He lived in a dark apartment, and loved all the bachelor habits you think condemn you to be single all your life. When we first became friends, Claude-Michel said he couldn't see himself ever getting married. If an idea does not get unanimous approval from both of us, for music or lyrics, we reject it. We learnt long ago that you must put your egos far, far behind you when you are working. To see 1,000 people give a 10-minute standing ovation when everyone had been predicting a catastrophe went beyond words. On the opening night of Les Mis at the Barbican in 1985 he and I shared the kind of thrill you get once in a lifetime. He said: "Claude-Michel is the one to write the classical side of the music - and he's dying to work with you."
Back in Paris, I told an old friend, Raymond Jeannot, that we were going to write this rock opera. I walked the streets of New York for a night, and by morning had found my subject: the French Revolution. A through-sung musical in operatic form, like Superstar, was the answer. In New York, in 1972, I saw Jesus Christ Superstar, and the ambition which had been in my mind for years - to tell a story with words and music - suddenly crystallised. We realised that we spoke exactly the same language about popular music and songs - and that's something you find very rarely in a lifetime. We did not talk about working together at that stage, but we saw each other a lot socially because Claude-Michel was so close to Frank, who had become my father-in-law. She was the daughter of the conductor Frank Pourcel - who was Claude-Michel's boss at EMI. But the blonde haired girl was not too happy about this and would cry at night because of how much she missed their friendship.The second coincidence was that soon after doing the deal, I met, through another channel, the woman who was to become my first wife: Francoise Pourcel. The brunette-haired one’s family moved away from New York City when she turned eleven so every summer her parents would take her back home so that she could spend time with her friends. It was like they knew each other forever even though it wasn’t until then that they realized how much they meant to each other.
They instantly clicked over their mutual love for all things Disney movies and started to spend most of their free time together at each others houses or playing on swings outside. One girl had bright blonde hair and green eyes while the other had dark brown hair with hazel eyes. The year was 1998 and they were both ten years old. A long, long time ago in the middle of a busy city, two young girls met for the first time.
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