“There was a certain leap of faith that we should wait and hear the full arrangement.” “I think because of the way that Elton does a demo, the songs as we first heard them didn’t sound anything like what’s in the film,” he says. Roy Disney, looking back on his first hearing of the John-Rice songs, is diplomatic.
They felt like, ‘Oh, we’re getting Elton John tracks.’ I knew they weren’t, but they didn’t know that.” I don’t think they could quite relate to it being the voice of the characters. “We had a lovely demo from Elton singing ‘Can You Feel the Love Tonight,’ but it’s Elton singing at the piano. “In retrospect, I can tell now, they weren’t very excited about the demos,” says Rice, a tall, casually elegant Englishman, lunching on an omelet and bacon at the Disney cafeteria in Burbank. Lyricist Rice, who with former partner Andrew Lloyd Webber reinvented the modern musical with “Jesus Christ Superstar” and “Evita” and “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” had suggested John as his composer for the project after being recruited by Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg in 1991, and remembers the chilly reaction to the tapes John had sent from England. Doubts had already been raised: Could the flashy pop star fit into the notoriously staid Disney structure? Would he be able to adapt to a system where creative decisions are made by committee?Īs they sat and listened to the first demo tapes from John, those reservations loomed large. With the movie not even in theaters yet, Walt Disney Records has already shipped more than 2 million copies of the soundtrack album, featuring the five songs as used in the film, plus three alternate versions featuring John’s vocals and score instrumental pieces by composer Hans Zimmer.ĭisney execs, however, weren’t so euphoric the first time they first heard the “Lion King” tunes. The musical results have spirits-and sales forecasts-high throughout Disney land. In complete contrast, there’s the chipper devil-may-care anthem “Hakuna Matata,” which is most certainly the only Disney song ever to have an implied (though never actually stated) rhyme of the common crude term for passing wind. On one end of the scale is “Be Prepared,” sung with drippingly evil delight by Jeremy Irons in the role of the lion villain, Scar-it’s perhaps the darkest number in Disney lore.
Those five songs cover a vast range of styles and moods. Today, though, Roy Disney-and just about every other executive in the Disney empire-is whistling Elton John tunes all the way to the bank, and not “Benny and the Jets” or “Rocket Man.” The songs on their lips are the five that John and lyricist Tim Rice wrote for the Disney company’s latest animated film, “The Lion King,” the treachery-filled tale of politics and passions on the veld.
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