- Place – Pye Studios Editing Room
- Time – 1970
- Client – Tim Rice
Tim Rice is one of the most versatile and prolific lyricists writing today. He has written for the musical stage and Disney animated films.
It wasn’t too long after starting at Pye that I became a competent tape editor.
I actually thought I was better than competent, so I confidently told Pat, the studio manager, I was ready for any editing jobs that came in..
Within days I had my very first client, Mr Tim Rice.
He had booked a tape copying room for two hours to do some quarter inch tape edits.
Shortly before he was due to arrive, for some unknown reason, I suddenly got an incredible attack of nerves.
I was waiting in the office when Mr Rice arrived, a very tall and well-spoken young man.
I introduced myself and asked him to follow me to the copying room.
On entering the room he produced a couple quarter inch reels of tape from his case.
He explained it was a musical he had just recorded called, Jesus Christ Superstar.
It was common practice to always do a copy of the tape before editing to ensure the master tape was safe.
We copied the titles to be edited and I set about what appeared very simple cuts.
Nerves take over
Being my first client and with my nerves out of control, my hands were shaking like a recovering alcoholic. I proceeded to cut the tape in all the wrong places and slice my fingers to ribbons.
It was tricky to hide the blood dripping from my fingers as it was now drenching the tape and turning my white marking pencil scarlet.
Mr Rice, seeing how nervous I was, kindly suggested doing another copy and said that he would leave the tapes with me along with notes as to where the cuts should be.
He explained me that he would call back in a couple of hours to pick up them up.
When he left I cleaned up the mess of blood and set about editing the tape again. Of course now each edit worked first time without a hitch.
With the client being absent I also had the opportunity to make a copy of this amazing musical for myself.
Reuniting with a Superstar
I never met Mr Rice again but throughout my career I always wanted to say thanks for his patience and tolerance that day.
In 2003 I did contact him for advice about a musical I was working on, I mentioned our first meeting in the editing room in my letter.
Mr. Rice replied personally with some helpful suggestions about my project and stated in his letter, “That it was an honour for him to have been my first client.”
What a wonderfully generous man.
A wonderful letter from Tim Rice
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