Sir Tim Rice

Sir Timothy Miles Bindon Rice is a world renowned lyricist, songwriter and author.

In 1966, after studying for a year in Paris at the Sorbonne, Rice joined EMI Records as a management trainee. When EMI producer Norrie Paramor left to set up his own organisation in 1968, Rice joined him as an assistant producer.

We all dream a lot - some are lucky, some are not. But if you think it, want it, dream it, then it's real. You are what you feel.

Best known for his collaborations with Lord 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.

We were young, successful, travelling the world - I mean, what was not to love? I knew at the time it would not get better than this in career terms.

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Jesus Christ Superstar are widely 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 1960's.

Rice has also collaborated with Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson of ABBA, on the hit musical Chess.

A prolific lyrical talent he has worked on many songs for a variety of artists over many decades including: Elvis Presley, Elton John, Elaine Paige, David Essex and Freddie Mercury to name just a few.

It's a cliche, but most people are good at something, and most people are good at what they're enthusiastic about.

In 1983, he co-wrote the title song All Time High with John Barry and sung by Rita Coolidge, for the thirteenth Bond movie Octopussy.

In 1992 he worked with Disney on Aladdin and in 1994 he combined forces with Sir Elton John on phenomenon that is The Lion King.

I must have written 15 lyrics for The Lion King, and only five or six were used. Some were scenes that disappeared, some were earlier versions of songs that didn't work, or else the characters changed.

In 1996, his collaboration with Lloyd Webber for the film version Evita resulted in a third Academy Award for Best Original Song for You Must Love Me.

He released his autobiography Oh What a Circus: The Autobiography of Tim Rice in 1998, which covered his childhood and early adult life up to and including the opening of the original London production of Evita in 1978.

He was knighted by the Queen for services to music in 1994. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, is an inductee into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, is a Disney Legend recipient and is a fellow of the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. 

I like to write in fairly everyday language - I've always tried to write lyrics that, if people would speak the words, it wouldn't sound like a song.

In addition to his many awards in the UK, he is one of only fifteen artists to have won an Emmy, an Oscar, a Grammy and a Tony in the US.

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. 

He has also been a frequent guest panellist for many years on the radio panel games Just a Minute and Trivia Test Match.

Rice supports Sunderland association football club. He was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters by the University of Sunderland at a ceremony at the Stadium of Light in November 2006. His other interests include cricket (he was President of the MCC in 2002) and maths.

September is my favourite month, particularly in Cornwall. I felt, even as a child, that if you get a wonderful day in September, you think: This could be one of the last, the summer is nearly over. If you get a wonderful day in May, you think: So what, theres more coming.

In 2019 he worked on a new film version of the The Lion King with Elton John and Hans Zimmer. The same year he also collaborated on a new version of Aladdin with Alan Menken.

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