photo: Pamela Springsteen
Outrageous, Alarming, Courageous & Charming.
Randy Newman’s different, and he doesn’t care who knows it.
“I’m not interested in heroes much,” remarks Randy Newman in a recent telephone interview with ARTVOICE. A prolific composer and dynamic lyricist in the fifth decade of a strange and illustrious career, this self-titled “froggish man” has never been a hero in the modern sense of the word (a pop star or rock god, tortured troubadour or sensitive folk singer). While the Stones screamed about honky tonk women in the ‘70s, Newman examined the darker voices of the lonely and disenfranchised, penning catchy, blues-inflected tunes about greed, selfishness, unrequited love and nuclear holocausts. While Bono’s ego clogged the airwaves of the ‘80s, Newman bemoaned the troubles in paradise, unveiling a polished pop style that made his characters even more pitiful and hilarious.
“Since I was a little boy, I’d root for underdogs – the Dodgers against the Yankees in the World Series. I don’t know what caused it. It’s sort of a bad deal, because the reason they’re underdogs is that they usually lose. The 10 to 1 horse doesn’t win much. But I’ve always felt that I liked things to even out. I wish the world were fair.”
Rochester will have a pair of chances to cheer Randy Newman and his beloved dark horses, when he performs with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra on March 12 and 13 at the Eastman Theatre. He’s touring in support of last year’s Songbook, Vol. 1, a record that finds the 60-year-old revisiting songs from every stage of his career, stripping them down to nothing but piano and vocals. The results are intriguing, especially when Newman tackles the songs of his youth.
“There are songs that you think don’t have anything to do with you, but as you get older, sometimes they do,” Newman points out. “I hardly realized I was doing them differently, but inevitably, they’re very different.”
It’s an idea we all can relate to: our tastes and opinions change as a result of age. Songbook is an album about these shifts in perspective. Newman wrote the song “Lonely At The Top” as a sarcastic send-up over 30 years ago. On Songbook, it’s not quite as humorous to hear a much older and more successful man singing the lines, “All the applause, all the parades/And all the money I have made/Oh, it’s lonely at the top.” It’s a good example of an artist’s organic relationship with his own character – as the artist changes, so does his creation.
But subtleties like these aren’t what made Newman a staple of modern Americana. It’s his brashness, his cutting wit, his ranting and raving, his brutal cynicism. Although the sarcasm drips like honey on his most incendiary lyrics, Newman is no stranger to horrible misunderstandings, notably his lone hit “Short People” and the ingenious “I Love L.A.” The song boldly confronted the ignorant bravado of Californians, and was adopted by the 1984 Olympic games in Los Angeles, even though it contains the lines, “Look at that mountain/Look at those trees/Look at that bum over there, man/He's down on his knees.”
According to Newman, the people who “don’t get it” aren’t looking for any real substance in their music anyways. “The way people listen to pop music is not good for what I do. You have to listen to what I’m saying to like it,” he explains. “All you gotta to is listen. I never thought it was that hard; it’s not like it’s physics.”
When stacked up against the recycled hit records of the last few decades, any sly, tongue-in-cheek jab is bound to stand out like a sore thumb. The topic is obviously a little frustrating to Newman. If you’re not in on the joke, you’re just not paying attention.
“You know how some people say, ‘Just so long as they react’? I like people to understand what I’m saying,” Newman admits. “In school, you’d analyze a poem and you’d say ‘It means this,’ and someone else would say ‘No, it means, this,’ and the teacher would say, ‘That’s right, and that’s right too.’ Well, no it isn’t!”
'I Love LA’ has the Beach Boys, the redhead and the open car, but it’s also got the bum, and some really aggressive ignorance. And I think the town gets it. It’s fun to be really aggressively stupid.”
The latest successes in Randy Newman’s career have been light years away from aggression and controversy. He’s lent his film scoring talents to Disney, a corporate monolith that shamelessly markets contrived, happy-land crap to innocent children everywhere. (If you think I’m being too harsh, I dare you to rent Cinderella 2: Dreams Come True.) Ironic is too tame a word to describe the collaboration.
“I did see the irony of it all, but I take pride in the fact that I’m a professional writer. I’m like Mozart, except shittier. If given an assignment to write a flute concerto, he did it, even though he hated the flute. But he liked what he wrote,” Newman comments with a jolly chuckle.
While it may not rival Mozart, Newman’s film resume is impressive. He has scored countless movies, including Ragtime, The Natural, Toy Story, Avalon, Monsters, Inc., Pleasantville and the recent hit Seabiscuit. His Rochester performances will be split between his scores and his songs; the evenings are sure to provide equal shares of orchestral booms and sardonic swoons.
But unlike John Williams or James Horner, Randy Newman is not predictable. He does deserve to be remembered strictly for his musical talents – as an accomplished pianist, experienced arranger and profound composer. His resume is littered with awards (four Grammies and an Oscar to be exact), but the true prizes of his career are his albums. The warm, welcoming satire of Sail Away. The stark Southern sunshine of Good Old Boys. The searing comedy of Born Again. The heartbreaking honesty of Bad Love. These are Randy Newman’s truly timeless achievements, and our undying fascination with the underdog will give them very long legs.
“I’m interested in people that have something wrong with them,” observes Newman. “I let them say what they gotta say, however odd or weird or misguided they may be, and let the audience judge who they are.”
Rochester has the chance to judge the misguided residents of Randy Newman’s mind, and considering that he rarely tours, these two concerts are a special gift. Thanks to the magic of audio recordings and his loyal band of followers (many of whom belong to Newman’s fan club, the Little Criminals), people will be inspired, tickled, saddened, offended and overjoyed by his music for many years to come. The world might be unfair, but it definitely has its moments.
Appeared in the March 11, 2004, issue of Artvoice. Second photo by Michael Wilson.