By Paul Freeman [1999 Interview]

He loved L.A., joked about not wanting short people 'round here and provided animated playthings with numerous songs rich in genuine human emotion.

Randy Newman has had a lasting, illustrious, multifaceted career. The nephew of three legendary Hollywood film composers -- Alfred, Lionel and Emil Newman -- he began writing songs professionally at age 17. He penned tunes for such artists as The Fleetwoods, Gene Pitney, Jackie DeShannon, Petula Clark, Jerry Butler, Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, The O'Jays, Alan Price and Irma Thomas.

Later stars such as Bette Midler, Van Dyke Parks, Cass Elliot, Judy Collins, Dave Van Ronk, The Everly Brothers, Rick Nelson, Nina SImone, Wilson Pickett, Peggy Lee, Linda Ronstadt, Joe Cocker, Three Dog Night, Etta James and Tom Jones covered his material. Harry Nilsson recorded an entire album of Newman songs.

Meanwhile, Newman, with his distinctive vocals, inventive, eclectic melodies and often darkly humorous lyrics, carved out a growing reputation as one of our most important singer-songwriters. He earned raves for his own albums "12 Songs," "Sail Away," Good Old Boys" and "Little Criminals."

He segued into film music, contributing mightily to the moods of such movies as "The Natural," "Toy Story," "A Bug's Life," "Pleasantville," "Meet The Parents," "Monsters, Inc." and "Cars."

Among Newman's memorable songs are "I Think It's Going to Rain Today," "I Love L.A.," "Short People," "Sail Away,""Feels Like Home," and "You've Got a Friend in Me," as well as the Oscar-winning "If I Didn't Have You" and "We Belong Together." His work has earned him countless awards. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.

I interviewed Newman in 1999, following the release of"Bad Love," his first album of pop songs since 1988's "Land of Dreams." Songs on "Bad Love" include "I'm Dead (But I Don't Know It)," "Better Off Dead," "Shame," "The World Isn't Fair," "I Miss You," "The Great Nations of Europe," "My Country" and "Every Time It Rains." He was about to embark on a tour as we spoke.

In 2019, at age 75, Newman continues to write and record great music. His latest studio album is 2017's "Dark Matter."

POP CULTURE CLASSICS:
Some performers live to be on stage. Others seem to find performing to be a necessary evil and would rather stay in the studio writing and recording. Where are you on that spectrum?

RANDY NEWMAN:
I never have seen like, oh, I play a place and all of a sudden, boom things take off. I mean, they take off if you do, you know, "Good Morning, Minneapolis," and things like that. Sometimes that sells records. And it's true, with some artists, you're right, I think it does show. But, I don't know if I've alienated everyone [laughs], but there was never like a line at the record store the next day.

PCC:
So it's the pleasure of performing that keeps you coming back to the stage?

NEWMAN:
That and just, letting people know you're alive. You know? There's so much now that nobody's being hip anymore and saying, "No, I won't do any of this. I don't promote things." If they are doing that, they're in trouble. I mean, you can't like disappear, like get in a motorcycle accident and not be around for eight years. Or you come back and no one knows who you are.

PCC:
But you had been away from the pop song sort of album form for quite a while. Had you been eager to return to that? Or had you been too busy with other sorts of projects to even think about it?

NEWMAN:
I've always felt like it was my main job. And I was doing something else, but I would hate to not have this as something I could still do, that didn't cost me too much, you know.

PCC:
You'd hate not to have it because...

NEWMAN:
I'd hate not to have it as a refuge, from doing pictures, which, if I had to do it all the time, would wear me out.

PCC:
Did it seem kind of liberating, because you didn't have to worry about having what you wrote mesh with anyone else's vision?

NEWMAN:
Yes, it did. Liberating and more difficult in some ways, in that there had to be lyrics and I didn't have anyone telling me what to do. That can be nice, but as the people in Russia knew long ago -- what the hell did they say? -- freedom... I can't think of it, but it's exactly the opposite of what you'd think.

PCC:
It can be daunting, as well as exhilarating.

NEWMAN:
Exactly. Freedom from choice, that was what they found to be appealing.

PCC:
For an album like "Bad Love," is the concept in place and then you start formulating the songs? Or do the songs dictate the larger picture?

NEWMAN:
I start by writing the songs. And I kind of felt where it was going. It's a concept that, with a stretch, I can make almost fit it -- great nations of Europe, Western civilization's love for itself. But basically there were just a number of songs about that, so that's what I called it.

PCC:
Do you generally find misguided love more intriguing than a more idealized love?

NEWMAN:
Apparently I do. I write fewer love songs than any other songwriter, almost, just because that's all I wrote, when I was trying to be Carole King in the early 60s, when I started. And then that sort of narrator who is myself interested me. And I kept doing that... and have done so ever since.

PCC:
And having a romantic feeling in some of the melodies, do you like having a contrast between the music and the lyrics?

NEWMAN:
I think I have different aesthetics. I mean, I don't read romance novels. And yet I like Brahms and Mahler and... not Boyz II Men, exactly, but I don't mind that stuff. But it doesn't interest me as much.

It wouldn't surprise me, if over my lifetime, the song that earned me the most off this record was "Every Time It Rains." And lyrically, of course, to me, it's the least interesting thing on there. I didn't write it for myself... and probably never would have. Now that could be a character flaw or shyness or something, but I just wouldn't have written it.

PCC:
But even though you wouldn't have written it for yourself, do you still feel it's part of you?

NEWMAN:
Yes. I feel that even though I wouldn't have written the music from "The Natural" on my own, just some heroic music, or I wouldn't have written "I Love to See You Smile" or "You've Got a Friend in Me" without the movie that required it, it's part of me, sure.

PCC:
Songs like "Shame" and "The World Isn't Fair," are these just things you see around you all the time and can't wait to comment on?

NEWMAN:
No, though it's more of that on this record than before, where I just looked right direct, I didn't wait for some other voice to introduce itself into my mind, where I'll be playing along and sing something and it usually starts with some kind of fragment of dialogue and then I get into whatever character it is and see where it goes.

This one, I mean, I saw this. I've got a second family and I went to this orientation. And there were all these big, beautiful women with little guys, that looked like frogs [as in "The World Isn't Fair"].

And "The Great Nations of Europe," I'd read a book, a few books, the idea's in the air, about disease, how Europe... There's a book by Alfred Crosby that was about how everywhere Europe went, their animals, their diseases, took over. And things didn't go the other way.

PCC:
And "I Miss You," that related to your ex-wife?

NEWMAN:
It was sort of a writing exercise also. If I introduce it this way, it would kill the song [laughs]. It kind of amused me in a way that I would do something like that. Or that somebody would do something like that... Married to someone else and writing a love song to the first wife. And I don't know whether it proved that I'm completely ruthless about... that writing's more important to me than anything else. I think it is.

I mean, I don't care how any of them feel. I talk to them all. I talked to my second wife and told her it's a slight exaggeration. I mean, I'm not going to move up there and stalk her. And I talked to my first wife... And they know that it's my province... And I don't care.

PCC:
So you didn't have any problem after the explanation?

NEWMAN:
No, I knew they deserved to know that it was coming, otherwise they wouldn't have. I mean, my second wife isn't that interested in what I'm... I mean, it isn't like, "What did you do today, dear?" She does know what I do for a living, but just barely.

PCC:
Is that a positive thing, in terms of not having someone looking over your shoulder all the time?

NEWMAN:
I don't know. I often say, "She doesn't give a shit about my work... but I think I like that. I think I don't care," because I've got enough people who are interested.

PCC:
"My Country," that seems like a comfort zone in some ways. Do you see TV as an evil?

NEWMAN:
I see it as addiction, for me. I can't shake it. And I believe most of the time I've spent watching it I've wasted. But it was also not a bad way to... I mean, that's the way I grew up, me and my brother and my mother, my father, we would sit there and watch television. At least we were in the same room, you know?

And at least we talked. It may have been about Jackie Gleason, but at least my father would talk about this and that and it would bounce off the screen all right. And it may not be the Nelson family, but it's true. It's the way I grew up... and I assume some others did.

And again, like when I'm watching television now, I can somehow sucker my seven-year-old or five-year-old into watching the same show that I watch. We'll all watch "The Simpsons" together. On some level, we all like it. And I get that feeling of, "Oh, this is the way things should be." It's like, no matter how shitty your childhood was, you try to replicate something about it. And that's what I feel -- "Oh, this was good." You know? [Laughs] It gets my vote as about the biggest thing that's happened in the century.

PCC:
It seems like, in every other form of music, it's assumed that the artist is going to be enhanced by age. And with rock, that's not the perception.

NEWMAN:
We'll see, with the record, it's still too early to tell. But it would seem that people do their best work early and then either disappear... or actually, they never disappear. If they have one hit, they're still playing somewhere. No one quits show business. It's just unbelievable. But I'm speaking for a younger generation there, who I'm sure wish some of us would go away [laughs].

PCC:
Do you think that's going to be the case with future artists?

NEWMAN:
It looks that way. Except, the brutality and reality of SoundScan, if the artists start looking at what's happened with their sales, they might think about it. Do I think they're going to go away? Yeah, I mean we've got to go away. I still can't imagine Jagger doing this at 62, 63. He couldn't imagine himself doing it at 40.

Why quit? There's an audience there. James Taylor, Jimmy Buffett -- they're doing better than most of the young people.

PCC:
"I Want Everyone to Like Me" -- Are you conscious of worrying about what the listener's going to like about your songs? Or are you generally writing for yourself?

NEWMAN:
Oh, no. Never for myself. I wouldn't be doing it. I always think someone's going to like it. I mean, I always think more people are going to like it than actually end up hearing it. But "I Want Everyone to Like Me" is just like why people get into show business.

PCC:
So you would love to have the mass audience doting on your every tune?

NEWMAN:
I think I would. But when I had it, with "Short People," I was a little shaken by it. I talked to disc jockeys at stations that I'd never been played on before. And some of it was really pretty stupid. But yeah, I always wanted to sell lots of records. So sometimes when you get what you want, it doesn't make you happy.

PCC:
Having worked in other forms, such as the film scoring, does that enhance the pop songwriting in some ways, make it easier?

NEWMAN:
The songwriting no. The arrangements yes. It's made them easier and probably, on the whole, a little better. But I wrote good arrangements when I was 22, 23. But that said, I think I'm better now.

PCC:
But coming off the scoring and projects like "Faust," do you still find this pop form challenging?

NEWMAN:
Oh, yeah. Songwriting? Yeah, you start with nothing and then you're supposed to come up with something. It's just as great an accomplishment as writing two minutes for a grasshopper chasing an ant, which is equally challenging. There's more focus on it.

Whatever you may say about movie music, it's subordinate -- that's the first thing you can say about it. There's lots of things happening that are more important than it mostly. It's never as loud as I think it's going to be, movie music. There's surprise sound effects. If the air-conditioning's too loud in the theatre, you can't hear the f-cking thing.

PCC:
So with this, it's nice having people focusing on the songs, the music?

NEWMAN:
Yeah, in this, of course, you do have that. If a movie gets reviewed in a newspaper, the music will get mentioned one out of 10 times. And that's often bad [laughs]. If you make an album, that's what they're reviewing.

PCC:
Having written so many songs, does it get harder and harder to come up with new ideas?

NEWMAN:
It wasn't harder. It was maybe a little easier, because of all the time... because -- I hadn't thought of this -- but in past times, I wouldn't touch piano like for months. In this case, I was there every day, for 12 hours, for two years or a year-and-a-half. So it wasn't as hard for me to hang in there. And it wasn't as hard for me to push on through, when there'd be something hard.

School was easy for me, just because of ability... up to a point. And when I got to the Algebra and things like that, I'd never learned like, sometimes you've go to hang in there and think about something. And so I couldn't do it. I'd look at it and go, "Well, I don't know how to answer that." And I did badly.

After years, after doing movies, where you've got to push through, you've got no choice, I learned to do that with songs, too.

PCC:
Well, "Bad Love" is a wonderful album, a great addition to the body of work.

NEWMAN:
Oh, thank you. I'm very happy that it isn't any kind of decline. I think it's as good as I've done... and if it isn't, it's close enough to where I can justify doing it again until I recognize that I'm worse.

PCC:
Is there a sense of nervousness with every new project, thinking "How is this going to compare to past successes?"

NEWMAN:
Well, not that so much. It's more just a matter of whether you've still got it, because it's a bit of a mystery how you do it. It isn't like it's clear to me that I know how to write a song, even though I've done a lot. I mean, I know how to write one for a movie, when they give me, "We want a song about this little boy who's friends with this cowboy toy." I know how to do that. And I can make fake assignments for myself. But I don't necessarily know after I write one that I can write another one, even after all these years.

I mean, I look at "The World Isn't Fair" and I say, "Well, that's got an awful lot of lucky stuff in it," things that just sort of fell in there for me. It just worked. "Great Nations of Europe" is almost too clean. You know? Where it ends with a bug and starts with what they did. And it's like too something the matter with it. But I don't know what it is.

But in any case, yeah, I worry about it. And if I think I'm getting worse, I'll quit.

PCC:
Well, hopefully that day is far in the future.

NEWMAN:
I hope so.

For the latest on this artist, visit www.randynewman.com.