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Randy Newman:
The Bluerailroad Interview
page 5
Do you compose a score from the beginning of a film to the end?
No, no. I wish. You get different parts of it. With the Pixar stuff, you really get different parts of it. They're finished with this, and then you get it. They're never finished, exactly. It used to be that they'd finish a picture and then give it to you. Sound and music were the last thing done. But with an animated picture it comes in different parts. It makes it difficult somewhat. Because you don't get to set anything. You can write something you can use all right. Like, in Cars, I did the last race better than I did the first. In my opinion.
It's really little, boring stuff like that, that you end up thinking about. You realize that you're talking about taking enormously seriously an ant and a grasshopper. But it's because the studio succeeds in doing it, so you have to figure out what music would look good with an evil grasshopper.
But I really kind of like writing music for movies. I like it because I love working with the orchestra. I love the sound an orchestra makes, and I love the guys and the women in the orchestra. And I feel very comfortable doing it and it makes it worth it, almost, the process.
Do you always get a temp track?
They do now, yeah. Not only that, but I don't think any composer is gonna come up again, ever, where they don't have to demo everything they do. Where they're not adept at synths, or have someone who can do synths for them. It's gonna be oriented that way. TV is 98% synths right now. Straight synth, no orch. Simulated orch. But there's no young guy who's gonna come up, like Horner, or Johnny, or me, who doesn't have to demo everything for them. I can play it on piano or something. John doesn't use synthesizer at all. Horner sometimes has to demo, sometimes he doesn't. But it won't happen again.
Do you have to demo everything you do?
No. But sometimes, yeah. I have. But someone else will do it from the score. I don't play synth well enough to do it myself. I can play it for them on piano, and sort of on synth. I can do that much. But that'll never be the case for anyone starting out. So they better get good - they already are good - at ProTools and synths and Finale and all that stuff.
Do they ever use one of your own scores for a temp track?
They have. There was some of mine in this one. They'll use it. James Newton Howard sometimes gets in there and participates a little in doing the temp. It will be his stuff. It will be stuff that he thinks will be right. Cause they can fall in love with a temp, and then it's trouble.
You have a distinctive style in your film work. Are people coming to you for a Randy Newman sound?
They are coming to me for knock-down, knock-about comedy. Which is the least gratifying kind of work to do. The Pixar ones are different because there's more depth to them - they're sad, they're happy, they're everything. But this new one has the sound of the cars all the time going. Had it not been Pixar, I wouldn't have done it.
Comedies are funny or they're not funny. And yet they're difficult to do. The movies that my cousin David gets offered to do, like Dr. Doolittle, and things like that, are the hardest movies to do. They're action-comedies. Comedy's tough, because you gotta keep it light, stay out of the way of stuff, and it's difficult. And the action part is difficult, too.
It's hard to write music that doesn't get in the way of the humor?
Yeah, you can kill a joke. By the nature of the music, or being in the wrong place. You can help a joke a little bit, too. But I don't know how much I helped Meet The Fockers, or Meet The Parents be tremendously successful. You'd have to ask [the director] Jay Roach. I'm not sure. Except the opening song in Meet The Parents I always liked. The stuff that goes over the studio logos.
With Meet The Fockers, did you have a completed movie to write to, or did it come in pieces?
It came in pieces. But they enabled me to have more time. And I think I started with the beginning. And I had themes from the last picture, too. And it wasn't much music. It was 25 minutes, maybe.
Do you always conduct the orchestra yourself?
Yes. I do. But so much of it is click, that you could disappear - you could go out and get a drink of water, or a sandwich, and they wouldn't notice you were gone. But they do. You get stuff out of them in rehearsal and stuff. But you sometimes feel like you're waving your arms with the click. I don't like it. But I was too lazy not to do it last time. Next time, maybe not.
Is that click set to a tempo you determine?
You determine the tempo by where you want the music to fall, and what you've written. And it will vary sometimes, and [the orchestra] will play to it. Most stuff's done that way.
The tempo will vary?
Usually by a little. Sometimes by a lot. And if it's by a lot, you sort of have to stop, so they can hear it. But, yeah, I would say if you go to a scoring session, odds are that they're playing to a click track. Pretty much so.
Do you always use the same size orchestra?
No. Smaller one for smaller films. If it's a big outdoor thing like Maverick, or an action picture where you need a big brass section, then you need a lot of strings to soak it up. 100, 108. Less on Meet The Fockers. Cars is pretty big. It also has electric guitars, regular guitars, mandolin. And some bluegrass stuff that I recorded separately.
And drums?
Yeah. [Jim] Keltner.
It was interesting to me that you said you didn't want to go to the Hal Wilner tribute to your music because you didn't want to hear people do your songs wrong.
It wasn't exactly that. I just didn't want to be like a gray cloud where I'm listening and it's not what I want to hear. I've had that experience before where I can't fake it too much if it's my music. Maybe it was fine.
As a songwriter, don't you want people to interpret your songs in different ways, or do you want them to stay exactly-
Not exactly. But I want it not to be embarrassing. Not to be enormously emotive, like versions I've heard of "I Think It's Going To Rain," and running the gamut of the emotions. Or getting things wrong, like happy "Sail Away"s. Or just really making it their own. What are you going to do? I generally had a specific intent. If someone sings their own notes… I mean, I heard a version of "Vincent" [by Don McClean] where a guy changed notes. And took liberties with it, and made it his own. That's put together too good. To screw with a song like that, I hated it.
Garfunkel was criticized for being too schmaltzy with your song "Old Man."
I was too schmaltzy with it, too. I should have been colder. Even than it is, with the strings. I haven't heard it for a while.
Did you like his version?
It didn't bother me that much. I thought it worked. In my version, I should have just put a lid on the strings a little more than I did. But maybe not, I haven't heard it in so long.
The song "The World Isn't Fair" is such an amazing song.
I'm proud of that one. I had the idea first on that one. It came fairly easily for a while. And I wrestled around with the fact that it's like one long verse. It doesn't get to a tonic, or something. It never stops.
Yeah, but it's such a good melody with those words, that it works.
I thought that "The Great Nations of Europe" would be one of the best songs I ever wrote. But for some reason, and I know what it is, I don't think it is. It's a little didactic. It's a little like a guy pointing to a board, and it doesn't have a character for a narrator. The guy in "The World Isn't Fair" is interesting as a character. He's glad. It's me. I'm glad the world isn't fair. I'm glad that Marx was wrong. In a way, you know. I've been very lucky. And yet, I'm not that happy about it. [Laughs]
So many people I know still feel that "I Think It's Going To Rain Today" is their favorite Randy Newman song.
It's amazing. I was a baby when I wrote it. And they pick that, and they pick "Marie." And those things are atypical of my work. You can't win if you're looking at numbers. If you're looking at how much money you're making, or how much money someone is making. I told my boys that people who think that way are never happy. The Buddhists are really right about material things. Absolutely for sure. And you can't win if you go out listening to what people say about you - even when they praise you. They say, "God, I love 'Think It's Going To Rain,' you can't help thinking, "Geez, you like something I wrote when I was 21 - what about the last forty years?" [Laughs] Even Springsteen, people like that, if you let the nature of the compliments bother you, the quality of them, you get stung all the time. Paul [Simon] doesn't want people saying, "God, I love 'Bridge Over Troubled Water,'" with Artie singing the lead. [Laughs]
Yeah, it bothers him still.
Sure it does. And it's like Salieri in Amadeus. I saw [Simon & Garfunkel] at Shea Stadium years ago, and Paul's written everything, all this fancy music, great music, and the crowd's reacting great. But Artie comes on and does "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and the lid comes off! There's this curly-headed handsome guy, and I just know Paul's dying. But you can't get into it.
When I interviewed Dylan, he singled you out as a great songwriter.
That's very nice, coming from him.
Yeah, he's pretty good.
Yeah, he is. Or was, or is, it's hard to say.
He mentioned "Louisiana" as one of your greatest songs. And I heard you do it - and also Aaron Neville do it - at Katrina benefits. And it was more moving than any other song sung. Is it surprising to you at all when past songs apply so powerfully to modern times?
Yeah. It is surprising. That one, of course. It's surprising how they've held up in a way. Same's true with Donovan, however. If you listen to those old Donovan records [laughs], and I didn't notice them then for being great records or anything, but they hold up.
Yeah, they're good. But a handful of his songs, not all of them. Whereas you've never done a weak album.
No. Born Again is odd. But not weak, I don't think. And that's what I try to think of myself as hoping I can keep doing. If I ever think I'm getting appreciably worse, I won't do it. But I haven't felt it. And as I say in the song "I'm Dead," you wouldn't know, maybe. I think my early stuff earns more money in royalties every year than stuff of the Nineties, or even the Eighties, except for "I Love L.A." But it's that stuff, the stuff on Sail Away and Good Ol' Boys and Little Criminals to some degree, that is what people know me for. So I mean, in a way, you could say that I had this window, like Neil Young from '71 through '75 where you write everything people love. He stayed good, but the bulk of his estate was written then. And mine, too, maybe.
Yet you've written so many great songs since then, like "The World Isn't Fair" or "I Want You To Hurt Like I Do" -
Yeah, but they're not comparable in what they generate. But, yeah, the new songs are improvements to me. "The World Isn't Fair" is real good. But the reality is that they're not as popular pop songs [laughs] as the early stuff.
You've often put yourself down, because you say you haven't written many hits-
But it's a fact. I sometimes wonder about Bacharach. My Uncle Lionel was a musician, and he said about Bacharach, "You know, all his tunes sound like third oboe parts." [Laughter] But I went to this tribute to Bacharach, and those tunes are very impressive. I mean, he wanders all over the place, but when he gets to the hook, he knows that he's there.
Bacharach has defined a sound in popular music. A Bacharach song is distinctive. And you have done that as well - not only musically, but lyrically, too. Is there some satisfaction in the fact that you've created something unique in popular song?
There's some satisfaction, yeah. There is. And there's some satisfaction that I'm still around. And functioning almost at the same level I was. Maybe 65%, 73%. I thought that the Bad Love stuff was as good a bunch of songs as I've written since Sail Away. So I was happy. Because if I think I'm getting appreciably worse, I wouldn't do it.
You are so busy writing film scores, and I know a lot of the fans of your songwriting worry that it takes you away from songwriting. Does it, or does it inspire new songs?
It inspires them. I'm usually glad to get back to it. And harmonically it opens things for me, because you go places you wouldn't go. And I take it very seriously, writing for the orchestra. So I don't look at it as time taken away [from songwriting.] But certainly, when I'm gone what'll be remembered for are the songs.
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