Title: Lloyd Webber on The Wizard of Oz, Over the Rainbow – and Avril Lavigne

Try as they might to dress his lordship up as a meanie, Andrew Lloyd Webber is no Simon Cowell.

In the British composer’s appearances as a judge on the recent CBC Television contest Over the Rainbow, producers would play thunderous music and flash the lights before revealing him sitting atop an imposing throne with armrests shaped like growling lions’ jaws.

But the 64-year-old composer of The Phantom of t...