Randy Newman: Bet No One Ever Hurt This Bad
Find a clown and grind him down.
He may just be laughing at you.
An unprincipled and uncommitted
Clown can hardly be permitted to
Sit around and laugh at what
The decent people try to do.
“Laughing Boy,” Randy Newman, 1968
What’s the point of being famous if you’re still lame? Seems like I can never get free of that kind of crap,” Randy Newman moans and shifts fitfully in his chair opposite me. Newman, 35, is a flamboyantly angry man; angry, in this case, because after all these years he is still a “nerd.” uncomfortable around most people — especially women — and, as a result, is repeatedly awkward and clumsy in social situations. And just as Newman often dislikes himself, he elicits a similar response from the people who are targeted in his caustic songs.
Warbling along in his dense, nasal wheeze, Newman has for over a decade been creating a catalog of highly acclaimed — and highly controversial — material with a knack for icy description and a distinctively astringent keyboard style. His playing mixes classical idioms with sultry stride piano, Gershwin with the gurgling of a gutter bum, and his medium is an intensely American sort of social commentary — Stephen Foster with a sick mind, some say. Newman makes his points through an ever-expanding cast of tragic figures, among them fat boys, haughty cops, lonesome old men, two-bit junkies, white trash, God, atomic bombardiers, transvestites and Albert Einstein.
Newman created a furor when he made repeated use of the word nigger in a composition called “Rednecks” on Good Old Boys (1974). The record was a scathing attack on racism and bigotry of all kinds, but for some reason, a huge chunk of the public did not catch Newman’s drift. Just last year, he was beset with a similar wave of heated misunderstanding following the release of “Short People,” a single from Little Criminals in which he parodies bigotry on — or so he thought — an obviously ridiculous level.
Frustrated that the nation’s short people saw him as an adversary instead of an ally, he looks back on that period with a thoroughly disheartened “Ohhh, fuck. Why don’t they leave me alone!” And then adds with a sly grin: “Maybe I was right about the little pukes all along.”
Determined to get to the source of Randy Newman’s rage, I have been talking with him for the last half-hour in his manager’s comfortable private office in Beverly Hills on the very morning that a huge billboard depicting him in quasi-Kiss makeup has been unveiled on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip to promote his new album, Born Again. Dressed in a dull blue tennis shirt, worn-looking jeans and scuffed brown loafers, Newman has been massaging the flickering slits behind his thick, red-tinted sunglasses as he explores a subject he says he has “never talked about before” — his great personal difficulties while growing up.
“I don’t remember anything about ’em much,” he had begun somberly. “That’s probably because of some psychological block; maybe there was some horrible trauma.”
Horrible trauma?
“Yeah,” he mumbles, explaining that he experienced a particularly humiliating eye malady during his youth that reinforced his already withdrawn disposition. When I ask him to be more specific, he claims that he has “trouble remembering stuff” and then clams up on the subject, instead going on to say that one of his earlier memories is of him as a baby, biting his father on the arm shortly after the senior Newman had returned from World War II.
Why, even then, was Randy so incensed?
“I don’t remember my motivation,” he demurs. “It seemed like a good idea. I was probably pissed off that there was another person in the house.”
As for his antisocial behavior in later years, Warner Bros. Vice President of A&R Lenny Waronker, Randy’s longtime producer and closest friend since childhood, sheds a little light on the mystery:
“Oh, he always had these eye problems — crossed eyes — which I think really affected him, his appearance and the way he looked and did certain things. He was always, kind of sloppy and didn’t really have a good fix on himself. But I think he found ways of overcoming that… . . .”
“Awww, I didn’t have a lot of pals as a kid.” Newman confesses, “but I was in a club called the Vikings in University High School. I was not into it, really; I just hoped it would help me with …girls,” he concludes with a squirm.
And did it?
“No. I was so damned shy around girls,” he whines bitterly. “I really didn’t have many dates. I was strange looking — and I was a bad driver. I’d be trying to get my arm around a girl who didn’t want to know about it while I drove the family car up on some sidewalk. We went to the movies, there was some parking at night, but I always did bad. They were mostly girls I liked who didn’t like me; it was tough.”
When did he finally get the hang of it?
“Never. As I proved the other day. I was at a beach where I haven’t been since I was fifteen years old; the same one I used to go to every day. I had my two sons with me [Amos, 11, and Eric, 8; he also has a one-year-old son, John]. And these beautiful little girls recognized me. Randy Newman, famous songwriter. So I talked to them.
“Later, one of my boys said that I really embarrassed him when I talked to those girls. My heart sank. I said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Cause I thought that, twenty years later, I’d handled this beach situation fairly well. And he did this vicious imitation of me just fumbling around.”
Surprised at how downcast he’s become, I suggest we postpone further reminiscences and get some lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant. He shrugs sullenly and ambles out into the hallway. We step into a packed elevator and Newman, unrecognized by the crowd, wonders aloud, “Hey, how the hell can you tell what floor this thing’s stopping on?!”
A stunning brunette in snug designer jeans turns to him with a smile that would dissolve a diamond and sweetly points out the lighted indicators hidden in the door panel.
“Uhh-oh! Hey, thanks!” he sputters graciously. “That’s neat of you. Thanks for telling me.” Charmed, her dark eyes twinkle and she breathes a mesmerizing, “You’re very welcome.”
Randy Newman: Bet No One Ever Hurt This Bad, Page 1 of 7