Randy Newman Is Dead (Long Live Randy Newman)

"I have nothing left to say/But I'm gonna say it anyway/Thirty years upon a stage/And I hear the people say/Why won't he go away/I pass the houses of the dead/They're calling me to join their group/But I stagger on instead/Dear God, Sweet God. Protect me from the truth, hey . . .' - 'I'm Dead (But I Don't Know It)' from Randy Newman's latest album Bad Love.

Let's face it, as we roll into a new millennium, some version of this lyric is probably secretly being sung by countless rock stars, whether they are five, ten, twenty or "thirty years upon a stage." And particularly those who play the kind of rock 'n' roll riffs Randy Newman parodies in this recording, just like he mocked-the-ass off rock bands like Kiss and ELO in his 1979 song 'Story Of A Rock 'n' Roll Band.'
As for the rest of us? Well, let's not get too comfy here. Whatever you work at, whatever you do, those voices from the "houses of the dead" are going to be calling you far sooner than you realise. Believe me. That's the thing about Newman's songs. At first you think our Randy is writing about other people: short people, prejudiced people, perverts, poseurs and total fools. Then you listen just a little closer to the music and realise he's singing about you.
But then that's how it's always been - whether The Walker Brothers or PJ Proby were singing the tellingly neurotic 'I Don't Want To Hear It Anymore'; Ricky Nelson was placing on vinyl an entire suite of Newman songs, from 'So Long Dad' to 'Love Story'; Three Dog Night were in marijuana-heaven with 'Mama Told Me Not To Come' or Newman himself was delivering his earliest solo masterpiece albums such as 12 Songs (1970) Sail Away (1972) or Little Criminals (1977).
In fact, those of us who have championed the man's work from so damn near the start that it makes no difference, saw absolutely no diminution in the quality of Randy Newman's work, ever. Even relatively ill-focused, latter-day albums such asTrouble In Paradise ( 1983) andLand Of Dreams (1988) were blessed with moments of musical magnificence that make you wonder how guys like Ronan Keating can describe themselves as "songwriters" and not blush.
In other words, Newman's are compositions that truly deserve to be described as such, in terms of both the music - often as harmonically challenging as any of Randy Newman's film scores - and words that have, quite rightly, led to Newman's status as one of rock's great songpoets.
That said, since 1988 he has focused more on scoring movies, a gig he admits helps "pay the rent." (And, no doubt, the alimony to his first wife.) Some of his successes in this area includeThe Natural, Parenthood, Toy Story , Pleasantsville and A Bug's Life. Newman also penned a Broadway musical, Faust. However even Newman himself recognises that the barbed essence of who he is, and what he does best, probably comes across in his own solo albums. And there are many critics, myself included, who believe that his latest, Bad Love, is actually one of Randy Newman's best, from it's opening track, 'My Country' which starts out seeming to reek of nostalgia but soon castigates the very things it celebrates, to the closing track, the cynical-but-probably-truthful 'I Want Everybody To Like Me.'
But first, speaking to the man for the first time since our last Hot Press interview circa 1994 I ask for his list of the greatest pop composers of all time.
"John Philips Sousa, Irving Berlin, The Gershwins, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen," he replies, pausing to consider the question. "And in the rock era, Carole King beforeTapestry, Dylan, Lennon/McCartney, Jagger/Richards, Paul Simon, Ray Davies, Stevie Wonder, Prince and Chrissie Hynde."
Are these the composers Randy Newman still turns to for inspiration in terms of his own work?
"Not really. I know them so well. They're in my head. But I don't know if they'll be in the next generation of songwriters. Certainly Sting has heard all that stuff. But I don't know whether kids today will bother to check out all that music. Or get a chance to because, let's face it, it's rarely played on the radio these days."
On the other hand you do have relatively limited songwriters such as Noel Gallagher inspiring Oasis fans to check out the likes of Burt Bacherach and The Beatles.
"True, but Oasis can't seem to get out of what they originally got into!" says Newman, laughing. "They make a wave at those early Beatles chords and try to find different harmonics but they don't have a George Martin to get them out of the troubles! Or move them on. So, at this point, they sound like they're just repeating themselves. Or, worse still, repeating themselves repeating the Beatles!
"Y' know what I've realised?" he asks, rhetorically. "People who wrote for other people stay good longer. Whereas I'm not sure that, in the case of performers who write their own songs, they do their best stuff when they're young. In fact, the opposite is often true. You gotta remember I was in there at the start of this whole singer-songwriter thing and back then you'd hear people say 'I'm not going to be doing this when I'm 30' or whatever. I'm 56! But I don't know if I can or will ever accept that I did all my best work back in my 20s. I actually don't think that is true."
But isn't this one of the great tragedies of youth-obsessed rock-culture? The fact that whereas a poet, novelist or playwright's work will still be accepted later in life, there is this cut-off point in pop? CD and DVD buying kids aren't supposed to care about old boys like Newman.
"That is true. But there probably won't be, as I say, that cut-off point for someone like Diane Warren. Of course, if you have any form of success in pop you can hang around grazing, as it were. Repeating yourself to an ever-diminishing audience. But that's not the same thing as getting older and still trying to make work that is vibrant, relevant and relatively new. And that, I have to admit, is what I am still trying to do. Whether I succeed in that foolhardy venture or not!"

This, again, is a subject Newman addresses in 'I'm Dead (But I Don't Know It)' when he sings "When will I end this bitter game/When will I end this cruel charade?/Everything I write all sounds the same/Each record that I'm making/Is like a record that I've made/Just not as good."
Happily, the latter, as I say, is far from true in terms of Bad Love, an album even the ever-self-critical Newman describes as "one of the best records I've ever made." And so, allowing for the fact that Newman just may be, even partly, tongue-in-cheek when he sings 'I'm Dead (But I Don't Know It'), nevertheless mightn't this be the view among power-mongers in the music business, despite the fact that he has relatively recently written numerous academy award nominated film scores and that stage musical. Did he, for example, have difficulty getting backing for Bad Love, an album that is, after all, his first on the Dreamworks label, as opposed to Reprise, his home since the mid-60s.
"No. I had no trouble getting the record made but I had trouble selling it here in the States," he claims. "And so the next time, though I have a contract, it will be difficult. The record was reviewed so well that someone would still want to back it on that basis but it hasn't sold 50,000 here. Whereas it sold 70,000 in Europe."
Do such sales figures distress him?
"It bothers me. I've always wanted a clear-cut-commercial success and I would do anything to get it. (Pause) Except change the way I write!"
Cute, Randy. Sounds like the punch-line from one of your better songs. Indeed, in another of his best songs from Bad Love , 'I Miss You' addressed to his ex-wife, Randy Newman does say "I'd sell my soul and yours for a song" which is not exactly the kind of sentiment that makes for clear-cut commercial success, even if it is the kind of claim that separates the artist from the dilettante. But is it true of our Randy?
"Everybody's soul I'd sell for a song," he replies.
Really?
"Really, yeah."
But given that songs such as 'I Miss You' are destined to reach only a relatively limited audience in America does Newman ever see this fact alone as not exactly a great return on his original investment. Likewise, is he ever bothered by the fact that he obviously has sold souls along the way in order to feed his muse and music?
"No because, either way, music is the most important thing to me," he responds. He pauses again. "Okay, maybe my kids are more important but it's close. Like, you hear people say 'oh my family comes first' but that's bullshit a lot of times when you hear it. I'd give up a lot for a song I love. Things like 'Shame' on this album. Or even 'Everytime It Rains', the song that'll probably last longest on this album even though, actually, it says nothing!"
Despite the characteristic sense of humour, Randy Newman is being deadly serious, even though most reviews of Bad Love and Newman's work in general, do tend to reduce the man to the role of ironist. And ironist alone. As such, it's almost automatically assumed than when he sings a phrase such as "I miss you" to his ex-wife it just can't be an expression of straight-ahead longing. Likewise, in 'Shame' when Newman sings "a man of my experience of life/Don't expect a beautiful young woman like yourself/To come over here every day/And have some old dude banging on her like a gypsy on a tambourine." But there's nothing ironical about the second last verse of the same song where the singer cries out in abject despair, "do you know what it feels like/To wake up in the morning/Have every joint in your body aching, God damn it? . . . Do you know what it feels like/ to have to beg a little bum like you, for love?/God damn it you little bitch, I'd kill you if I didn't love you so much." Isn't there a danger that the primal pain in the latter will be lost to audiences because of Newman's reputation as an ironist?
"All of what you say is true," he agrees. "And that's why I tried, in the last record, Land of Dreams, to do some directly autobiographical songs so I wasn't always locked inside that box. Because there definitely is that perception that everything comes out of the side of my mouth. I really did want to show people that there occasionally can be straightforward statements as well. Even though, that said, I gotta admit I don't actually like the straightforward statements as much as the more ironical songs. I like having the freedom to bounce around a little bit.
"But, in terms of irony, I don't do it consciously. It probably started with 'Simon Smith and His Amazing dancing Bear' in 1965 because I couldn't stand the lyric I had. And one of the reasons why is that I realised, even then, that the vocabulary of pop songs is tiny. Even now if you extend it, it's tiny. It's an eleven year old's vocabulary. It always has been. Maybe simply because a lot of seven-dollar words don't sound well, sung. Of course there were periods when popular music was closer to art but, let's face it, it's a mass medium. And every songwriter has to work within those parameters."
So when Randy reads, for example, that Garth Brooks, with sales of ninty-plus million "units" is the best-selling "artiste" of the twentieth century - way above the likes of Lennon and McCartney - does he interpret this as proof positive that the mass of people are fools?
"I never thought that," he replies."I know they're not. It's just that I think they don't want to make any kind of effort with their entertainment. And yet, watching television, for example, does require more than just a passive response. In fact, in this country, television at the moment, is doing the best work. You never would have guessed that. I'm talking about innovative, break-through documentaries, drama, comedy, the lot. We got shows that are genuinely funny and even anarchic, like Frasier, Friends. For a mass medium it's doing a lot better than movies. Way better than Broadway. So TV is, as I say, relatively challenging. But, overall, people don't want to have to work at their entertainment. In that sense even The Beatles - had they not had that one-in-a-million voice McCartney had, and Lennon had too - could have been writing the same stuff and it might not have gotten noticed. But then that was the '60s."
Perhaps. But most end-of-century music polls have placed Lennon's more jaundiced songs above McCartney's maybe musically more sophisticated but relatively saccharine lyrics. In fact, McCartney once said that the essential difference between himself and John was brought into focus when they wrote 'Getting Better' together. Paul came up with the line "It's getting better all the time" and John, acerbic as ever, added "can't get much worse." Likewise, Randy Newman's new album - as with all of his work over the past 35 years - surely is part of the same lineage? Or, to draw a parallel from the world of movies, the musical equivalent of, say, David Lynch.
"You could say that, yes. But I have a less dark view of love, and life, that someone like David Lynch has. In fact, as I've said before, I don't have the kind of cynicism people assume I have. In fact, one of the great disappointments in my life is that I probably expect too much of people. As in, a little more generosity. In that sense I'm not cynical at all. I'm pessimistic, but idealistic at the same time. That's what I hope comes across in the songs. Overall. "
But even though many commentators have described Bad Love as Randy Newman's "darkest" album to date, wasn't there a decidedly dark underbelly to even his earliest songs? Such as in 'So Long Dad', which evoked the soul-breaking pain of losing a father rather than what most people seem to have heard on the surface of the song: a sense of "fuck-you-dad-I'm-out-of-here."
"I actually think that kind of stuff is darker than the new album," says Newman. "Nothing is darker than young-man-dark. Sort of a sophomoric 'I Am A Rock.' Or 'So Long Dad.' Or 'I Think It's Gonna Rain.' There's just no light, when you're that age. But if you live long enough you do see, well, I'm down but I'll bounce back up, I know it. Hopefully, you get that kind of read on things"
So is Randy Newman buying into clichis here, saying we all inevitably mellow as we grow older?
"No, never!" he responds, laughing. "And I hate that kind of music. Really hate it. Music that's just there to eat potato chips to! I much prefer, say, rap. Even though I gotta admit that rap is the first thing that I haven't quite understood. I mean I can't judge it . . . can't say 'this is good, this isn't good'. But sometimes I do think these rappers forget that that melody is always what people have liked. It's a big mistake songwriters can make. I, myself, have forgotten that, plenty of times. Gone too much for rhythm."
But didn't Paul Simon say, back in the early '80s that "the age of melody is over"?
"Never, it's not," counters Randy Newman. "He was wrong."

Okay, So let's shift focus here. Slightly.
What about the age of monogamy? Is that over? Was there ever a time when the well-named Randy Newman really had - to cull a concept from one of his earlier songs - seven women in his life? At the same time?
"No!" he says, laughing. " I was just making fun of Jackson Browne for saying so!"
But how about now? Notwithstanding that he sings a song to his ex-wife, saying he misses her, Newman is now married to his second wife. So is this one for keeps?
"Who knows what the future holds," he says. "All I can say is, yes, I am married again and that, to tell you the truth, made 'I Miss You' all the more difficult! As in, because I was writing about my ex-wife! I told my wife, now, about it, and she said 'if I thought she'd take you back I'd be worried. But she wouldn't, so I'm not!'."
But doesn't this little anecdote bring us back to that question of the songwriter selling anyone's soul for a song. In the sense that, by writing such a song in the first place, Newman was surely running the risk of hurting his current companion.
"That's right. But seeing as though we're focusing on the subtext of 'I Miss You' the truth is that that song really is about writing. About the art and act of writing itself."
Maybe even about Randy Newman being a cannibalistic bastard, as artists have always been?
"That is what it is about, definitely," he muses. "And it is a construct that is there to display that tendency, throughout time. Which makes it not quite like I'm living it, you know what I mean? I did it. I mean, I wrote it. But I don't know whether I'd have done it if I could have seen that there might be consequences like this wife would leave me and cost me millions of dollars. And never talk to me again. Like my first wife did. I actually knew that wouldn't happen. In fact, I think maybe I wouldn't have written the song if I thought that would have happened. So how 'cannibalistic' is that?"
Indeed. And Randy Newman is speaking from experience in terms of the actual cost of the break up of his last marriage. During our last interview Newman revealed that leaving his first wife and kids for the woman he's still with led to a settlement in which his previous wife "gets half the royalties from all the old stuff, everything up to Land Of Dreams", which includes, presumably, much of the work featured on the recently-released 4 CD Rhino Retrospective Guilty: 30 Years Of Randy Newman.
Nevertheless, when Newman looks back at all those rock and pop classics, the movie scores, at the music for the Broadway contained on that box set, even he must see this as one hell of a life's accomplishment?
"It doesn't feel that good, but it feels pretty good, yeah," he says."It feels like, well, there's some good stuff that I didn't record myself. And that I forgot about. In fact that box-set was a collaborative effort. I won some, lost some. There were some things I wouldn't have had on there and some things I really wanted to include, that were left off."
Are there any plans for Rhino to do what they did for Burt Bacharach? As in, put together a box-set featuring all the artists who have covered Randy's songs. From the Walker Brothers through to Cilla Black, Alan Price, Nina Simone, Joe Cocker and, more recently, Elton John and Linda Ronstadt?
"Not that I've heard of," he replies. "But I wouldn't mind that! The thing is I've been in this business since I was 15 and, unlike Bacharach, I have a track record of not having hits! The type of stuff I write, just isn't going to get there, it seems. I myself think the music itself isn't actually that hard to understand. And I think I can play to lots of people and they get it. But maybe not. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'll always be, as you said, too left-of-field for mass consumption!"
Does this niggle?
Niggle is the word. It s like everytime when I stop working and look at the numbers and say to myself why doesn t the record company spend more money on advertising or something it s always been a shatteringly bad experience. Not shatteringly bad but it does, yes, niggle at me, make me wonder why, say, Bad Love has only sold about 45,000 copies here in the States.
So what would, say,Sail Away probably Randy Newman s most popular album have sold?
Worldwide? Five hundred thousand.
Perhaps Randy doth protest too much! After all, many of his earlier peers couldn t get a record deal these days even if they promised to kill themselves to boost sales of that final, posthumous album? Called, eh, I m Dead?
That is the other side of it all, thank you for reminding me! Newman says, laughing. And you re right. There are people who are very good and they can t get a deal. Not because music is as many of them say at its worst right now. I actually think it s the business that s at its worst now. What s bad about it is the intrusion, on the artistic process, of executives who, basically, shouldn t be intruding. And the lack of real interest they have in anyone, until they sell 50,000 or 100,000 units . Then the record company will pay attention to em. But only then.
That said, back when Randy started in the music business, the Mafia had control over many record labels!
Sure. And it s never been artist-driven. But when the music business was a little messier it was probably better for the artist. There was more room for different things back when it wasn t simply a bunch of bottom-line people sitting round looking at figures. Nowadays, the music business may not be run any better, but the people in power are trying to run it as if they were selling telephones!
Randy Newman pauses, laughs.
Y know when I was making this record I was thinking about Mutt Lange. And the kind of success he s had. It s enormous. I mean, out-size success! Not three million with Def Leppard but fifteen million! But, about ten years ago, in one of his rare public statements, Mutt said he was starting to like country music and thinking of going into it! Now, country music is all starting to sound like his music! You know, really slick. But if you look at it another way, it s kind of heroic the way he makes records! He doesn t let his musicians actually play! I know of one major band who didn t get to play on some of their records! He d have a studio bass player play the band s part! I love him for that! And as for Shania Twain, well, that s the biggest thing he s ever done. In fact, I don t think Mutt Lange has ever had a failure! But, in contrast with all that you have Tom Petty, who puts out a record and it s here and then it s gone. It s like in that song I m Dead no one actually quits showbusiness but the powers-that-be do tap you on the shoulder pretty hard and say you know, buddy, it s over for you !
So does Randy feel anyone tapping his shoulder right now?
Yeah! Definitely! Nobody from the record company, but I really do feel that they public are saying something like that!

In the closing track on his latest album, I Want Everyone To Like Me Randy Newman says: I want to earn the respect of my peers/If it takes a hundred years . So let s cut to the chase in terms of this question of longevity. Earlier, Newman listed the great pop composers of the 20th century but which compositions of his own does he feel just may still breathe at the end of the 21st?
A song like Feels Like Home could be done over and over. It s an atypical song for me. But I think that in time things that were hits will be pulled out. It isn t like people are going to pull out some unknown guy who was writing in 1974 and discover him! That s not what happens in the field of popular music. We got enough history to know that. It s the Shirelles that get played on the radio. Not some great girl group that was recording around the same time but didn t have any hits. The same is probably true of my work. They probably will play Simon Smith And His Amazing Dancing Bear.
But what about the area of rock criticism, as opposed to radio? Or cultural studies?
I ll be in those, he says. That definitely is possible.
So if anyone picks up this issue of Hot Press a hundred years from now and wants to check something other than Simon Smith And His Amazing Dancing Bear or I Think It s Gonna Rain , something that really captures the high-point of Newman s art what would that be?
I think the best record I ever made is Miami from Trouble In Paradise. It s got a lot of people in it and I just feel I got it all kinda right.
Does Randy feel the same about anything on Bad Love?
Yeah. Shame and The Great Nations of Europe . And the best thing is that reviewers from all over Europe, and America, do seem to agree that many of the tracks on the Bad Love album are some of the best I ve ever written. And, as I tried to say earlier, that does mean a lot to me. It s why I keep going out there and making music. To some degree. Okay, they re not beating the doors down for the next Newman album. But I know that, along with those critics, there are fans out there who have that kind of feeling about my stuff.
In fact, maybe Randy Newman needs to be told that many of the e-mails to RTE in response to my People Get Ready series on the 52 great pop acts of the Twentieth Century, suggested I should include Newman.
That s very nice to know, he responds. I mean that. And I remember that the last time I talked to Hot Press, I told you that the Irish audience was one of the best I ever had. Even if, the night I told them that, they were waiting for the ironical punch line they thought should follow such a comment. But I meant it! The Irish audience really did seem to get where I am coming from. Always. So in that sense alone I really am looking forward to my Irish concerts.
Randy Newman plays Vicar Street, Dublin on March 1st and 2nd.