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Randy Newman:
The Bluerailroad Interview
page 3
And that didn't appeal to you, the idea of moving to New York?
No, I was still going to school, I think. But Leiber is certainly one of the best pop lyricists of the century. In my opinion. He's right up there with anybody. Those lyrics he wrote, a ton of those things, are really great. It's funny stuff. It's remarkable.
Was it at age 17 that you wrote your first song?
16. The very first song was called "Don't Tell On Me." [Sings plodding melody.] And the next one was "They Tell Me It's Summer," which was recorded by The Fleetwoods.
Was it writing for yourself that shaped your songwriting approach?
Yes. If I'd had a voice like Simon or Sting, or a voice that I saw as seductive in some kind of way, or like a romantic hero, maybe I'd have written that kind of thing. Though I'll tell you, I'm not sure it would have interested me. I remember I changed before I started recording. I changed with "Simon Smith (And His Amazing Dancing Bear) in '65. That was the one. Because I couldn't stand it, what I was doing. Maybe I couldn't do it as well as Goffin & King, or Mann & Weil. But there are millions of ways of saying 'I love you' or 'I don't love you,' and that's what 95% of the repertory is. But I just didn't want to do it. And I was writing for Frank Sinatra, Jr. About some girl named Susie. [Sings simple tune.] But I just said, 'Jesus Christ.' I just wasn't interested. I didn't care what I rhymed with what. So I changed.
Was it a conscious choice to start writing from a character's point of view?
No. Not conscious. But once I did it, I liked it. The song being slightly oblique. The song is about some guy who has some kind of gimmick, and uses it, and is kind of cynical. It isn't as if a lot of people followed me down that road. Or that there's been a lot of people before me doing it. I can think of almost no one. There isn't much of it. Because the medium is made to be more direct, so people can put themselves in it. They're not used to hearing irony. More so with Rap, when people are characters more often. But you're not used to it on the radio.
Yeah, but maybe because people can't do it. There are people who have tried, but haven't been able to pull it off like you have.
That may be. You have to get the diction right. You have to have the vocabulary that the person you're writing about would have. And you have to have it not be you. But I mean, if I could write "I Love You Just The Way You Are," I'd have been happy to have done it. But I would have written the whole thing, and at the end, I'd have gone, "you stupid bitch," and blown my chances.
There are songwriters like Sondheim who have pulled it off, but he has the context of theater.
Yeah, he's writing for shows. He said that if he didn't have an assignment, or some reason to write a song, he doesn't know how he'd do it. He did a good job writing that song for Madonna (from Dick Tracy.).
Yeah, and she could even sing it.
It would seem, though God knows what everybody went through for that.
One of the best pieces of advice you gave me about songwriting is "Don't let the critic become bigger than the creator."
Yeah, it'll kill you. But I'm not able to do it. Not always. It'll shut you down. Sometimes I just won't let it go. Like I say, now all this stuff I'm writing is so blues-oriented, so simple, that I'm a little dissatisfied in a sense. But I could be wrong, and I may end up finishing these songs.
This reminds me of the first time I met Leiber. I talked to him about songwriting, and I was writing all these songs with straight eighth-note accompaniment. I was doing that before the Beatles did it. I did it really early, for some reason. And I complained to him about the fact that that was what I was doing, and he said, "If that happens, you just write yourself out of it. You let yourself do it, and eventually you'll get tired of it, and think of something else." And that's very good advice, and I've thought of it often. You make yourself just finish them off, and do it, and you will move on. It may be even more likely when I was twenty, than now, but I am pretty sure that that's the case.
I'm surprised you're writing mostly bluesy stuff - you have written many great bluesy songs, such as "Lucinda" - but you're also one of the few who writes really harmonically complex songs.
Sometimes my songs become a little bit more complex when I have to think about the chords, and write them down, and move the voices around. But, yeah, it surprised me, too, that it isn't more complex. The Kurt Weill harmonic vocabulary is something I could sing to. But it is something that I think about. In fact, I'm thinking about it too much. You know, you can find substitutes for the blues. When I say bluesy, I mean this: (goes to piano, and plays a cavalcade of moving chords, far beyond a standard blues). I mean, I'm including that kind of shuffling around.
You've been playing for so many years - do your hands go to the same patterns?
Yeah. [Laughs] They go to shuffles. I have to not do that. Rock and roll players are really used to straight time. And I like shuffles, too. That's what I love. I have to force myself not to do it.
Do you consciously experiment with chords you've never played before?
Yeah, all the time. In movies, for sure. And in songs, yeah. You can do it to the detriment of what you're working on. I've torn songs apart, just so I can do something with the orchestra. But I've stopped doing it. Because I thought I was hurting the song, slowing it down.
Do you generate your melodies from chords, or do you think of melody lines separate from chords?
I'll sing it against what I'm playing. Though I'll tell you, what movies do, and have done to me, in part - when you write for an orchestra, you've sort of got to move the right ways. The rules of harmony apply; it sounds better if you follow these stupid basic things. Like contrary motion, and no parallel fifths, and things like that. And it just sounds better to me, and it works better, voicings and stuff. So then when I'm playing songs when I'm not even thinking about it, I'll do things that I wouldn't ordinarily do. My hands will go to the right place, but it's the wrong place for the song. And then when you have to write a melody down, to dodge it, when you do an arrangement, it changes things. Some of the things I sing, when my ear's in shape, they sound out to me. They didn't bother me when I did them, and they don't bother me, ultimately. But I probably could have done it differently. It's a different kind of writing.
You said your film work keeps you in shape for songwriting-
I would think so, because you're doing creative work everyday, and you're forced to do it, and it's harmonically, certainly, more complicated than songs. The harmonic vocabulary is bigger than what it is in a song.
You write full orchestral scores. Is that because you think an orchestra is the best medium for a movie?
For the ones I've been given. I would think there are some movies where a straight rock and roll would be best for it. A movie about young people, or modern life urban style stuff. I love an orchestra and in what I've done, I've thought it was the right thing. As did the director, or I would have done something else.
Do you write a movie score by watching an entire movie first, and then thinking of melodic motifs that will carry through?
They haven't been that kind of picture. Sometimes you'll get part of reel three, or reel four. I think maybe I could have done more than that. Like the Harry Potter theme, which is used in many different ways. I've done it.
In Monsters, Inc. you have a beautiful motif whenever the character of Boo is onscreen.
Yeah, but she's late in the picture. In Monsters, nothing really good happens to them for a long time. There isn't a consonant, straight-out chord, for a long time. There is for some establishing stuff, but then they're in danger for a long time. But I might be able to unify things more if I did do something like that, but sometimes I'll write themes that are related, but it isn't motific development. Sometimes it will be a sound more than a melodic motif. Like the pizzicato on "Desperate Housewives" is a sound, irrespective of the notes they're playing. I've done that for pictures.
Do you always compose on piano for movies?
No. I used to, of course, before the synths were around. But I'll write on a synth, and then put it down on paper. If it's an action scene, nothing's gonna make enough noise for you, usually, but brass. It just won't. There just isn't anything else besides brass and percussion. Woodwinds are just not gonna do it. So you play a brass figure [on synth] or something. I come from a background and a family that would have hated that. You get used to any modality. There are people who write everything at a piano. And write it down, and that's it. No synth involved. I was always scared - more scared when it was just a piano - and you'd write an oboe solo, and you'd worry about a million different things. With a synth, it isn't accurate, particularly, especially in my versions. I'm not good at it, using a synth. But I'll listen to it. And I'll still put it on paper so I can see it. And I won't do all the parts on synth. I'll just do an outline of it. And I think it helps. It's helped me. Orchestrators, the guys I've used, they use synths, but it's all on piano.
When you're composing for a movie, do you do it while watching the images, or do you watch a scene first and then go to the instrument?
It varies. Sometimes you'll have it broken down in certain scenes. It used to be that you couldn't look at it. You couldn't get the video; you'd just work from a cue sheet. That's the way it was the first seven years or so I worked on films. But now you can look at it, and lock in the place you're gonna start, and the place you're gonna end, and fiddle about with this and that. So, yeah, you look at it. And there's a little silent movie type stuff you'll do, where you're playing along with it. But you don't do the real writing when it's on.
Your Uncle Alfred wrote 300 movies scores -
He did. He worked all the time, every day. That I ever knew him.
And you were sometimes there on the soundstage, watching him work?
I did. Since the time I was five years old.
Did you watch him when he composed, too, or just conduct?
I would go visit him when he was working, and he'd ask me what I thought. I mean, I might have inherited some of this, my attitude about composing, from my uncle. Because here was this guy who was the best movie composer there was. And he was asking me, when I was eight years old, what do you think of this? And he looked worried. And if he was worried, maybe I thought, subconsciously, because I didn't want this to happen to me, "Oh God, maybe I should be worried, too. And maybe I should suffer, and live in a garret." I've yet to be able to stride confidently into the room where I'm gonna be working, without thinking optimistic thoughts.
On a movie sometimes, yeah, if things are going well, sometimes you know where you're going the next day. But then the next cue'll come up, and you've got that empty page stuff. And I don't even like to hear myself say it. But it's not unique to me. Johnny Williams feels the same way, accomplished as he is. James Newton Howard feels the same way when he starts a picture. As many as he's done, and as fast as he can do them. I was talking to him once, and I said, "I really hope that I get hit by a car, or something, and get out of this. I don't want to die, or anything… And I know that's hard to believe." And he said, "No, I feel the same way." It's ridiculous. It's really ridiculous and laughable to look at things that way, and harmful to yourself, and harmful to anyone who heard you, who aspires to be something like you, and thinks you're great, and wonders why you wouldn't have confidence in what you're doing after all you've done in the past. Wouldn't you just figure that the numbers would just favor you? What's the worst that could happen to you in there? You know, you can go to a psychiatrist for years, and they tell you a simple thing, this is what's wrong with you, and then they would tell you again and tell you again, and apparently that's the way they work. But you can't always change. Though it's stupid and nonproductive.
You once said that Alfred was a depressed person and would drink every night-
He did drink every night. At 5. But I don't know whether he was a depressed person. I saw him in funny instances. There are other people who knew him differently Which is another idea for a song: I was at a funeral. It was actually for Al's wife, Tom and David's mother, who just died. And you think you know a person, and you've known them ever since you were born. But you'd hear stories from her friends, or people who saw her in a different way, and it was like you were talking about a person I didn't even know. It's interesting. People have written short stories about that. But it's an interesting thing to write a song about.
You mentioned that James Newton Howard had only four weeks to write the score for King Kong. Is that uncommon?
No, it's not uncommon. But I wouldn't do it. I would never do it for anyone I didn't really love. [Laughs] Cause it's just not enough time. The first thing that I try and get is as much time as I can. To do the job right. You're working all the time, anyway, but it's nice to get eight weeks. It used to be more. Ten, or whatever you could get. But now it's more common that someone would get four weeks, or three weeks. TV, it's nothing, it's a week. And guys do amazing stuff. You know, Alf Clausen, Michael Ciccino, those CSI guys. TV music, in general, is in a higher state than film music is. Cause they leave people alone a little bit. They're not bound to temp tracks. And temp tracks are often monochromatic. They're a necessity, because they're pieced together from this, and they're pieced together from that. A little bit of Balto here, and a little bit of Pirates of the Caribbean here, and Crimson Tide. So it's kind of flat and it doesn't go anywhere, and sometimes that'll end up being what the director ends up wanting, even though it's hurting it, and they don't know it.
(continued ...)
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