Andrew Lloyd Webber With rewritten lyrics it became "King Herod's Song" in their third musical, "Jesus Christ Superstar" (1970). The planned follow-up to "Jesus Christ Superstar" was a musical comedy based on the Jeeves and Wooster novels by P. G. Wodehouse. Tim Rice was uncertain about this venture, partly because of his concern that he might not be able to do justice to the novels that he and Lloyd Webber so admired. After doing some initial work on the lyrics, he pulled out of the project and Lloyd Webber subsequently wrote the musical "Jeeves" with Alan Ayckbourn, who provided the book and lyrics.
Andrew Lloyd Webber commissioned Lloyd Webber and Rice to write a piece for the school's choir. Doggett requested a "pop cantata" along the lines of Herbert Chappell's "The Daniel Jazz" (1963) and Michael Hurd's "Jonah-Man Jazz" (1966), both of which had been published by Novello and were based on the Old Testament. The request for the new piece came with a 100-guinea advance from Novello. This resulted in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat", a retelling of the biblical story of Joseph, in which Lloyd Webber and Rice humorously pastiched a number of pop-music styles such as Elvis-style rock'n'roll, Calypso and country music.