The 'Midnight' Scam

This is a little piece that's been on my mind (and on my notebook) for a while. I've called it the 'Midnight' scam when perhaps it should actually be called the 'Memory' scam.

I'm sure that a lot of people have heard or seen the musical CATS before; it's one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's greatest hits. The songs in that musical are taken from T S Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. All of them have their genesis in that most peculiar book, except for one. The odd one out is the song 'Memory', which is actually a terribly cut-and-pasted revamp of one of Eliot's other poems, 'Rhapsody on a Windy Night', from Prufrock and Other Observations, a terribly angsty collection about unrequited love and entropy.

The original poems take you through a kaleidoscope of sad lives, through the hours of the day, to midnight and beyond. It is a very depressing collection, but it contains some of Eliot's best images and lines.

I wonder why they purloined this particular poem for the musical. The two are completely different: the poem is mystical, takes us from midnight to four in the morning, and leaves us hanging at knifepoint (to mix a metaphor somewhat); the song is fairly catchy and designed for someone like Elaine Paige to yowl through. I can only conclude that the song was grafted in to give her something to do while she was standing in for Judi Dench.