Andrew Lloyd Webber "Joseph" began life as a short cantata that gained some recognition on its second staging with a favourable review in "The Times". For its subsequent performances, Rice and Lloyd Webber revised the show and added new songs to expand it to a more substantial length. Continued expansion eventually culminated in a 1972 stage musical and then a two-hour-long production being staged in the West End in 1973 on the back of the success of "Jesus Christ Superstar". In 1969 Rice and Lloyd Webber wrote a song for the Eurovision Song Contest called "Try It and See", which was not selected.
Sunset Boulevard (musical) film remake starring Angela Lansbury as a fading musical comedian rather than a silent film star, Sondheim declined, citing his conversation with Wilder. When Lloyd Webber saw the film in the early 1970s, he was inspired to write what he pictured as the title song for a theatrical adaptation, fragments of which he instead incorporated into "Gumshoe". In 1976, after a conversation with Hal Prince, who had the theatrical rights to "Sunset", Lloyd Webber wrote "an idea for the moment when Norma Desmond returns to Paramount Studios"; Lloyd Webber did no further work on the play until after 1989's "Aspects