Andrew Lloyd Webber was born in London in 1948, and was already writing music at age nine. By 1965 he'd begun a fruitful partnership with lyricist Tim Rice, and they made their popular breakthrough with two Biblically-themed pop operas, Joseph & the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Jesus Christ Superstar. Webber later set the poetry of T.S. Eliot to music with Cats. This ran for 18 years on Broadway, a record Webber would break with his own The Phantom of the Opera. The winner of multiple awards, he was knighted in 1992.