he looks well \u2014 slim, energised, his shock of hair an exclamation mark over arched eyebrows \u2014 he spreads his hands on the table as if to brace himself. \u201cI am a recovering alcoholic. Sixteen months ago I decided that I needed help and it\u2019s the best thing that ever happened to me.\u201d This time he really is auctioning off the last of his wine, and this time he\u2019s really quitting \u2014 rehab, AA, sponsors, the works. No more white-knuckling.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou think it\u2019s secret, but it\u2019s not,\u201d Lloyd Webber, who is 78, says of his drinking. \u201cEverybody knows. I started getting into a downhill spiral and about 18 months ago the family were in a desperate state. My wife was feeling she couldn\u2019t go on.\u201d He checked himself into a clinic, which didn\u2019t work, but it prompted his first trip to an AA meeting in Switzerland, then others in the UK.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In his wine cellar, 1997Alamy<\/p>\n
The surprise was how much he liked, even \u201cadored\u201d AA. \u201cPeople had always said, \u2018Oh no, you wouldn\u2019t like that.\u2019 And you get this thought that it\u2019s a load of meth drinkers coming in off the streets. Not at all. What I love about it is, you go into a room and everybody\u2019s equal. I\u2019ve made friends that I wouldn\u2019t have thought possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He now attends a meeting every day, moving between his homes in London, Hampshire and New York, and speaks with the compulsive candour of the newly converted. Does he get recognised? \u201cOf course, but it\u2019s not an issue. I did the meeting in New York on the day I was opening Cats: The Jellicle Ball last week, and nobody said a thing.\u201d His favourite American AA meeting was in St Louis. \u201cIt was great fun. When you get a whole load of rednecks, it\u2019s rather different to a meeting in Chelsea.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He says the turning point was hearing someone else describe the \u201cstupidity\u201d of addiction. \u201cIt was about the ludicrous lengths you go to, the hiding and the pretending.\u201d He had been functional as a bon viveur, he thinks \u2014 it was only when he declared himself sober that the trouble began. \u201cWhen you\u2019re a wine drinker, you don\u2019t think of yourself as\u2026 well, alcoholics drink spirits.\u201d Not doing that had been his free pass. \u201cThat was the shocking thing for me, when I realised that I was drinking vodka to hide it.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a long time he focused on making it to midday and his first drink. \u201cYou don\u2019t really think. It\u2019s just, \u2018How am I going to get through the day?\u2019 I got that thing of seriously worrying that I wasn\u2019t writing, and panicked. \u2018Maybe I\u2019ll have a drink. OK, I\u2019ve written something.\u2019 Because it does slightly liberate you \u2014 but then it\u2019s more and more and more.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
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With his wife, Madeleine, in 2002Getty images<\/p>\n
Did he write any of his famous musicals while drinking a lot? \u201cProbably not a lot, but I can think of a couple of songs that have been hits where I\u2019d definitely had a glass of wine and thought, that was all right.\u201d Such as? \u201cNo Matter What, which was a big hit for Boyzone. I can\u2019t really remember going right back.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the thing: there\u2019s a lot he can\u2019t remember. \u201cI\u2019m lucky that nothing did go very wrong. I haven\u2019t had some frightful accident. But then you begin to think of the near misses.\u201d He cringes to think of the people who might have avoided working with him, \u201cbecause word gets around\u201d. \u201cI thought that I was getting away with it,\u201d he says. \u201cThe thing is, I am deeply sorry and I can only apologise to people if I made a mess.\u201d<\/p>\n
The paradox is that without booze Lloyd Webber is the most productive he\u2019s ever been. Cats: The Jellicle Ball, a tribute to the 1980s drag scene, opened to the best reviews of his career (\u201ca joyous glitter bomb\u201d) and he is writing two new musicals: one based on the 2006 film The Illusionist and another about the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The latter came to him while he was in rehab. \u201cI think it will be unlike anything I\u2019ve done for a long while \u2014 more like Joseph [and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat], 70 or 80 minutes, quite funny.\u201d Then there is the success of his off-Broadway Phantom spinoff Masquerade, an immersive show involving six casts. \u201cIf anything goes wrong it falls apart. I couldn\u2019t have done that if I hadn\u2019t been sober \u2014 I wouldn\u2019t have been concentrating enough.\u201d And an all-star version of Jesus Christ Superstar opens at the London Palladium this summer with Simon Russell Beale and Boy George joining a rotating cast as Herod, while the Regent\u2019s Park Open Air Theatre is staging a new Cats.<\/p>\n
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Lloyd Webber: \u201cI\u2019m lucky that nothing did go very wrong\u201dChris McAndrew for The Sunday Times Culture<\/p>\n
Partly this Webbernaissance has been down to sobriety and \u2014 not unrelatedly \u2014 a willingness to let other people play with his work, whether it\u2019s the high camp of the Jellicle Ball or the director Jamie Lloyd\u2019s high-concept takes on Sunset Boulevard and Evita. In an interview with Variety magazine last year Lloyd Webber appeared to have fallen out with Lloyd, complaining that Evita was too loud. While he stands by that, they seem to have made up. \u201cEvita was deafening on opening night, but it was brought back down. If it goes to Broadway, Jamie and I have worked out what we\u2019re going to do. I thought I liked everything loud, but Jamie likes it louder. The thing I\u2019d love to do with him would be an American rock tour of Jesus Christ Superstar.\u201d<\/p>\n
In New York they would have to make other adjustments to Evita. There would be no outdoor balcony scene for Don\u2019t Cry for Me Argentina because of the risk of a shooting. \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t even begin to get the insurance for it,\u201d Lloyd Webber says. Nor would they make any money unless Rachel Zegler was in it for a year, \u201cand I can\u2019t see how she can be\u201d. Perhaps he has been thinking his way round this because he mentions that Zegler wasn\u2019t his first choice for Eva Per\u00f3n. \u201cI\u2019d better not say who it was, but she dropped out. Then Rachel sent us a recording of herself doing the whole score, and we said: holy smoke!\u201d<\/p>\n
The best thing about being sober is the way it has brought his family together, Lloyd Webber says. A few months ago he returned to his flat in New York and the doorman asked if he was hosting a baby\u2019s birthday party. \u201cI went in and there were all these balloons with \u20181\u2019 on them \u2014 my youngest daughter had sent them to celebrate me being one year sober.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Three years ago his eldest son, Nicholas, died of gastric cancer, aged 43. \u201cHe was alcoholic,\u201d Lloyd Webber says simply. \u201cHe was in a dreadful mess and came out of it. But I couldn\u2019t help noticing how he\u2019d changed. He got stomach cancer and one doesn\u2019t know what caused it, but I can\u2019t believe that all the medication he was on helped.\u201d To remind him he wears two leather bracelets \u2014 one with a gold disc inscribed \u201cNick\u201d, the other with a silver link from his four surviving children. \u201cI look at them and they stop me drinking.\u201d<\/p>\n
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With students funded by the Music in Secondary Schools TrustAlan Davidson\/The Picture Library Ltd<\/p>\n
Lloyd Webber is sure that his father, an organist and teacher at the Royal College of Music, was an alcoholic too. He didn\u2019t see it as a child because he was a boarder at Westminster School, then away at Oxford University (very briefly) before getting a flat. \u201cThings got more difficult at home for my brother [the cellist Julian]. I think my aunt probably was alcoholic too, though I don\u2019t remember her ever being drunk. I do remember my father.\u201d What was that like? \u201cHe used to get quite depressed. He always wanted to be a composer, and he was, but he felt his music was out of its time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The money raised from next week\u2019s Christie\u2019s auction, estimated at about \u00a3300,000, will go to the Music in Secondary Schools Trust, which is part-funded by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation. Giving more children access to music is his passion project and the issue that has made him cynical about politicians of all kinds. \u201cWe know that for every pound we put into my scheme, \u00a39.87 comes back,\u201d he says, citing the benefits calculated by the Social Value Engine. \u201cIt\u2019s all proven. But will anybody do anything about it? No. Lip service. Keir Starmer saying, \u2018Oh, I went to the Guildhall.\u2019 Well, please. It saves in policing, knife crime, drugs.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
When he sold his cellar through Sotheby\u2019s in 2011, Lloyd Webber recorded a video interview with the auction house\u2019s head of wine. His love of the stuff was clear as the two of them pootled about in his Hampshire cellar, stroking bottles (\u201cyou lovely, lovely boy\u201d) and gasping at rare vintages. Next week\u2019s sale marks a decisive break with that version of himself: is he saying goodbye to anything positive?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, there\u2019s lots of happy memories. I used to love my burgundies. But it would set me on the slippery slope. I can\u2019t and I mustn\u2019t.\u201d That\u2019s his bad luck, he says, although you have to have been an alcoholic to appreciate the joy of being sober. Last night he was in Oxford for the opening of the new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, where Nicole Scherzinger sang songs from Sunset Boulevard. Tonight he will hear Zegler sing Don\u2019t Cry for Me Argentina at the Olivier awards.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI have had probably the two finest female performers in musical theatre in my shows, and I\u2019ll have heard them back to back. When you\u2019re not drinking you think, \u2018My God, how lucky am I?\u201d<\/p>\n