Courtesy of Nonesuch Records

The World According to Randy Newman

By Rob O’Connor

Randy Newman is one of the finest songwriters. While that seems obvious, it's apparently still news to most of the record buying public. He's become better known as that guy who's always nominated for a Grammy for his film score work and as the guy who sings the theme song for Monk. And, of course, as the guy who once sang about "Short People" and how much he loved L.A.

Naturally, to those of us who have paid his career closer attention, we've thrilled to the nuances of his work. We're like graduate students of literature deeply immersed in texts, wringing the life out of every idea. Hopefully, we don't lose the joke in the process. For there is great humor in Newman's work. Often subtle. Often, it isn't until I get to the lyric sheet that I see what I didn't catch and then I marvel at the subtlety.

Newman's latest album Harps and Angels is his first studio album of new material since 1999's Bad Love. While Newman berates himself a bit for not being more productive, at least all of his work has remained worth hearing. I'd go so far as to say that while many of his oldest fans remain sentimental about 12 Songs, Sail Away and Good Old Boys, if pressed, I'd take Little Criminals, Trouble in Paradise, Land of Dreams and Bad Love to my desert island. Will Harps and Angels make the cut?  Come back to me in a few years and we'll see how it holds up.

As for now, it's sounding pretty impressive. "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country" made waves as a topical tune available on YouTube and iTunes and as a New York Times Op-Ed piece (sans the verse about our Supreme Court Justices), and tunes such as "Piece of the Pie" discussing our economic disparity as a nation turns to Jackson Browne for consolation, "Korean Parents" that explicitly tells us that if we all had hard-nosed Koreans pushing us to excel we could be the "greatest generation" and "Losing You," where an older couple realize they don't have enough time left on earth to ever get over losing their son are prime Newman. His songs are simply about so much that other songwriters seem lazy and unambitious by comparison.

Randy took a few moments out of his day to listen to my questions and make them seem smarter than they were.

Sonic Boomers: So, a chicken or the egg question. Does (Harps and Angels co-producer and Newman's lifelong friend) Lenny (Waronker) knock on your door and ask when you're going to make another record or do you go to him and tell him you're ready?

Randy Newman: Lenny's retired. No one comes to me anymore. They're not exactly waiting for the next Newman record. They're not going to be lined up at midnight. Eventually I noticed a lot of time had gone by. I didn't notice how long it had been until someone told me: That I had done three studio albums in twenty years. That's pathetic.

SB: From there, you started writing to make up for lost time?

RN: Yes, I made the time. In this period of time I'm going to do nothing but write. That's the way I do it. I can't just wait until I have an idea. Ever since I was a little boy that's the way I wrote.

SB: Many songwriters describe it as a mystical process where the songs come through them. I don't get that feeling from you. It seems like you work on them consciously.

RN: Sometimes you get gifts. Whoa. A song will come real fast. You have the end right at the beginning. But you have to show up for it to happen. That's one advice I would give if you want to make a living at music. You have to show up everyday for it. The trouble is that some of the people who write the most are sometimes the worst at it (laughs). "I wrote a hundred songs this year." You listen to ten and you shouldn't have written the other ninety.

SB: Do you do a lot of last minute touching up or editing?

RN: Sometimes. I never get them right. I'm never totally satisfied. Like "Piece of the Pie." I tried to get Mellencamp out because I didn't mean comparing him to Jackson Browne. It was General Motors I was talking about. I knew that I didn't do it well enough to make it clear that I wasn't talking about him. Then I thought of that chorus and I liked it so much. I thought it was so funny I didn't change it.

SB: Do you ever write a song where you think "I've gone too far this time" and then pull back?

RN: Occasionally, on this record I think I cross the line that I wouldn't ordinarily cross just because I wanted to. Just because I liked what I thought of. "Korean Parents" is close to whether that song's offensive or not. Where usually I'm pretty sure. I can argue my case. But this one it's a stereotype all right - and it's a favorable stereotype. But I couldn't resist doing it.

SB: That seems to be the case for any kind of "racial profiling." You describe someone as "Tall, thin and blonde" and no one complains but "short, fat, poor..." will get people upset.

RN: You try to not do it about anybody. Substitute someone else in there and it would be offensive. With Jewish parents, it's like saying "clever" or "shrewd." Where it becomes offensive, I don't know. I think I could justify it, but it's a close call.

SB: So you sometimes wander over that line.

RN: Yeah. Or I haven't done it or I've changed it. When you grow up around bad language or vulgarity you don't notice it. You hear people in a restaurant and they're saying, every adjective is "fucking this" or "fucking that," and you move away. Because people have a right to not be assailed by that kind of stuff. I don't even notice it. But I do in that context. When other people are sitting there and are using terrible language real loud, you just want to get out of there.

SB: You write a lot about economic disparity. It's not a topic many other people focus on.

RN: I'm glad I've written so relatively much about money. It's real important. It's the way the world works in so many ways, I don't know if I'm an economic determinist. I can't say I'm going down or if they're going up. I'm not super rich. But I've done well considering what I do.

SB: Have you considered writing your autobiography?

RN: I've been asked. I have less interest in that. I don't do it in a medium where everyone does it, a confessional medium. If I wrote one, it would have a lot of lies in it (laughs). If I could write. All my kids can write. I read their essays. I have a fifteen-sixteen year old now, the older boy, and every one of them can write with facility. I find the language difficult. I know a lot of words but looking for the right one and it's just "oh man, it hurts my head." My daughter, it comes right out of her, like journalism. She tells exactly what's going on. She can describe a room exactly. I don't think I could do that.

I did some online journal that my manager and I kept one time. That's pretty funny. It's about the trip to Holland. I've been contacted. I've had the opportunity to do anything. There's people who would read a short story if I wrote it. Yo Yo Ma asked me to write something for him. I could do it. I don't know if I would or if I will.

SB: With the title track of Harps and Angels, it seems as if your view of God is softening a bit.

RN: No, it may be mentioning for the first time--a feeling that I've always had--that if there were an afterlife, if there were something like heaven, it would be phenomenal. It would change everything. And it did. A majority of people believe in it. The Jewish religion and the Old Testament stuff--that would never be a hit. You put love and heaven in there, I don't know enough about it to talk about it, but it's never stopped anyone in showbiz from talking about it, but once that's in there you have a hit.

SB: The funniest thing about agnosticism and atheism is how you can strongly feel as if you don't know about God and an afterlife, but chances are when something bad happens to you, you feel as if there's a karmic reason for it happening.

RN: That it's payment for something you did, or the good things even out with the bad. You can't get away with the things you're getting away with. When I wrote the song "The World Isn't Fair," I was thinking about that. It does seem that some people for no accountable reason have terrible things happen to them and some people--in this very neighborhood that I'm sitting in--have great things happen to them.

SB: So do you know Jackson Browne? He's going to be surprised to hear he's made it into a Randy Newman song.

RN: I know him a little bit, from the Troubadour days. I've seen him around a few times.  He likes the song. He took a brave kind of route. That's the way he wanted to write. He could write hit songs and sing them, but he wrote about nuclear power. Everyone lost interest but him.

SB: Now "Potholes" is a highlight of the album. Is that all true, the part about your father recounting your most miserable childhood moment on the ball field while other memories go away?

RN: 100 per cent. That's the only one I confess. I don't understand it. It's weirder than the fiction. That's what he did. That's what happened. It was the worst day I could remember and that's what he talks about.

SB: Do you deliberately embarrass your kids? Play the old, senile parent routine and act oblivious to their horror?

RN: Oh no. Never. I hope not. You hear a lot of stuff come out of your mouth that you heard your mother or father said that you hated and you find yourself saying it yourself. But I hope I don't do that. I was an adult (when his dad retold his regretful pitching performance story). For him, that was a high point. He was better at baseball, I think.

SB: The memory is a weird thing. It remembers things from childhood very clearly and then blurs adulthood into vague moments and lost years.

RN: That's the way the mind works. That long term memory and short term memory. I usually remember every phone number but I can't take it room to room.

SB: I've found that the older I get, the more my "short term" memory forgetfulness expands. It's now years instead of days or weeks...

RN: I'm back to 1999 now.

SB: Will you tour for this record?

RN: I'm going to play the United States in September. Maybe some nights in Europe. Expectations are so much lower for what you're hoping to sell. I've always had them. This stuff isn't that hard. My voice is my voice. I never thought it was that bad. Maybe I have lower standards for that than anything else. I always liked the way I sang. There's nothing like low expectations. Nowadays, it's disappearing.

SB: This album sounds like you would be able to do it justice onstage. It sounds like a piano record. Unlike some of your records where there's a bit of a rock band or featured electric guitar and drums.

RN: There's some horns on there and some strings. I do like that kind of blues thing and shuffles. When I write something I have to not write a shuffle. To play in straight time, I have to work at it.

SB: Was "Feels Like Home" your olive branch? Your sweet song, your non-shuffle?

RN: It's a song other people have recorded. People really like it. Even my fans at the website. They like those songs best, which is really strange because songs like that interest me less than "Potholes," "Harps and Angels," character songs. And I like comedy. I chose a funny medium, no doubt about it.

SB: It seems like songwriters don't take advantage of the wide platform they have.  Bruce Springsteen inspired everyone to become a "heartland rocker" whereas not many have followed the Randy Newman School of the Unreliable Narrator.

RN: One reason is it's a direct kind of medium. People don't just sit and listen to music except when you're sitting at a concert. And what are you going to do onstage: look like a bad guy?

I have a friend who was a lawyer and he said, "I've tried to get people to listen to your songs and they don't do it." One reason is that people don't just listen to music the way I do, since I'm professionally employed. Most people are working in the kitchen, or driving and talking and my stuff is not the best possible stuff for that. This album is better for that than the others were. There's some kind of sounds going on, except for Jackson Browne ("Piece of the Pie"). You're better off with Norah Jones. Every restaurant I was in Europe was playing her.

SB: Do you seek out much new music or do you just let it come to you?

RN: I didn't even hear Led Zeppelin. It always seemed like work to me. I didn't hear "Whole Lotta Love" until they had a hit. I knew Jimmy Page. I'd met him. They were really good, I mean, really good, and early Who records. I always thought with Daltrey swinging the mic, he was getting a free ride on Townshend. It's not true. Here are these real sardonic songs that would never have been hits, but they're good and they require the tone that Daltrey gave them. He's not getting a free ride. That's probably not news to anybody but me.

SB: Maybe if you had someone out there to ham up your tunes they'd be huge hits.

RN: No, if I'd written more songs like "Feels Like Home." I like that song, but I would never just do that.

SB: You don't think if "The World Isn't Fair" was delivered by, say, Meatloaf and infused with melodrama that it could be a smash?

RN: That's one of the best songs I ever wrote, but what bothers me, it sounds like it's all introduction, it never starts. But I was totally satisfied with it.

SB: So will you make another album sooner than another nine years?

RN: I'd better. I hope I do.