MOG

When Randy Newman finally picked up an Oscar in 2002, after 15 previously unsuccessful nominations, the biggest cheers were not from the A-list audience in sharp tuxes, shimmering gowns and borrowed bling. His long-overdue recognition, courtesy of the Best Song award for If I Didn’t Have You, from the soundtrack of Monsters Inc, provoked overwhelming whoops from the orchestra pit, which he considers the greatest compliment of all.

"That’s what I wanted more than anything," he says. "If ever I’ve had any sort of dream connected with music, it was that other musicians thought I was good. Having said that, I’ve learned over the years that musicians don’t always know what good is!"

Modesty and mirth in equal measure, welcome to the world of Randy Newman, a man who’s enjoyed three distinct careers in the music industry. In his youth he squirreled himself away in an office block penning ditties for the pop stars of the day, only embarking on a second career as a singer of his own songs after becoming disillusioned with the interpretations of others.

Since the release of his self-titled debut in 1968, Newman has been synonymous with articulate, thought-provoking popular music – with a twist. Alongside Bob Dylan, Paul Simon or Bruce Springsteen, he remains one of the great chroniclers of the American condition, but he’s arguably as much a satirist as he is a troubadour. He’s a dab-hand at the love ballad (Marie, Nobody Needs Your Love), but is perhaps more celebrated for his caustic worldview, be it lachrymose paeans to slavery and other historical outrages (Sail Away, In Germany Before The War), first-person character-driven parodies of ignorance and prejudice (Rednecks, Political Science), or dissections of urban, political or moral decay (Baltimore, Louisiana 1927).

His humour has a jet black streak, and has frequently courted controversy, never more so than on 1977’s Short People, a song about intolerance that had middle-America up in arms. It nonetheless brought him the biggest hit of his lengthy career, Newman once joking that, in true Rutles style, the moral majority were buying copies of the record just so that they could destroy them.

Newman’s third career is that of a respected and in-demand film composer, hence his solitary Oscar and overstuffed drawer of nomination notifications, and it’s this string to his impressive bow that has arguably kept him away from his second career. His new album, Harps And Angels, is only his third in 20 years (bar a misjudged "musical"), but it’s as powerful, as bewitching, as entertaining and as controversial as anything he’s ever done.

At the age of 64 he could be forgiven for opting for the life of a crusty old sage, a national treasure with a neat line in witticisms and jaunty tunes on tap. Yet in his newest collection he trains his eye on the plight of unwanted immigrants on Laugh And Be Happy, takes the American education system to task on Korean Parents, and sticks the knife further into his homeland on Piece Of The Pie and A Few Words In Defence Of Our Country. The latter, when released as a download last summer, was declared Number Two in Rolling Stone magazine’s Song Of The Year survey, just behind Jay-Z but ahead of Rihanna – how’s that for contemporary cultural relevance?

Newman greets me in a plush hotel suite overlooking the Thames and seems genuinely touched by the gift I bring: a copy of On Vine Street, the recently-issued Ace Records compilation of his early songs as a professional songwriter performed by such luminaries as Scott Walker, Dusty Springfield, Fats Domino, Harry Nilsson and Irma Thomas. He even suggests a subtitle for the disc: "Undistinguished songs by some pretty distinguished singers."

It was as a $100-a-week tunes- and wordsmith that Newman first paid the rent. The 1960s UK charts alone were graced by his work accompanied by the voices of Gene Pitney (Nobody Needs Your Love, Just One Smile), Cilla Black (I’ve Been Wrong Before), Alan Price (Simon Smith And His Dancing Bear. Casual listeners may also not be aware that he penned such evergreens as I Think It’s Going To Rain Today (covered by Dusty Springfield, UB40), You Can Leave Your Hat On (Joe Cocker, Tom Jones) or Mama Told Me Not To Come (Three Dog Night, Tom Jones in tandem with The Stereophonics).

Newman was a product of what was nothing short of a songwriting sweatshop. New York had its Brill Building cubicles housing partnerships like Gerry Goffin & Carole King, Jeff Barry & Ellie Greenwich or Barry Man & Cynthia Weil, while Randy clocked in for Metric Music, the publishing arm of Liberty Records, on the opposite coast.

Did Metric represent the Los Angeles competition to New York’s Brill Building?

Yeah, but we were kind of fighting a losing battle. The whole time I was there I think we had one hit, Jackie DeShannon wrote Dum Dum for Brenda Lee. David Gates, who ended up in Bread, had a couple of minor things. There was a whole bunch of us there, like PJ Proby. I think Glen Campbell played on a lot of the demos, as did Leon Russell. I think the structure of the company was the same as the big hitters in New York, but we were nowhere near them in terms of quality.

Is it true that you only started singing because you weren’t happy with how your songs were performed by others?

That was pretty much it. At first I was shocked by how far away the final versions were from what I had envisioned when I was writing the songs, and it got to the point where I couldn’t stand to hear myself complaining all the time. A couple of record companies were interested in me doing my own stuff, so I took the plunge.

There must be some that you liked though...?

I would say that the Cilla Black version of I’ve Been Wrong Before is the best of the bunch. George Martin produced it, everything fell into place, and it struck me as being an almost perfect pop record. I was very happy with that one.

It must have been quite a leap from jobbing songwriter to performer. It took Carole King some time to commit to it because she had very little confidence in her own singing voice.

Yeah, but when she finally got up the courage she made a truly iconic album (Tapestry), a record that every 14-year-old girl in America bought – and a lot them were inspired to become singer-songwriters themselves. For me, though, Carole’s best stuff was earlier. Things like Take Good Care Of My Baby and Up On The Roof were tremendous songs. There was a great structure to her stuff; Gerry Goffin was the lyric guy, but it was Carole who made them work. Lyrics were seldom of any interest to me, I never paid too much attention to them, but Dylan came along at the same time as I was at Metric, and it kind of dawned on me that you could do more in the words of a song.

It was certainly a massive shift from your straight pop lyrics of Nobody Needs Your Love or Just One Smile to something like Simon Smith And The Amazing Dancing Bear.

As I recall, Simon Smith was the first song I wrote where I took on another persona. Before then I was more concerned with the musical structure of creating a hit, which in itself can be stifling to your creativity. You find yourself following too many rules, that’s why so many songs from the era sounded the same, everyone was working from the same template.

It’s nine years since your last album Bad Love, and 20 since Land Of Dreams. Three records in two decades doesn’t sound much, but I suppose you’ve been busy with film music for most of that time.

Well, I was never that busy, there’s no real excuse for my lack of songs over that amount of time. There have been so many days out of 7,000 when I could have knuckled down and done some work, it’s ridiculous. I just don’t sit down and make myself do stuff often enough. But I’ve stopped beating myself up about it, I just accept the fact that sometimes I don’t have the confidence to do it. When I have an assignment, like a film score to put together, I go in and do it very quickly. I’m always amazed when I hear these statistics about how long it’s been since the last record of my own songs. All I can say is that I’m sorry I’m late

The one song from Harps And Angels that we’ve already heard, A Few Words In Defence Of Our Country, was released early as a download. Was the timing important on that? Land Of Dreams came out during the Reagan era and Bad Love was at the tail-end of the Clinton administration, so you’ve previously side-stepped releasing records when either of the Bushes were in the White House.

Yeah, I nearly missed ‘em both! But I wanted to make sure I had something out there before Bush had gone. This administration is bad, it’s noisily bad. I found myself talking about it and amazed by it, but my thinking in the past is that it’s just gonna go away and there’ll be something else to take its place. I’ve never really written about specific times or incidents, because it gives the songs a finite, restricted shelf-life. But I think Defence Of Our Country is different, it makes specific references to people and the make-up of the Supreme Court, so it’s sorta of its time. But it can probably be played again when there’s a future administration that’s also bad, although I can’t believe we’ll ever again have things as bad as we do now.

Why has your social commentary always been about looking at a broader picture, rather than focusing on a single event? It would have been interesting to hear a Randy Newman song about Vice-President Dick Cheney’s hunting mishap when he shot a friend in the face.

Hmm, yeah. It might have been funny to take his persona and sing a song as if you were Cheney himself, blindly justifying that he had no choice but to shoot the guy, something like that. But I guess that’s more the remit of a Saturday Night Live skit, it makes things more disposable when you work like that. But I like Defence Of Our Country very much, I like the randomness of the lyric and the various people it brings in, like wondering why everyone thinks King Leopold is so great!

Did you put the song out early as a download in case you didn’t get the album finished before Bush was out of office?

Well, I had a plan to make a whole album sometime over this last year. I’ve been thinking more and more about how I’m gonna spend the time I got left, which is extremely finite. As much as I love writing movie music, and I think I’ve done some good movie music, I guess my job is still, as far as most people are concerned, being a singer-songwriter. Even though the singer part of that equation is open to debate!

So do you still suffer from the Carole King syndrome of not having confidence in your own voice?

I’m no fool, I know I’m limited by my voice. The ballad on the new record, Feels Like Home, is just about within the range of what I can do, and something like Losing You is OK because it’s a pretty standard country song that I can grind out.

But often the limitations of your voice are perfectly suited to the material; the more plaintive yearning songs like Marie, or character pieces like In Germany Before The War. When you start to falter at your top register it complements the atmosphere of the music and the lyric.

Yeah, I get what you mean. I can do the sensitive love song stuff but it has to be a certain type of love song. I’m not James Taylor, I can’t caress a love song the way he does.

Do you really see America today as "the end of an empire", as you suggest during A Few Words In Defence Of Our Country?

Well, I do think we’ve been going through big changes. We’re not quite the dominant nation we were in the 50s or 60s. Maybe "end of an empire" is too strong a term, but others are doing a lot better than us economically, the quality of life in America is not getting better. Financially speaking, industrial workers are making exactly what their grandfathers made, which suggests that the promises of old about everyone being able to climb the ladder just haven’t been fulfilled.

You could be forgiven for mellowing as you trundle through your 60s, but there’s still some savage wit and irony on Harps And Angels.

Nah, I’m not one for getting soft in my old age!

Piece Of The Pie is a pretty caustic look not just at America, but at other singer-songwriters. Jackson Browne’s socially-conscious persona gets namechecked, as does John Mellencamp for selling a song to General Motors to be used in TV ads.

I don’t really want it to be seen as me attacking Mellencamp for doing a commercial, but I would attack General Motors for saying "this is our country", there’s a kind of empirical arrogance going on that I’m not comfortable with. It seems a little too jingoistic to my ears. I’ve never met Mellencamp, I don’t know if he’s gonna like the song, but who cares?

It reminds me of when you mentioned Bruce Springsteen in My Life Is Good (from 1983’s Trouble In Paradise). It’s rare for any performers to make reference to their contemporaries in song.

No, other people tend not to do it, and I guess it’s odd to roam in that area. But Jackson Browne exemplifies that kind of will for betterment that was so prevalent among songwriters in the 60s and 70s, but he’s kept going. I mean, who else is writing songs about the dangers of nuclear power now? It’s an admirable thing, but unusual. Jackson heard the song and he liked it.

But like Mellencamp with General Motors, you must have been approached to have your songs used in TV commercials.

Well, yeah. I’ve certainly done things in the past, but they were mostly unsuccessful, so I never became the first name on any major corporation’s wish-list. I did something for Ford, a little 30-second thing, and they gave me a ton of money. But it failed and they took the campaign in another direction pretty quickly. McDonald’s wanted to use my song I Love To See You Smile (from the soundtrack of the Steve Martin movie Parenthood), and there were beer companies who approached me, but I’d never do that. Alcohol is a harmless thing mostly, but I have seen it rip families up pretty good. I know a lot of people who’ve died from drinking and driving, so I’ve kept away from those things. So I don’t really mind that much about taking the corporate dollar. If someone had offered Mozart money, don’t you think he’d have written something for a carriage company? I think of them as professional assignments, that’s all.

Have there been times when you’ve been approached by a commercial concern to use something and they’ve clearly not understood the song in question?

The City Of Los Angeles is the best example of that, they wanted to use I Love LA (from Trouble In Paradise) not realising that the lyric wasn’t exactly the most complimentary statement you could have about the place. You’d have the thought the album title alone might have given them a clue.

Short People became your biggest hit, arguably because of the publicity it received due to its controversial subject matter and the fact that so many people didn’t understand you were singing not as yourself but as a character. Does anything on Harps And Angels have similar potential to outrage or offend?

Korean Parents, most definitely.

Who’s it most likely to offend, the pushy parents of immigrant over-achievers or the mums of dads of, in the song’s words, "millions of American kids (that) don’t have a clue"?

Take your pick! It’s close to being accurate, but even if it is it may still not be OK. I’m writing about a stereotype but in a way that compliments them, although I‘m still occasionally wondering if I’ve maybe crossed a line.

But surely, 30 years on from Short People, satire has become more mainstream, with the likes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on TV every night of the week.

I’d like to think so, I’d like to think that more people get it. Irony isn’t the reserve of a handful of intellectuals any more. There’s been irony in rap music for years and years, the whole idea of pretending to be someone else, of taking on a character. But still, even after all this time, I’m not convinced that music is a great medium for irony or satire. People don’t always sit down and listen to the words. I never did it that much back in the 60s, and I’m actually a songwriter! In concert it works, yeah, which is kind of why I almost always go out on tour with just a piano, ‘cause it makes it easier to get your point across when there’s less distractions for the audience. It also helps having them all stuck in chairs facing the same direction, which you don’t get when you’re being played on the radio.

The title track on Harps And Angels, about a man who thinks he’s about to die but discovers there’s been an administrative error and he has to go on living, is like a twisted remake of It’s A Wonderful Life. Have you ever thought of writing a film script or adapting any of your songs for a movie? You’ve certainly got the connections...

I don’t have enough power and influence to get anything green-lit, I don’t think, but it’s an interesting idea. Funnily enough, I was watching The Big Lebowski the other night and thinking about it in terms of a musical. I’ve met the Coen brothers, but I don’t think anything’s gonna come of it, they always have a lot of things floating round. But I like the Harps And Angels idea, that could work.

Roman Polanski has offered me something, though, he’s talking about doing Dostoevsky’s Crime And Punishment as a musical! You’re laughing? Yeah, that was pretty much my first reaction, but I’ve been looking at it, and I think you can do it, you know. But it can’t be one long grim mental collapse, it’s the kind of thing that you could turn into a sort of Springtime For Hitler, but we’ll see. If you could de-dark it, for want of a better description, you might have something. I’m not really well up on what Polanski has been up to over the last few years, I haven’t watched one of his films for god knows how long, but I get the impression that he might not have thought the idea through. The whole story is this kid breaking down, there’s a whore with a heart of gold, but where are the chorus girls, you know?

Well, if anyone can find them, it’s probably you.

Yeah, watch this space...

Harps And Angels is out now on Nonesuch