Julian Slade

Composer Julian Slade was the creative force behind the record-breaking Salad Days, the most successful British musical of the mid-20th century. Born in London on May 28, 1930, he was one of three sons of barrister G.P. Slade, and first studied piano while at prep school in Oxford — at Cambridge's Trinity College, Slade befriended John Barton, Peter Wood, and Tony Robertson, all of whom would make their own mark on British theater in the years to follow. Barton commissioned Slade to write his first undergraduate musical, Lady May, and while he pursued an acting career of his own, his compositional prowess was clearly more impressive. Bang Goes the Meringue further established Slade's gift for clever if lightweight melodies, and upon exiting Trinity in 1951 he wrote incidental music for several productions mounted at London's famed Old Vic Theatre.

In late 1952 theater manager Denis Carey issued a call for a new holiday musical, and with Dorothy Reynolds and James Cairncross Slade composed Christmas in King Street — its success earned him the position of music director at the Bristol Old Vic, and with lyricist Reynolds he wrote a series of light musical comedies including 1953's The Merry Gentlemen and 1954's The Comedy of Errors. In 1956 Slade and Reynolds set out to create a whimsical season-ending production that would include parts for everyone in the Old Vic company — six weeks later, they completed Salad Days, the tale of two university undergraduates who come into possession of a magical piano that inspires all within earshot to begin dancing, regardless of social standing, age, or stuffiness.

When Salad Days' scheduled three-week run proved an enormous commercial success, a London production was announced; though savaged by critics, it proved an unprecedented success, and 2,288 performances later was the longest-running musical in British history, beating the previous titleholder, Chu Chin Chow, by 50 performances. Fans and critics alike eagerly awaited Slade and Reynolds' follow-up, 1957's Free as Air, and while the latter camp noted the growing maturity and depth of the music, the former decried the loss of youthful innocence that made Salad Days so appealing, and box-office receipts quickly waned. Slade and Reynolds never recaptured their commercial momentum, although musicals like 1959's Hooray for Daisy, 1962's Vanity Fair, 1966's Sixty Thousand Nights, and 1967's The Pursuit of Love kept their work in the public eye.

Following Reynolds' retirement, Slade struck out on his own, scoring Regent's Park adaptations of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and Much Ado About Nothing — he also adapted several works by Winnie the Pooh creator A.A. Milne, most notably 1986's Now We Are Sixty (a collaboration with Aubrey Woods and George Rowell, whom he first joined for 1972's acclaimed Trelawny). In 1997 Slade enjoyed his final success with an adaptation of Nancy Mitford's novel Love in a Cold Climate. He died of cancer on June 17, 2006, just a few weeks past his 76th birthday.