Andrew Lloyd Webber Opens Up About His Journey with Alcoholism
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Andrew Lloyd Webber shared insights into his battle with alcohol addiction in a recent interview with The Times. The 78-year-old composer, an acclaimed winner of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony (EGOT), revealed that he began his journey toward sobriety more than a year ago. He expressed that while checking into a rehab clinic was ineffective for him, attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings has been immensely beneficial.
“I am a recovering alcoholic,” Lloyd Webber stated. “Sixteen months ago, I decided that I needed help, and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Despite previous attempts to quit drinking in 2015 and 2016 while producing School of Rock on Broadway, Lloyd Webber admitted he returned to drinking.
“I was doing what they call ‘white-knuckling,’ without any backup, and I started to worry that I wasn’t being creative. And I thought, ‘But I’ve said to everybody that I’m not drinking.’ So I started to drink secretly,” he explained.
Currently, his musical Cats: The Jellicle Ball is on Broadway. Lloyd Webber noted that about 18 months ago, he fell into a downward spiral, prompting concern within his family. “My wife was feeling she couldn’t go on,” he said.
“When you’re a wine drinker, you don’t think of yourself as… well, alcoholics drink spirits,” he reflected. “That was the shocking thing for me when I realized that I was drinking vodka to hide it.”
He acknowledged his close calls, stating, “I’m lucky that nothing did go very wrong. I haven’t had some frightful accident. But then you begin to think of the near misses.”
“I thought that I was getting away with it,” Lloyd Webber remarked. “The thing is, I am deeply sorry, and I can only apologize to people if I made a mess.”
On his experience with AA meetings, which he now attends daily, he shared, “People had always said, ‘Oh no, you wouldn’t like that.’ And you get this thought that it’s 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’s equal. I’ve made friends that I wouldn’t have thought possible.”
When asked if he had written any of his musicals while drinking, he replied, “Probably not a lot, but I can think of a couple of songs that have been hits where I’d definitely had a glass of wine and thought that was all right.”
Lloyd Webber is also in the process of creating two new musicals, one inspired by the 2006 film The Illusionist and another based on the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911, according to The Times.
