Tim Weil Beaks Down How Jonathan Larson Created a Broadway Revolution in MAKING RENT

In his new book Making RENT, Tim Weil takes readers behind the scenes of one of the most groundbreaking musicals of the 20th century. In a recent interview with BroadwayWorld's Richard Ridge, Weil opened up about his first impressions of Jonathan Larson, the emotional weight of the show’s earliest days, and the creative process that shaped its now-iconic score.

Looking back on the earliest demos he heard, Weil recalled just how striking Larson’s voice was as a composer:

“I heard the demos and I didn't have anything to connect them to. I didn't have any larger context to the show. It was just songs for me to get my ear and listen to. And my first thought was, 'Nobody writes like this guy. Good, bad, and different, this is a true original.' Much in the way that [William] Finn was a true original. Jonathan was a true original. And that thing, just jumped out of the cassette player, which is what I was listening to at that time!”

That originality, he explained, was immediately undeniable. “He was unique. I had done a number of new shows by then, and nobody sounded like him. Not even close. That's how much of an original he was. So that, to me, already set him apart from everybody that I had known that was working in the theater.”

Weil also spoke candidly about the devastating moment when Larson passed away—just after the show’s final dress rehearsal and before its first preview.

“I didn't have enough time to consider [the bigger picture] because I was very singularly focused on what Michael [Grief] and I and Jim Nicola, who was the artistic director of the New York Theater Workshop, we were all very singularly focused on the task at hand. Jim had a theater to run and until he was told otherwise, the show was continuing. Now we found out from Jonathan's friends and family that he absolutely wanted the show to go on. So that was an easy uh hurdle. A couple people have asked me, 'Were there any moments in that, what must have been a terribly difficult time emotionally, which it was... were there any moments when people would say something just a little light, a little cheery, a little funny, just to kind of lighten up the mood?' And I said, 'There was nothing funny going on. Nothing.' It purposeful. It was focused. We were still trying to make a good piece of theater.”

The development of RENT’s now-beloved score was still evolving in those final weeks. Weil shared that one of the show’s most iconic songs didn’t yet exist.

“Jonathan had written all of the songs by the time we're into January of 1996, which as we know is the month that he passed away. He still hadn't written 'Take Me or Leave Me.' He had written a song in its place that was supposed to be a comedy song and it was fine in and of itself. It just didn't seem to fit. So for a long time there was a placeholder where the Joanne/Maureen song would go.

“Once he heard Fredie [Walker-Browne] and Idina [Menzel] sing from their auditions, through rehearsals... Jonathan, now having spent time hearing these voices and seeing these two women together, started to put the ideas of what that song at least would sound like. He said to me in a conversation, I'm not quite sure where it's going lyrically, but I have a really good idea of what the sound is gonna be.”

In this video, hear the full story and so much more and purchase your copy of Making Rent: The Story Behind the Music that Changed Broadway.