Andrew Lloyd Webber has composed: (Theatre) Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus Christ Superstar, Jeeves (Later reworked as By Jeeves), Evita, Varations and Tell Me On A Sunday (later combined as Song and Dance), CATS, Starlight Express, The Phantom of the Opera, Aspects of Love, Sunset Boulevard, Whistle Down the Wind, The Beautiful Game; (Film) Gumshoe, The Odessa File, additional music Evita; and Requiem (a setting of the Latin Requiem Mass). His productions include Daisy Pulls It Off and La Bete, both Olivier award winners. He is reviving Daisy in London this year [2002], and also producing A R Rahman's Bombay Dreams, which is scheduled to open in London's West End at the Apollo Victoria on 19 June [2002]. He now solely owns The Really Useful Group whose management, in addition to producing his own work, is active independently from him in developing and producing the works of other writers. The Really Useful Group is co-owner of Really Useful Theatres which is London's largest proprieter of West End theatres, including the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, the London Palladium and The Palace. Awards include seven Tonys, three Grammys, six Oliviers, a Golden Globe, and Oscar, an International Emmy, the Praemium Imperiale, the Richard Rodgers and the Critics' Circle Award for Best Musical 2000. He was knighted in 1992 and created an honorary life peer in 1997.

- From a CATS playbill

(About CATS)
    I began setting Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats to music late in 1977, partly because it is a book I remember with affection from my childhood and partly because I wanted to set existing verse to music. In my associations with lyricists it has tended to be the case that once a dramatic story line had been agreed, the lyrics are written to music I compose. I was very curious to see whether I could work the other way round.
    Very luckily Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats contains verses that are extraordinarily musical; they have rhythms that are very much their own, like the 'Rum Tum Tugger' or 'Old Deuteronomy' and although clearly they dictate to some degree the music that will accompany them they are frequently of irregular and exciting metre and are very challenging to a composer.
    I wrote some settings in late 1977 which I began performing at the piano for friends, but I never progressed the idea seriously until after I had composed Tell Me On A Sunday. This was performed on BBC television in the early part of 1980 and I began to think of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats as a possible concert anthology that could also be performed on television. With this in mind, some of my settings were performed in the late summer of 1980 at the Sydmonton Festival. Valerie Eliot fortunately came to the concert and with her brought various unpublished pieces of work by her husband; one of these was 'Grizabella the Glamour Cat.' The musical and dramatic images that this created for me made me feel that there was very much more to the project than I had realised. I immediately decided that I needed the support of another to encourage me to re-work my settings and to see if a dramatic whole would be woven from the delightful verse that I was now to be allowed to develop.
    Thus in the late summer I had my first meeting with Trevor Nunn. Soon after Valerie Eliot produced various other unpublished poems, three of which we have incorporated into CATS in their entirety. She also gave us a fascinating rough draft of the opening poem for what appears to have been conceived as a longer book about cats and dogs. This poem was not appropriate for the stage but it inspired us to write a lyric with the same intention of celebrating the supremacy of Jellicle cats. We have been able to include lines from the end of Eliot's draft poem which now introduce 'The Naming of Cats.' But what was most thrilling was to find reference in one of Eliot's letters to a coherent, albet incomplete structure for an evening; he proposed that eventually the cats were to go 'Up up up past the Russell Hotel, up up up to the Heaviside Layer."
    Trevor Nunn, who I discovered has a taste for tackling theatrical problems that most people consider insoluble, set to work immediately with me combing Eliot's works and we were reminded of the many references to cats in the main body of his writing. We worked on the incomplete structure and were able to incorporate some of these feline refrences into CATS without alteration.The opening poem was completed by Trevor Nunn with the aid of Richard Stilgoe, while 'Memory' was adapted from 'Rhapsody on a Windy Night'.
    Of course the other very exciting opportunity that CATS gave me was the chance to compose dance music. This is an area of musical theatre that has always intrigued me and I was fortunate to be guided through the unfamiliar world of choreography by someone as experienced as Gillian Lynne. For the opening night in New York we had the added excitement of working with American dancers and actors. Hopefully their contribution is reflected in certain changes made to the score.
    I have enjoyed working on CATS as much as on any show on which I whave worked. My graditude will be undying to Valerie Eliot whithout whose encouragement the musical could never have taken its present form. - Andrew Lloyd Webber