Randall Stuart Newman was born on November 28th of 1943, his father's 30th birthday, in Los Angeles. He lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, as a small child and spent summers there until he was 11 years old, when his family returned to Los Angeles.
Newman has been a professional songwriter since he was 17. He cites Ray Charles as his greatest influence growing up. His first single as a performer was 1962's "Golden Gridiron Boy", released when he was 18. In the mid-1960s, Newman kept a close musical relationship with the band Harpers Bizarre, best known for their 1967 hit version of the Paul Simon composition "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)".
In this period, Newman began a long professional association with childhood friend Lenny Waronker. Waronker had been hired to produce the Tikis, the Beau Brummels and the Mojo Men, who were all contracted to the Los Angeles independent label Autumn Records. He in turn brought in Newman, Leon Russell and another friend, pianist/arranger Van Dyke Parks, to play on recording sessions. Later in 1966, Waronker was hired as an A&R manager by Warner Bros. Records and his friendship with Newman, Russell and Parks began a creative circle around Waronker at Warner Bros. that became one of the keys to Warner Bros.' subsequent success as a rock music label.
His 1968 debut album, Randy Newman, was a critical success but never entered the Billboard Top 200. Many artists, including Barbra Streisand, Alan Price, Van Dyke Parks, Dave Van Ronk, Judy Collins, Glen Campbell, Cass Elliot, Art Garfunkel, the Everly Brothers, Dusty Springfield, Lynn Anderson, Wilson Pickett, Pat Boone, Neil Diamond and Peggy Lee, covered his songs and "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" became an early standard.
In 1970, Harry Nilsson recorded an entire album of Newman compositions (Newman played piano) called Nilsson Sings Newman. The album was not a commercial success, but critics liked it (it won a "Record of the Year" award from Stereo Review magazine), and it paved the way for Newman's 1970 release, 12 Songs, a more stripped-down sound that showcased Newman's piano. This is when his music really started to pick up.
Newman has been nominated for 22 Academy Awards, winning two times. He has received three Emmys, seven Grammy Awards, and the Governor's Award from the Recording Academy. Newman was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002. In 2010, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Newman was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013. In September 2014, Newman received a Max Steiner Film Music Achievement Award and performed at the annual film music gala Hollywood in Vienna for the first time together with his cousin David Newman.
It’s insane how much Newman lets it all hang out instrumentally behind some of the most morally reprehensible characters ever conceived in a lyrical fashion. His anger is palpable but never overwhelming, he is as no chill as he is calming in the songs exteriors. This (beside Trouble in Paradise) is the album that must cement him as one of my favorites as I don’t get the overwhelming negative perception of this album. It’s like Todd Rundgren level production fuckery with a level of goofery that is all still very Randy despite its critics claiming it is a fall from grace from his smart songwriting. To me it’s a natural progression. After his most reductive yet catchy song reached rebound heights I have the internal image of Randy going like “So you like Short People aye?! Get a load of ‘Pants’ and ‘Mr. Sheep’ you musical baby food listeners!”
Not to be confused with his “It’s Money That I Love” on Land Of Dreams, “It’s Money That Matters” is the opening song here. It’s pretty straightforward, a swaggering blues tune that comes out the gate with some wonderfully mild lyrics. Bemoaning nature, God, and family, all classic parts of a traditional America, money is the most important thing in the narrator’s life. "There are guys I knew who got 1500 on the college boards, can outspell me, were more decent and ethical fellows in some ways. They just chose a different sort of life. The trouble is, in this country, if you do, you can’t avoid getting your face rubbed in it and can’t help wondering, 'Why is that little fat guy with the money with that pretty girl over there?' Then you think, 'It’d be nice to have an electric blanket. It would be nice to have a remote control and not have to get up from my chair.' Some people avoid thoughts like that, but they’re awful hard to avoid. So that’s what it’s about. There is more truth to that song than I would hope there would be. Money does not make you happy, but it looks pretty good, you know?"
Then there’s the ELO critique/tribute song from a dumb fan “The Story of A Rock and Roll Band” which on paper sounds like a horrible and inevitability dated idea, however as an ELO enjoyer his ability to mangle his views of them as a band without overwhelming praise or overwhelming critique made me happy. “That song…what I like about it is that I got everything so wrong: mispronounced the name of the town, made up their names… And they do have these idiosyncracies about their music that are funny. It’s maybe a kind of a joke, but I wouldn’t have done it if I really hated them like I hate some people. No matter how successful they’ve been, it’s too easy to take a shot at someone, and it’s not a shot. I’d tell ya if it were.”
Then we get Randy’s “chicken shit” classic “Pretty Boy”. The lyrics sound like the ending of a West Side Story interaction, but where there is an emphasis on those lyrics showed the hyper masculinity as a point of self destruction. The haunting background instrumentation sends shivers down my spine every time. It all ends with a confrontation, who knows how it ends, but what the song paints isn’t a pretty picture. The song is vague about who the title character is, but it’s certainly an armed gang that surrounds him, closing in on him with every ominous line. It’s possible he’s just a hapless tourist who’s found himself on the wrong street in Manhattan deep in its Taxi Driver phase. But I think he’s more likely someone who once imagined that he could join a gang, perhaps even this gang, although the narrators don’t appear to know him personally.
I just love how Born Again combines some of Randy Newman's subtler songwriting with some of his darker lyrical excursions. A case in point is "Mr. Sheep," in which the narrator ruthlessly mocks a businessman on his way to work. Maybe me favorite moment on the song is Newman’s masterful line reading of “He forgot his um-buh-rel-la”, giving the last word four syllables. As tends to be the case with Newman's music, the joke was actually on the guy trying to tell the joke, but plenty of people took the song at face value. He says he concentrated on trying to act with his voice some on this album, and particularly this song. “Mr. Sheep…People say, 'How can you take such an easy shot at a businessman with a briefcase?' The clue was those haunting, terrible rock and roll Nazi voices taunting the guy. Maybe I didn't do it well. But I thought it was so obvious."
"Ghosts" is a multifaceted track that can double as a point of reflection for the characters mistakes, and simultaneously a meditation on the choices made leading to old age. As always you know when a Randy album hits you with a barren piano chord you know shit is about to get realer than you’d be able to handle. This track is no different. “But if I get it wrong, I know I got it wrong [writing about something he hasn’t personally experienced]. I’ve written songs where I know I just didn’t have the people right. ‘Ghosts’ was the last one. It’s about an old man who fought in World War Two and now has nothing and is a bit bitter, not absolutely likeable. He talks about colored kids, which in the States – I hear it here – but in the States you don’t call black people colored.”
We get a left hook track with "They Just Got Married". It might be Newmans quickest deviation intro a tragedy. So much so that its tragic ending I found to be farcical and amusing; "Soon they have a little white-haired baby / Looks just like his daddy / And they're all real happy / A couple of years go by / She's going to see the doctor / It's just a regular checkup (oh no) / Plus she thinks she might be pregnant / Anyway, she dies / And he moves down Los Angeles / Meets a foolish girl with lots of money / Now they're getting married".
"Spies" seems like something in a Fletch movie as a throwaway joke or maybe there for 30 seconds. Narrator here conspires about a Japanese girl and Russian dude being spies because they 'clearly aren’t American'. It's an aumsing take that you could hear from a conspiracy nut that doesn't trust the government but will believe whoever he is following.
Then we get another classic where our masculine lyrical character is pathetic. "The Girls in My Life (Pt. 1)". Over 6/8 New Orleans R&B, the narrator describes—mumbles, really, since he barely has the energy to make himself heard—his many relationships with women. He clearly means to impress us with his sexual prowess. The only problem is that he doesn’t seem to have actually had sex with any of them nor an actual relationship at all, other than his ‘very lovely wife’. But he continues to think of himself as a lothario, and the song ends with a promise: "That’s just half the story / Of the girls in my life." Part II, of course, was never released. Perfect closing lyrics for such a character. It’s like the "I’ve got a girlfriend…but she’s up in Canada. You wouldn’t know her."
"Half A Man" follows a tough homophobic trucker as our narrator who threatens to kill a transsexual and “catches” homosexuality from him. I am really in love with the progression and listened to it on loop for half a day because every time I listened, another lyric made more sense with the picture it was painting. (1)“I meant to make fun of the idea that homosexuality is contagious. That’s what the song is about, that you can catch it from somebody, which is what maybe these idiots are afraid of and why they’re so angry at gay people.” (2)“It was a really funny song, but it scared me, you know? Propounding the theory that homosexuality is contagious. It was inspired by a story my father told me when I was about twelve. He’s a doctor, and he had this patient. He told me that this guy had never had a trace of homosexuality, nothin’, and all of a sudden he was taking a shower at the YMCA…Boom! He went down on this other guy, and the guy beat the shit out of him. He tells this to a twelve-year-old! Isn’t that something for a father to tell his kid? Holy Christ! I was just starting junior high school, having to take communal showers…And I remembered that story for 20 years.”
"William Brown" is pretty simple. “Yes – nothing happens (the song is one of the few written by Newman without a narrator) – I’ll never do it again, but I wanted to write a song in which nothing happened. There’s only one slight joke, about the guy moving from North Carolina to Omaha. The idea of moving from a beautiful green state to the Platt River I like. But I shouldn’t have done even that. It’s totally flat. At least I did it once.”
And of course “Pants”. It’s hard to say this is the favorite, because there are multiple here just as there is on Trouble In Paradise. Newman’s rock star stalks the stage to the synth-heavy hard rock popular among the arena rock acts popular at the time, threatening his audience with “sexual” violence. Only the threat is so absurd that only an idiot could be threatened (or turned on) by it. He sounds less like a rock ‘n’ roll rebel than like a disobedient five year old, and while he runs through a litany of people who won’t be able to stop him from taking off his pants, he doesn’t seem to ask himself why anyone would want to bother. “‘Pants’ is about these big heavy pretentious rock’n’roll acts like Kansas or Styx. I saw some big rock shows, in a baseball arena, which I’d never seen before, and I couldn’t believe whatta impersonal thing it was! The artist is way up here and the crowd, they’re like sheep with arms! [He raises his arms, opens his mouth, and fawns blankly at the ceiling.] Heads turn in the lobby. It was nothin’. This kind of false sexual innuendo, you know, ‘I’m gonna take off my pants!' – the whole thing was a drag, and really demeaning to the audience. Who wants to put these…these…anybody on a pedestal like that?”
For Trouble In Paradise, Randy unleashes probably my favorite parade of shucksters, hucksters, bigots, junkies and unreliable narrators (closely to Born Again) that would be right at home in a David Mamet play or Coen Brothers movie. This is one of the best-sounding bad-vibes albums in rock, alongside Frank Zappa's Sheik Yerbouti and Steely Dan's Guacho.
Randy had a second hit single with the deceptively cheery "I Love L.A.", the Cole Porter-style intro leading into an ironic, ambivalent comment on the American Dream and some of its discontents. LA officials didn't think this was the image they wanted, but Newman released the song anyway. Despite the unsavory references to the city, the song became an anthem for Los Angeles, as most people didn't listen far beyond the chorus. This is typical of Newman's songwriting; he often writes lyrics that mean more than what's on the surface. Randy Newman's cousin, Tim Newman, directed the video. Tim had lots of experience directing commercials, but had never done a music video. For most of the video, we see Randy driving around Los Angeles, taking in the beautiful sights along the way. Tim said it was the most fun he ever had at his job.
"Christmas In Cape Town" is a disturbing portrait of Apartheid era South Africa apparently written under the influence of Nadine Gordimer's books. The white South African narrator isn’t about to denounce apartheid, but he experiences a chill of recognition and foreboding in which he sees a violent pay-back looming for a historic wrong. Though he’s a blatant racist, he is given the capacity to think and understand--but not to shake the pull of his ingrained bigotry.
"The Blues" is an amusing duet with Paul Simon poking fun at the plight of the oversensitive singer-songwriter, though Randy has stated that he regrets writing the song. “It’s the only song I can think of which I regret writing. It sorta makes fun of the mock-sensitive songwriter, like Simon was and clones of him still are, where the kid gets in trouble and goes to his room and plays the piano. Now I never did that; the piano was always a drag for me, but I shouldn’t have made fun of that.”
Randy also proves that he's a master of the gear shift with the inclusion of two devastating ballads, "Same Girl" and "Emotional Girl". The former, described by its author as a song about "two junkies in love", is a heartbreaking portrait of lost innocence with a lavish string arrangement, lasting melody and sometimes inconsistent harmonies. Randy's just way ahead of his contemporaries here. Some of Newman's best songs are his sad songs, the ballads and elegies and laments that get stuck inside your heart. They can be easier to write than the political songs, he says "comedy is the hardest" yet many of those songs are more complex emotionally and misunderstood. Or at least not understood the way Newman understands them. Sometimes the difference is incidental and sometimes it is keen.
The former of those songs, "Emotional Girl", is a great example of one that is inbetween. The song's narrator sounds sympathetic in telling the story of a daddy's girl who wears her heart on her sleeve. He is not an objective observer. He has been one of her lovers, maybe the one who broke her heart; "I've never had a girl love me / Half as much as this one loves me". By the end of the song, the narrator has shed some light in a dark blue place; "She lives down deep inside herself / She turns on easy, it's like a hurricane...You gotta hold on tight to her". The middle eight in this song is just sublime. "People hear it as a love song. There's no way they're laughing through their noses at it sarcastically. Yet, really, the thing to me was about the guy in the song betraying her by telling someone these secrets this sensitive girl has told him...But there's also the other side to it. Maybe the guy is in love with her."
"Mikey's" is another amusing look at a racist, reactionary douchebag, with our narrator sounding off over a robotic synth-rock backing which seems to be Randy's pastiche of new wave rock. I love the way the narrator comments on the music bellowing, "Didn't used to be all this ugly music playing all the time...Where are we, on the moon? Whatever happened to the old songs? Mikey, whatever happened to the fucking 'Duke Of Earl'?"
The hectoring continues on the hilarious "My Life Is Good", a self-mocking viginette which eavesdrops on the life of an arrogant, rich and famous rock star. Boss Springsteen gets a namecheck and Ernie Watts' booming impersonation of Clarence Clemons is accompained by Randy screaming "Blow, big man, blow!" Pretty weird and pretty funny.
"Miami", which kicks off side two, is the most musically expansive track on Trouble In Paradise, featuring a lovely performance from Randy's favorite drummer Jeff Porcaro, intricate stop-start arrangements and cool mandolins by Dean Parks. It's very similar in nature to "I Love L.A.".
"Take Me Back" is another good Newman song about a total loser. The character grew up with a fairly vanilla life, despite his constant boasting. It sounds like his wife has now thrown him out. He fills his time in sad fondness for the past and by sleeping with college girls. I love how the line "take me back" serves a double purpose. It is the character begging his wife to "take him back", but it also a larger desperate wish to just be taken back to a time in his life where he hadn't squandered all his "potential" through selfish mistakes.
The closing "Song For The Dead" is a crushing Vietnam War allegory that features a mythological (dead?) collonel who has been left behind to say a prayer for his fallen comrades. The song serves to send up a certain kind of American heroism, but still carries a hefty emotional punch.
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