With wit and candour, Tim Rice describes the gilded path that took him from cricket and comic-obsessed schoolboy to one of the world's best-known lyricists. Along the way he worked as a petrol pump attendant and articled clerk before becoming a management trainee at EMI. But it was his fateful meeting with Andrew Lloyd Webber in 1965 which was to be the turning-point in Tim's career. Immediate fortune didn't follow and it took the album of Jesus Christ Superstar to reach no.1 in the States before they were taken seriously. Covering every aspect of his life until his marriage to Jane McIntosh and the opening of the stage production of Evita, this is an engaging and fascinating autobiography.

ティム・ライスの自伝「Oh What a Circus」は、単なる成功譚を超えた、言葉の魔術師による魂の遍歴です。少年の日の情熱が稀代の作詞家へと昇華される過程が、ウィットに富んだ筆致で鮮烈に綴られています。運命の邂逅が日常を黄金の狂乱へと変容させる瞬間の描写は、創造性の本質を突く文学的な凄みに満ちています。 映像化された華やかな作品群に対し、本書は成功の裏の苦悩や、歌詞に込めた緻密な計算というテキスト特有の深淵を補完します。旋律の背後にある真意を知ることで、音楽と文学が火花を散らすクリエイティブな熱狂を、より重層的に、そして情熱的に体験できるはずです。