Julian Lloyd Webber on his brother Andrew: ‘People would love me to say we were competing every day’

Julian Lloyd Webber turned 75 a few months ago, but he wasn’t really thinking about that milestone.“I was thinking more about this concert at the Wigmore on that day,” the celebrated cellist says of the event held in his honour at the London venue. “Because I never believed I would play again.”Lloyd Webber had been forced into early retirement in 2014, when a herniated disc in his neck prevented him from using his bowing arm to full effect. The clincher, he says, was his 15-year-old daughter, Jasmine, who overheard him and his wife, Jiaxin, speaking about the potential programme. “She suddenly said, ‘Oh, I wish I’d heard you playing in concert, Dad.’ And I thought, ‘Oh. Maybe I could try to do something.’ So I played Fauré’s Élégie, which is about eight minutes long.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “And I never imagined I would do that again.”The musician, conductor, broadcaster, music educator and now memoirist is on a flying visit to Dublin with his wife, a native of Shanghai and herself a cellist. Jasmine does not play – she is “more interested in politics”, her parents note with wry smiles – but Jiaxin will join her husband for their forthcoming Bach, Bows and Arrows tour of Ireland. She will play from Bach’s famous cello suites and Lloyd Webber will regale the audience with stories from his recent memoir. The second half of the show will see an audience Q&A where “anything could happen”, while he will also attempt to play a short piece “with an Irish connotation” himself. “It won’t be long, but I’m going to try to do it,” he says. “And I mean, honestly, if you’d said to me that one day I’d sit down and play again at the National Concert Hall in Dublin, I would’ve said no chance. But I want to do it. I’m determined to do it.”Lloyd Webber’s playing career may have been prematurely curtailed, but his passion for music remains as strong as ever. Sprightly of mind, and with his piercing blue eyes and trademark mop of tousled hair, he hasn’t lost the air of a maverick; this is a man, after all, who once played at a celebration of his brother Andrew’s work at the Royal Albert Hall wearing a jersey of his beloved Leyton Orient FC. That recent memoir, Bows and Arrows, pulls back the curtain on Lloyd Webber’s career as a cellist, as well as his eventful upbringing in London, the various luminaries he has worked with and the details of his four marriages. The book also dispels some myths that have dogged him, including an assumed rivalry with his brother.Andrew (left) and Julian Lloyd Webber with their father, organist and composer William Lloyd Webber, in January 1978. Photograph: Dennis Stone/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) “I think people would love me to say, ‘Yes, we were competing every day,’ or, ‘I was playing a cello and he was writing musicals,’ but it just wasn’t a competition. As I say in the book, I love him to bits – although I’ve been a bit cheeky about him,” he adds, chuckling. Does he feel that he has lived in Andrew’s shadow, though? He shrugs. “It depends on the shadows, you know? Because, to me, classical music is extremely important, and sometimes I feel that when people say that, [are they insinuating] that classical music is under the shadow of what he does?”Because of their success and their well-spokenness, many would also assume that the brothers grew up in a privileged home. That was not the case, as Lloyd Webber explains in his memoir. Although their parents were professional musicians, they grew up in a “run-down Victorian block of flats in what today is oh-so-posh South Kensington”. Before Julian was born, the family kept a pet monkey called Mimi. The house was loud and often chaotic; at one point Andrew’s writing partner Tim Rice also lived with them. Their father, William, was a composer and director of the London College of Music, but there was no nepotism or handouts. Both brothers won scholarships on their own merit. “It was made very clear that we had to make our own living and that [our parents] weren’t going to support us,” he says. “I think if I hadn’t got a scholarship, they wouldn’t have paid for me to go to college, either, because they really didn’t have the money. “And that was the right decision, totally. I think, in the long run, you’ve got to have an incentive. All the time I was at college I was thinking, ‘What am I going to do? I’ve got to earn some money.’ It’s a good life lesson.”[ New National Concert Hall boss: ‘I hope to be here for the grand reopening’Opens in new window ]The young Julian was drawn to the cello because “of how it looked when it was being played”; he went on to work with wide-ranging notables in music, from Yehudi Menuhin to Elton John, who “breezed in, tennis rackets over his shoulders”, to record a cello-led version of Your Song.He has been happily married to Jiaxin since 2009; Bows and Arrows also goes into the difficulties of his previous marriages, particularly the acrimonious relationship with his third wife, Kheira Bourahla. “I had to admit that I lost the plot,” he says, “because I should never have [got married].”A distressing passage in which he documents being abused by a stranger on the London Underground as a nine-year-old was similarly challenging to recount. “I mean, all abuse is bad, but this was particularly traumatic because it changed me at that point,” he says. “I’d always been a happy child, and suddenly I was shy and very withdrawn and very nervous around adults. So it completely changed my life. I had to write about it, but I found it difficult.”After his neck injury, Lloyd Webber was somewhat resigned to never playing professionally again. Instead he threw himself into his other passion, one he had inherited from his father: music education. He was appointed principal of Birmingham Conservatoire a year after retiring; before that, he founded the In Harmony government-led social and music education programme in 2009. Julian and Jiaxin Lloyd Webber He has been a fierce advocate of placing instruments in the hands of children who may not otherwise have the opportunity to play, because he thinks “it’s very important for people to fulfil their gifts in life”.As he gears up for their forthcoming tour, there is clearly no sign of Lloyd Webber slowing down, even after he received a diagnosis of prostate cancer in recent months and underwent “intensive radiation treatment”. It is important to share his experience, he says, “because people need to hear these things” and be proactive about their health.“I was diagnosed with a benign prostate condition in 2017,” he says. “And because the PSA” – prostate-specific antigen – “level can rise when you have a benign issue, I kept being retested, and it kept going slightly up. And then last summer they said, ‘Look, you’ve got to have a biopsy.’ “And then I read about the biopsy, and I didn’t want to do it.” He shakes his head. “Finally, in December, I had it – and it was positive. So I guess you should be tested, on balance, even though waiting for the results to come through is difficult. And combined with the radiation treatment, they give you these hormone pills, and I found those really very, very difficult.” He shrugs. “I’m off them now, but I don’t know. I get the results just before this tour starts, and I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t have worked. They’re very good at what they do, so I’m completely optimistic.”[ Reality check: Can Julian Casablancas and The Strokes really save rock’n’roll?Opens in new window ]Lloyd Webber shared his diagnosis with his fans after his 75th-birthday concert; he has also had to contend with the ugly side of social media. On one Facebook update he noted how “anonymous Daily Mail readers” had blamed his illness on the fact that he dyes his hair. He made light of it at the time, but it’s clearly a topic that irks him.“People are incredibly sensitive about what you can say about anyone or anything nowadays, aren’t they? And you can find yourself with police knocking on the door, and being banned and cancelled – yet people can anonymously write the most vile shit, and nothing is done,” he says. “How can that be right? How can those social media [companies], and even newspapers, how can they [allow it]? Do they not mediate those comments? It shouldn’t be possible to write that stuff, not just about me but anyone.”For now it’s onwards and upwards with a positive frame of mind. There is much to look forward to and much to be proud of about his eventful career, from the people he has worked with to the prestigious places and events that he has played. Is he happy with his lot? He frowns for a moment.“I don’t really think about that,” he says. “I think if you keep asking yourself ‘Am I happy?’ then you’re probably not. I think that happiness is doing things – and for me it’s bringing music to people. It’s always been about that.”Bach, Bows and Arrows: A Very Intimate Audience with Julian & Jiaxin Lloyd Webber begins at the Bardic Theatre in Donaghmore, Co Tyrone, on Tuesday, August 25th. It includes dates at the Guildhall, in Derry; Lyric Theatre, in Belfast; Braid Arts Centre, in Ballymena; Portico of Ards, in Portaferry; Market Place Theatre, in Armagh; Town Hall Theatre, in Galway; Lime Tree Theatre, in Limerick; National Concert Hall, in Dublin; Glór Theatre, Ennis; and Live at St Luke’s, Cork; before finishing at Mullingar Arts Centre, in Co Westmeath, on Sunday, September 6th. Bows and Arrows, Julian Lloyd Webber’s memoir, is published by Biteback