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Written & Photographed by PAUL ZOLLO
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EDITOR'S NOTE: For more with Randy Newman, check out our Archives
for another interview, Randy Newman On Film Scoring 2006.
 andy is at the piano. It's one place that he always seems the most comfortable. Like many musicians, his thoughts are musical as often as they are verbal. When we talk about his songs, he frequently starts playing and singing to make a point. And his playing is always quite astounding - intricate, sometimes thundering, complex arrangements set against beautiful melodies. [Though he often jokes that he isn't much a melodist, in fact he's one of the best.]
Today we're sharing the stage at the annual ASCAP Songwriter's Expo, where it's my fortuitous mission to interview Randy onstage for a vast audience of fans and songwriters. He's onstage, doing a soundcheck. We're at the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel, now ritzy but once a funky Holiday Inn where this writer was known to pool-crash on occasion back in the day. Later, during the event, I am introduced to the crowd, and then I, in turn, introduce Randy, as the crowd spontaneously erupts into a standing ovation. We talk - Randy is in show-biz mode, making lots of jokes to great gusts of laughter - and he bursts frequently into song - "Political Science," "Sail Away," "Marie," "I'm Dead (But I Don't Know It)," "The World Isn't Fair," "Great Nations of Europe," "Davy The Fat Boy," "Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear, " "I Love L.A.," and others are all performed for the spell-bound crowd.
Hate New York City, it's cold and it's damp
And all the people dress like monkeys
Let's leave Chicago to the eskimoes
That town's a little too rugged, for you and me, you bad girl…"
From "I Love L.A."
By Randy Newman
How does one introduce Randy Newman? It's not easy, cause there's a lot to say, and it's easy to get overblown. But unafraid as always of unchained hyperbole, I said something quite close to this: Some human beings are way more talented than most. It's true. You think of someone like Michelangelo for example. He was not only a pretty great sculptor, but also a great painter, and a poet. George Gershwin was a great songwriter, composer and pianist but also an accomplished photographer. And Randy is one of these people.
He's one of the most important American songwriters now or ever. He's defined an entire school of songwriting - so often in the press we see songs referred to as "like a Randy Newman song" - because his work is really on a level all its own. He's defined the art of writing songs in character. Musically & lyrically he has created a world no one else exists in - some try - but nobody else does it like he does. Randy's songs are sophisticated, brilliant, often hilarious, often historical, timeless - and endlessly relevant. And musically they are compelling and beautiful. If he was only a melodist - a composer - he would be one of the best. But he's also one of the greatest living lyricists there is - despite Sondheim's problem with Randy's inclination to rhyme 'girl' with 'world.' Sondheim never wrote "Louisiana" or "The World Isn't Fair."
But there's more - since Randy's heartbreakingly beautiful score for the Milos Forman's Ragtime in 1981, he's become one of the world's foremost film composers. Other songwriters have written scores - and other film scorers have written songs - but never in the history of the cinema has there been a serious songwriter who is also such an accomplished and experienced and great film composer. Usually people are good at one or the other - but not both. Randy is a very seriously great film scorer - as the scores to Ragtime, The Natural, Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., Cars, Meet The Fockers, Avalon and so many others attests. And unlike others in the field - he isn't a "hummer" - he writes and conducts full orchestral scores - that stand up to repeated listenings - as I know well, having a seven-year old who loves nothing more than to watch Monsters Inc., for example, thousands and thousands of times.
That was pretty much all of my introduction, before I brought Randy to the stage. And I don't know if he heard it, but I know if he did, he'd bristle at the comparisons to Gershwin or Michelangelo. He's extremely self-critical. When told, for example, of the exceeding genius exhibited in a song like "Great Nations of Europe," which miraculously condenses the brutality of 16th century European history into a single hilarious and pointed song, he remarks on the one line in it he felt wasn't perfect.
Yet it's this yearning for perfection that makes him the artist he is. It's the "divine dissatisfaction" that Martha Graham spoke of years ago, that quality in all great artists that is never satisfied, because art is always human, never perfect, and yet they strive for the absolute. And it's that drive that compels him to ever expand his range and his expression musically and lyrically, and results in a new album every few years or so that is as great or greater as his previous masterpieces. Unlike so many of his peers who peaked decades ago, Randy Newman is still at it, still writing songs in his sixties that match the level of the masterpieces he wrote in his twenties.
Broken windows and empty hallways,
A pale dead moon in a sky streaked with grey.
Human kindness is overflowing,
And I think it's going to rain today.
From "I Think It's Going To Rain Today."
By Randy Newman
When asked about his ability to maintain quality throughout all these years, he's answered, on more than one occasion, that it's because songwriting has always been a matter of "life or death" for him. Which is not to say he enjoys the process of writing songs. He doesn't. (Maybe because he's created such a formidable creative challenge in his life - matching the level of previous Randy Newman songs, no easy feat.) But he thinks about this - this pattern of popular songwriters peaking early in life. He received many laughs at the Expo by saying that although most pop songwriters did their best work in their 20s, none of them have retired. He then sent the crowd into hysterics with a song he wrote, featured on Bad Love, about this very subject - continuing to do it when you have nothing left to do - called "I'm Dead, But I Don't Know It."
I have nothing left to say
But I'm gonna say it anyway
Thirty years upon the stage
I hear the people say
Why won't he go away?
From "I'm Dead (But I Don't Know It)."
By Randy Newman
He's capable of writing songs on subjects other songwriters don't even dream of approaching. He's written about racism in America, small-mindedness and prejudice better than any other songwriter ever. Though slavery in America and the genocide of Native Americans are momentous chapters of not so distant American history, our greatest songwriters have never broached either topics. Yes, Dylan does refer to the "ghosts of slavery ships" in "Blind Willie McTell," but that's about it. Whereas Randy wrote one of the most poignant and telling songs ever about slavery - "Sail Away" (written in the character of a slave trader luring young black men to his boat) - and on his last album, Bad Love, he succeeded in entailing the twisted history of Columbus and his effect on this land and others in "Great Nations of Europe."
Columbus sailed for India found Salvador instead
He shook hands with some Indians and soon they all were dead
They got TB and typhoid and athletes foot, diptheria and the flu
'scuse me great nations comin through…
From "Great Nations of Europe"
By Randy Newman
Randy's songs contain solid content. Whereas so many songs we hear are sadly devoid of content, Randy's are always about something - about a person, a place, an event, or a bit of history. His use of history - which he started years prior to the Google-era of instant history - is widespread throughout his work - from the landmark "Louisiana 1927" about the great flood that decimated the state (and which was the most poignant of all songs sung after the horrors of Katrina) to "Sail Away" to "Kingfish," written about Huey "Every Man A King" Long, who was elected Governor of Lousiana in 1928, to the masterful "Great Nations of Europe." And in the remarkable "The World Isn't Fair," from Bad Love, he somehow succeeds in connecting the history of Karl Marx to the modern tale of rich "froggish" men with young beautiful wives to crystallize the inequality in the world. It's a song only Randy could write, and he did.
Oh Karl the world isn't fair
It isn't and never will be
They tried out your plan
It brought misery instead
If you'd seen how they worked it
you'd be glad you were dead
just like I'm glad I'm living in the land of the free
where the rich just get richer
and the poor you don't ever have to see
It would depress us, Karl
Because we care
that the world still isn't fair
From "The World Isn't Fair"
By Randy Newman
Many years ago, when Saturday Night Live was still new, Paul Simon was the host, and to introduce his friend Randy Newman, he played the first verse of Randy's beautiful love song, "Marie." Of all of Simon's appearances on the show, it's the only time he performed a song he didn't write, with the exception of his duet on "Here Comes The Sun" with George Harrison. His performance of "Marie," which is perhaps the ultimate love song, was momentous. Here was one of the world's greatest songwriters letting us in on what was still somewhat of a secret back then in 1974 - that Randy Newman was among us. "Marie" remains remarkable in Randy's work, because it is not only heartbreakingly beautiful, but because it's such a straight-ahead love song, something Randy has always said he wished he could write, but rarely did, because his voice wasn't made for outright declarations of ardor. But to get around that problem, he put the song in character, and employed an unprecedented technique - having the narrator get drunk enough to spill out emotions he'd never be able to express sober:
I'm drunk right now baby, but I've got to be
or I never could tell you what you mean to me
I loved you the first time I saw you
and I always will love you, Marie.
From "Marie"
By Randy Newman
Simon, of course, isn't the only famous songwriter to sing Randy's praises. When I interviewed Dylan in 1993, he spoke of the greatness of legendary songwriters Hank Williams and Woody Guthrie. And when I asked him to cite a living songwriter who was great, the first that came to his mind was Randy. "There aren't many songwriters in Randy's league," he said. "He knows music. A song like `Lousiana' or `Cross Charleston Bay,' [`Sail Away'] it just doesn't get any better than that."
Bluerailroad: The chief distinguishing characteristic of your work is your uncanny ability to write in character. How did that start?
Randy Newman: What I did for years was I tried to be Carole King. It was at Metric music, in Hollywood. Jackie DeShannon and Leon Russell were there. When I started at 16, Carole King was just the greatest, I thought. And I still do. And so when Gene McDaniels would need a follow-up, or the Chiffons, she would always beat us. Occasionally Jackie got a record.
The first song I wrote I was writing for Frank Sinatra, Jr. Who, in combination with his father, makes a very good Harry Connick, Jr. [Laughter] So I was writing a song, and I couldn't take it. So I wrote this [plays "Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear."] I think that was the first one. And then I justified it since by saying why shouldn't songwriters have the latitude that a short-story writer, like John Updike, has. When he writes a short story or a novel, it doesn't have to be he who is the protagonist.
What was the reaction of people to that kind of song? Did anyone say, Randy, this is not what you should do?
They already said that to me when I thought I had a great follow-up for Bobby Vee. Carole had "Take Good Care Of My Baby" and I'd come in with this [plays a slow shuffle.] That's not bad. [Sings] "I know someday I'll find a boy who'll softly say, little girl, can I take you away…" Oops, I just modulated without meaning to. [Laughter] I wrote that when I was very young. For The Ventures. That was called "Take Me Away." I don't know if anyone ever recorded it.
"Davy, The Fat Boy" was among your first character songs-
Yeah. Originally it was totally different. Using the orchestra was so important to me, coming from the family I did, that I would tear up songs just so I could use the orchestra and get the place right. It was one of the first things I ever conducted. And when you conduct a whole orchestra, it's like this weight. They slow you down, unless you do certain tricks that I don't know. [Laughter]. So it's like building a mountain that you can't climb. [Sings dramatic intro at a very slow tempo.] So I did arrangements for myself that I couldn't sing. And you'd see, it was right in the mainstream of what pop was doing at that time. [Laughter]
A thing about "Davy The Fat Boy," like so many of your songs, is that their relevance hasn't diminished at all-
And the income hasn't increased. I think that made four cents, that song. Some of my songs with a good deal more shittiness to them earned a lot more. Like this one [sings "I'll Be Home."] "I'll be home, I'll be home, when your nights are troubled and you're all alone/when you're feeling down and need some sympathy/there's no one else around to keep you company/remember baby, you can always count on me/I'll be home, I'll be home, I'll be home." That song earns more than others. Wrote it for Mary Hopkin. But I mean it's songs like that, that if I'd gone down that road, I'd be oil painting in Kawai today. [Laughs] I've been very lucky, considering the type of writing I've done. People who are fans of mine, I think their favorite songs of mine are the ballads, the ones that are when I'm closer to the mainstream than, say, "Davy the Fat Boy."
"Davy" seems especially relevant now, in this era of "American Idol" when people get a lot of entertainment out of ridiculing others.
The song is about the narrator, who is so callous, he tells Davy's mother and father that he's gonna be a pal to Davy and then he puts him in the circus. I find that funny for that reason. That degree of meanness. It's not like a cautionary tale or anything. None of us are that bad, or if we are, we don't admit it. I've written songs about people who are worse.
Leonard Cohen told me, "If I knew where the good songs came from, I would go there more often."
Yeah, I'm so tired. I'm even tired of hearing myself say that; I'm tired of hearing myself whine about it. So I'm stuck now, with saying nothing. But it's true. It's not easy. I talked to Henley and he said, "I haven't written anything in five years." But he was fighting that war.
You've been writing songs now for decades. Do you find it ever gets easier?
It's always easy for me when I have an assignment, a movie assignment. Everything I've ever written for a movie has come relatively easy. And once you get started on something, for yourself, sometimes that will go quickly. But starting can be difficult. I haven't learned anything that I didn't know before. The real secret to that, like so much else, is stamina. Hanging in there. And showing up every day. With a movie deadline, you have no choice. And what it does is - for motion picture composers, a lot of them - when you don't have to do anything, after having to do something every day, every day, every day - James Newton Howard just did King Kong in four weeks - so when you don't have to do anything, you don't want to do anything. I mean, there ain't nothing I want to do. Not much past brushing your teeth. At least, that's the way I feel about it. It's not healthy.
(continued ...)
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