Andrew Lloyd Webber theatre. He also had originally set music to "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" at the age of 15. In 1965, Lloyd Webber was a Queen's Scholar at Westminster School and studied history for a term at Magdalen College, Oxford, although he abandoned the course in the winter of 1965 to study at the Royal College of Music and pursue his interest in musical theatre. In 1965, when Lloyd Webber was a 17-year-old budding musical-theatre composer, he was introduced to the 20-year-old aspiring pop-song writer Tim Rice. Their first collaboration was "The Likes of Us", a musical based on the
The Phantom of the Opera (Andrew Lloyd Webber song) as a single to promote the upcoming musical of the same name. The duet was performed by Sarah Brightman and Steve Harley. The song became a Top 10 hit in the UK, peaking at #7, and remaining within the Top 100 for ten weeks. In 1984, Andrew Lloyd Webber and producer Cameron Mackintosh began working on the "Phantom of the Opera" musical. Sarah Brightman, whom Webber married in 1984, was set to play the heroine Christine. As development of the musical continued, Webber decided that releasing the title track as a pop single would be a good way of promoting