Five things you may not know about Tim Rice. One, he's possibly the only person ever to write a musical about cricket (or even want to). Two, he once sang in a group called the Aardvarks. Three, his 15-part radio history of Western pop music was translated into Mandarin and broadcast to China on the BBC World Service. Four, he still sings in a group called Whang and the Cheviots. And five, his full name is Sir Timothy Miles Bindon Rice.
Oh, and here's another thing. Last year, he was the official lyricist for four shows which were running simultaneously on Broadway: The Lion King, Aida, Beauty and the Beast and Jesus Christ Superstar. Not bad for the guy who used to be known as the other bit of Andrew Lloyd Webber.
"But," he points out cheerfully, "I only wrote half the songs for Lion King and half for Beauty, so really one should say it was three. Anyhow P.G. Wodehouse did five in the early part of the century, so I haven't beaten the record. Still, I've got three, so I've only got to find three more . . . "
In person, Sir Tim is tall, genial and plummier than a crateload of Christmas pudding. He is, in fact, the model of a modern British lyricist, ensconced at the bottom of the garden of his postcard-perfect house on a lazy curl of the River Thames, working away in what is not so much a study as a suite of sound-proofed rooms, complete with a kitchen and a loo whose walls are covered, cheekily, with theatre awards.
Words have been good to Tim Rice. But then, he has produced classic popular songs by the fistful. Don't Cry For Me Argentina, I Don't Know How To Love Him, A Winter's Tale, Circle of Life, I Know Him So Well, Any Dream Will Do - you may love them or you may hate them, but the chances are you can also whistle them. His are songs which have, literally, circled the world.
What makes a good song, though? "I dunno," answers the master songsmith, with commendable promptness. "The obvious things are, either it gives people something to identify with, or it entertains them. A great tune is important, but what's a great tune? I dunno. It's like painting, I suppose. Why is something by Rembrandt pretty good, and something by your kid at school not very good? It's obvious, but it's not always easy to explain."
Which songs does he admire, then? "Oh, there are so many. Smoke gets In Your Eyes. I always liked that one. I'm A Believer is a great song. Blue Suede Shoes is a wonderful song. Yesterday is a wonderful song. So is Tutti Frutti. Anything by Paul Simon is pretty good. Barry Gibb writes fantastic songs. I don't listen to much music these days - I still buy CDs but I find there's usually one or two good tracks on there and the rest is filler."
One of the best albums he has heard recently, he says, is Mary Chapin Carpenter's. "I like her. Wonderful songs. But even the greatest artists struggle to fill 14 tracks sometimes - and I think the reason quite so many good songs aren't being written is the decline of the single . . . Singles encouraged great songwriting. That's why all the groups in the 1960s wrote such great songs. Anybody can go into the studio and make a perfectly decent-sounding album, but to make a really exciting single that catches a mood or an emotion in three minutes, that's much harder. And there are plenty of awful songs around, of course, usually sung by people like Mariah Carey - those ghastly power ballads which actually don't say anything at all. They're usually about 'We'll get through', 'You stood by me', all this crap. Awful."
He grins, warming to his theme. Maybe it's not so difficult to explain, after all. "A great song doesn't have to be complex or sophisticated, but it has to make real, human contact. There were plenty of songs which came out after Blue Suede Shoes and, at the time, people thought, oh, these are as good as Blue Suede Shoes. But they weren't. There's something about the concept - and the title, of course."
The interaction of words and music is a kind of alchemy which few, if any, songwriters fully understand. Rice has worked with composers as diverse as Burt Bacharach, Marvin Hamlisch and Freddie Mercury, and has recently forged a hugely successful partnership with Elton John, but will probably forever be associated with Andrew Lloyd Webber, even though they parted company in the late 1980s. Does he regret the split, or relish the freedom? A bit of both, he says.
"Very few songwriting teams were permanent, anyhow - it only looks as if they were, when you look back at it. In fact, most lyricists worked with different composers at one time or another. In some respects, I think it was a pity Andrew and I didn't stick together. But we did three great shows - Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita - and I don't know if we'd have come up with any others. For a while I thought I'd missed out - I mean, he steamed off and had two big hits with Cats and Starlight Express. But then I realised, well, I couldn't have done Cats, which didn't need an assist, and I didn't want to do Starlight - it wasn't my sort of scene."
Still, musicals have been Rice's metier. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat was written for a boys' school just up the road in Hammersmith. Then came Jesus Christ Superstar - which, though hardly rock 'n' roll, was as revolutionary as musicals get. No spoken dialogue; no pretty girls on swings, unless you count Mary Magdalene; and, for possibly the first time in popular culture, words in the mouth of one Judas Iscariot. Was Rice worried, when he was writing the lyrics, that he might attract a sort of Christian fatwa on himself?
"Well, I didn't think what I was saying was particularly shocking," he says. "Nor did I think anybody would hear it, because I didn't think it would be a big hit. When it began to be successful in America, a number of people protested. But that all faded away."
After the break-up with Lloyd Webber, Rice did a show called Blondel with the composer Stephen Oliver, which was an unmitigated disaster. Next came Chess, with Bjorn and Benny from Abba. Rice says the record was the best he has ever been involved with, but whether it will ever be a megashow . . .
He shrugs. Musicals get a bit out of control. "We had a hit record, and suddenly we had a marathon on our hands. We had 800 producers, all of whom wanted a bit of the action. It's almost better to have to fight for a piece to convince somebody to produce it. Then they don't change it. The problems Chess had were with the story being a bit too complex in places - although I sometimes think, well, sod 'em. If they can't follow the story, they've no business listening to it."
No such worries with his recent megahits for the Disney organisation. The stage version of The Lion King opened on Broadway in 1997 and is still the hottest ticket in town. Beauty and the Beast is currently touring the UK to packed houses. Rice confesses to a fondness for the latter show, which will open in Dublin in March. "I thought it might be a bit of a panto, but it's a very honest, straightforward, entertaining evening with a lot of gags, good casts and a very good score."
Still, though - from Christian icons to cuddly animals? Sir Tim throws back his head and laughs. "The Lion King doesn't work because it's got cuddly animals. It works because it's got a great story. It works because every character is believable. I've never tried to write down to children. Whether you're writing words for a warthog who's got problems or words for an Argentine dictator, you've still got to make the words as good as they can be." It sounds like a cue for a song.
Beauty and the Beast opens at the Point Theatre, Dublin on March 28th. Booking on 01-8363633