Randy Newman Is at His Best When America Is at Its Worst
His movie songs are filled with memorable melodies; his own albums with unsavory characters. One of the most astute cultural observers is the subject of a new book.Around the summer of 1966, a song on the radio recorded by the Italian American pop crooner Julius La Rosa caught Bob Dylan’s ear: a forlorn, impressionistic ballad called “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today,” penned by a 22-year-old publishing company staff writer from Los Angeles named Randy Newman.“Randy’s song was so mysterious,” Dylan recalled. “I never heard a song like that before; it was so cynical.” Newman’s own rendition later stood out to him for “the sadness in Randy’s voice. Sadness and cynicism, it’s a strange combination but Randy always manages to pull it off.”Dylan’s testimonial is one of many in “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country: The Biography of Randy Newman,” by the former Los Angeles Times pop critic Robert Hilburn (out Oct. 22).“It’s an honor to have Dylan say something nice about me,” Newman said during a recent phone interview. Though he’s received plenty of accolades — including six Grammys, three Emmys and two Oscars, as well as induction into the Rock & Roll and Songwriters Hall of Fame — Newman, now 80, admitted, “what I really wanted was to have the respect from fellow workers in the field. That Bob or Paul Simon, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Linda Ronstadt, that those people liked what I did mattered to me — maybe an inordinate amount.”While Newman has never enjoyed the broad commercial success of his peers, his work has on occasion clicked with the culture. His somewhat controversial 1977 satire “Short People” was a bona fide hit that gave him his only gold album, “Little Criminals”; “I Love L.A.,” a wry celebration of his hometown from 1983, became an unlikely anthem for the city’s sports teams; the earnest “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” from Pixar’s 1995 movie “Toy Story,” soundtracked millions of childhoods.In truth, far more people have heard the 20-plus film scores Newman has composed since the early ’80s than any of his singer-songwriter records. “It’s sort of a funny hand to be dealt,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
