Making the Music

They are one of the odder couples in songwriting annals. Tim Rice, who teamed with Andrew Lloyd Webber to reinvent the Broadway musical with Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita, had been largely overshadowed by his former partner, who created Cats and The Phantom of the Opera without him. Rock star Elton John, meanwhile, was working his way back from a career funk in the late '80s and looking for new directions. They paired up to write songs for Disney's 1994 animated film The Lion King. When it became the studio's biggest hit ever, they were a hot duo, joining again to write the score for Aida and then The Road to El Dorado, an animated feature from DreamWorks that opens next week. At their best, as in the lovely ballad Elaborate Lives from Aida, Rice's colloquial but soulful lyrics are a perfect complement to John's luscious melodies:

I'm so tired of all we're going through;
I don't want to live like that.
I'm so tired of all we're going through;
I don't want to love like that.
I just want to be with you.
Now and forever;
Peaceful, true.

Even Verdi--or Jerome Kern--might shed a tear.

A good deal of the Aida score was written via phone and fax, Rice working from his London digs and John from his house in Atlanta. Rice pens the lyrics first, a reversal of the way he has worked with other partners, like Lloyd Webber and Alan Menken. With a laugh, he calls working with John "delightful, because unlike most composers, he doesn't seem to think he can write lyrics." John, for his part, marvels at Rice's easygoing ability to weather the Broadway collaborative process: "Tim has the patience of Job to do rewrite after rewrite. He's a perfectionist and never seems to complain."

Both, of course, lead elaborate lives independent of each other. John continues to tour and record, while Rice wants to rework Chess, his great musical written with Abba's Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson that failed on Broadway. But Rice and John could get back together at any time. "We're just two jobbing songwriters," says Rice, "looking for gigs."