Listen Up: Randy Newman

Sail Away (1972)

I really think the mark of true genius in any type of artist is the consistent relevance of his or her unique vision. As I pointed out in my recent piece on Bob Dylan, Dylan’s initial, brilliant rumination on modern American life applies just as readily now as it did when he first presented it in the early 1960s.

The same can be said of Randy Newman’s less well-known, far more sardonic work from the 1970s.

By now, of course, there’s a generation of people who know Newman solely as a movie score composer who warmed children’s cockles via “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.” This is a remarkable reversal of national attitude toward Newman, although he admits that he wouldn’t write songs like “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” if he weren’t being asked to do them.

His motion picture scores—many of which, to be certain, are masterful—aren’t what I’m talking about here. I mean “Randy Newman albums,” the ones most listeners avoided like the plague when they were released back in the 70s.

Newman’s greatest records as a rock artist warm no cockles. They pointedly reveal things we’d rather not admit about the American character. At his best in that hangover of a decade, Newman dissected this country’s grand delusions, and he made a lot of people very uncomfortable in the process.

Newman covered it all—the demeaning nature of aging, the distinct possibility that there is no God, racism (a topic he returned to repeatedly), loneliness, spooky rural living, xenophobia, homophobia, and the general collapse of our social order...to name but a few. And he threw in outright all-American mouth-breathing idiocy for good measure, as he damn well should have in his pursuit of painting an accurate portrait of this country.

He had bigger balls than any other songwriter during rock’s prime era; given his blunt approach and willingness to embody altogether despicable characters in his songs, no one else, not even Dylan, came close.

As you might expect, he paid for this.

His only genuine hit album, the type that was being purchased by high schoolers who also bought Queen records, was 1977’s Little Criminals, which made it all the way to a cool number twenty on the Billboard charts due to its biting American Top 40 single, the largely misunderstood “Short People.”

The fact that a great, sanctimonious swathe of the American public couldn’t grasp that “Short People”’s narrator wasn’t Randy Newman at all but was intended to be viewed as a fool says a whole lot about...well…a great, sanctimonious swathe of the American public. And Newman said a lot more than that about them on a series of stunningly honest, sharply detailed albums.

Most people didn’t “get” Randy Newman. Those who understood where he was coming from could only stand aghast at the spectacle of one of our most gifted songwriters treading water at the lower depths of the charts.

Newman would repeatedly fail as a commercial entity because he hit dead bullseyes with his music. His choice of targets was his Achilles’ heel, seeing how those targets were also possible listeners. There was something laudably self-defeating about it all, punk rock played as show tunes with beautiful melodies and full orchestral accompaniment.

Randy Newman would not be smooching anyone’s behind to get on the radio, thank you very much.

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People like to list their “desert island discs,” the albums they’d want to have with them if they were suddenly stranded with no other comforts.

Given what’s unfolding in this country right now, America itself is starting to feel like that desert island, a place where you’ll have to turn inward if you care to proceed with any grace and dignity. Outside forces will not be providing new signposts to a fuller existence.

I’ve got scores of albums that will surely be powerful companions on this now-forming island, but one of the most significant has to be Newman’s thirty-minute-long 1972 masterpiece, Sail Away.

There’s debate among Newman fans as to which of his records is his very best. If anybody wants to argue that his 1974 examination of modern Southern mores, Good Old Boys, is his strongest, I’ll certainly accept their choice, especially given my own upbringing in a self-hypnotized, often casually racist small town in northern Alabama.

Rest assured, the vast majority of that town’s citizens eagerly voted for our current degenerate moral and political fiasco; exit polls not required. And if any of those people are reading this article, they’re now really pissed off that I’m mentioning them. They’re not like that, you see...after having enthusiastically endorsed the whole thing.

That’s what “Good Old Boys” is about. And Newman nails it. But I have long held that Sail Away is, brief song for brief song, his most perceptive, far-ranging work. As scalding as most of it is, it also contains moments of goofy good humor, at least on the surface. If you dig deeper, even the lighter songs have bite to them.

Sail Away deals with America’s false perception of itself and the reality of how this country actually operates. He points out our continuing belief in manipulative, obviously phony sales pitches, our desperate need for even false comfort in a world that’s well beyond our personal control.

Tell me that’s not worth looking at right now, at this exact moment in our history.

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Before I delve into Sail Away, I want to stress yet again that Randy Newman pulls no punches. His modus operandi is to take on the character of what he calls an “untrustworthy narrator,” someone who fully believes his own horse shit.

This is where a lot of people get hung up on Newman’s writing.

If a Randy Newman song is about a crook, Newman adopts the voice of that crook. And if he’s writing about racism, he speaks in the voice of a racist. He does not believe the things these people are saying. An avid student of history, he’s showing us that such charlatans have always existed in America, and millions of them still walk among us while we go to church, eat our fast food, and watch our TV shows, acting like everything is just hunky-dory.

If you don’t understand this approach, many of Newman’s songs can be deeply offensive. Even if you do understand it, they can be offensive. But the point is that the character singing the tune isn’t offended in the least.

It’s no wonder Randy Newman never appeared on TV next to Dick Clark. It’s a miracle he was allowed to play medium-sized music halls. But, like Thelonious Monk before him, he kept plugging away, trusting his own vision until he found an audience that was discerning enough to grasp it.

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I hesitated earlier when describing Newman as a rock performer. A multitude of influences run through his songwriting, although Fats Domino and his New Orleans shuffle often lie at the very heart of it. Newman is also an extremely gifted orchestral arranger who already appeared to be writing scores for motion pictures long before he actually started doing it on a regular basis.

This comes as no surprise, really. His uncles Alfred, Lionel, and Emil all wrote music for a slew of classic films during the studio era. Lionel won nine Oscars, second in history only to Walt Disney, and even wrote the 20th Century Fox theme that we still know today! Young Randy used to like to drop by and watch Uncle Al work with his orchestra. The power of those strings, horns, and woodwinds obviously stayed with him.

Produced by Lenny Waronker and Russ Titleman—Waronker strongly encouraged his best friend Randy’s songwriting when they were still teenagers and Randy wasn’t so convinced—Sail Away moves effortlessly between string-laden psychodramas, show tune parodies, and solo piano pieces. All of this is viewed through a cracked prism that more often than not reveals the foolishness of the songs’ characters.

Newman manages to mix dark irreverence into even the most gorgeous settings, a neat trick that few other performers have ever been able to duplicate. It’s such a dangerous high-wire act, few have even tried.

The most arresting example of this difficult alchemy on Sail Away would have to be the title track itself, in which a slave ship captain’s repulsively racist sales pitch to his soon-to-be human cargo is couched in a breathtaking string arrangement.

Those are hard lyrics even if you’re attuned to what Newman is up to, but the gorgeous accompaniment, much to your horror, almost draws you in—you very nearly find yourself believing this asshole’s promises of a better life and skipping past the vile way he says it.

We’ve been trained from childhood to believe that America is the land of the free, where everyone has an equal opportunity to live a life of peace and dignity...which is, you know, a lie. It never has been that way, but few white people are likely to go shouting that horrible knowledge while everyone’s singing “The Star Spangled Banner” at a college football game.

Newman’s slave ship captain is no different than a modern politician, if not a modern self-serving con man, which is the same thing at this stage of the game. They weave tapestries out of total horse shit, and people line up to believe them. That these guys used to deliver the racist part in code but can’t be bothered to do it these days is all the more reason why this song should exist and be listened to, even as it makes you squirm.

That lush accompaniment is altogether suitable—our lovely dream is rotten at its core, and we all know it. Who are we kidding except ourselves?

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The easiest-to-like song on Sail Away, “Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear,” also happens to be one of the first tunes Newman ever wrote! He decided to dust it off for this record. What appears to be a playful ode to an eccentric street performer and his Ursus americanus (look it up) actually has a deeper meaning to it once you parse the lyrics, which is business as usual for Randy Newman. Apparently, he was writing like this right off the bat.

So yeah—that’s a lot of fun. But look a little closer.

“Seen at the nicest places where well-fed faces all stop to stare?” How would you like to be that guy? He’s not pointing out those well-fed faces because his own belly is full. He’s lowered himself, becoming a novelty so he can get something to eat! And what about “Who needs money when you’re funny?” Well...everybody does! I’m often good for a laugh myself, but I still need money to survive, and I hardly think training a bear to dance for a bunch of rich dickheads would cover the bills.

Rest assured, Simon Smith does not have insurance.

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If coldness toward other people is something of an underlying theme on Sail Away, the lifetime achievement award would have to go to the title character of “Old Man,” who, while on his deathbed, is on the receiving end of a heartless speech by his equally icy son.

What a stunning piece of writing. Newman always approaches a character study at a slightly different angle than you might expect. He keeps you on your toes.

Normally, in any kind of drama, the dying man’s speech would be the focal point. Giving the lead role to the monster he’s created in his own image is an incredibly powerful twist on the situation. This isn’t a song about death. It’s a song about lack of connection in your life.

The son’s comfortless speech may as well be coming from the dying man. You can see how he lived through the utter soullessness of his child. Both the lyric and the arrangement leave a lingering chill as the song ends. It’s a remarkable production, all the way around.

I’ve always been very impressed by Newman’s ability to switch gears between sarcastic, silly songs and works of great depth and power. It’s what I think of first when I consider his writing. This dichotomy lends an identifiably Newman-esque tone to his albums. I can’t think of another artist who does this as consistently and successfully as he did it back in the day. He really is a uniquely gifted songwriter, to a degree that even some of his fans may not recognize.

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And now a catchy little ditty about nuclear holocaust.

Honestly—what would-be pop star thinks to write a song like that?!

The fact of the matter is, there are a lot of people who feel this way. They’re total dumbasses, but rest assured their time has come. Consequences-be-damned stupidity is now the gold standard—people applaud it in stadiums—and Newman was writing about it fifty years ago! Protesters marched in the streets in response to Nixon’s carpet-bombing of Vietnam, but Newman was seeing that little escapade as the hors d'oeuvre to the main course. Why not consider the worst when millions of your neighbors, and even our “leaders,” are dolts?

Note where shrugging off Grandpa’s inanities has gotten us in the interim.

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Several months after the towers fell on 9-11, the city of New York started presenting free concerts by some pretty big musicians at the southern tip of the island, just to let everyone know that life would go on. It had to go on. We had to get back to fully living again, or living as fully as we could while still shaking off the overwhelming soul fry of that hellish day.

George W. Bush, of course, was going whole hog with the rah-rah jingoism on TV every afternoon. You got the distinct sense that it wouldn’t matter who the U.S. attacked in response to a mass murder in its own backyard, just so somebody got it. So we ended up picking Iraq for reasons that even now are...not especially clear.

One afternoon, Jill and I were downtown sitting on some aluminum bleachers with several hundred other people watching Randy Newman give a solo performance. Every now and then, I’d glance to my left and could see the still-steaming pile of twisted rubble that used to be the Twin Towers just a few blocks away. It was right there. I was thinking to myself, “Well, he won’t be playing ‘Political Science’ at this show.”

Then Randy Newman played “Political Science.”

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The closing track on Sail Away may be the single most discomforting thing Randy Newman has ever written and also his most darkly hilarious...which, once again, is how he tends to do it. In this instance, his emotionless narrator is actually God shaking his head over the absurdity of mankind believing He cares about them!

Better put on a raincoat so you don’t get covered in the blasphemy.

Let that one sink in for a minute. If I had to pick one song as Newman’s greatest, this would likely be it. I love that God speaks the way Charlton Heston does in The Ten Commandments.

“I recoil in horror at the foulness of thee.” Ha!

Newman is a lifelong atheist, but he’s always made it clear that he doesn’t deny anyone their beliefs. He wishes he could believe, but he simply can’t get with the program. With “God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind),” he seems to be saying you can certainly believe in His existence if you want to, but don’t go acting like you know His personality, too.

Note that he specifically lists the most popular religions in the lyric. Why write a song about such a big subject if you don’t infuriate everybody?

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Here’s the story with that autographed Sail Away CD cover that I’m flashing in the photo. One day in November of 2003, I strolled over to Tower Records by Lincoln Center to hear Randy Newman play a few tunes then sign copies of his new album, The Randy Newman Songbook, Vol. I.

As I approached the store, I was stunned to see a line of about five or six hundred people stretching all the way down the block and wrapping around the corner! I couldn’t believe it!

Then I got closer and saw a poster advertising that Alanis Morrissette would be signing albums at Tower Records in four hours!

The crowd was not there for Randy Newman.

So I entered the store and saw Newman sitting behind a gorgeous Steinway piano in front of some CD bins that had been shoved out of the way—no stage or anything—casually chatting with six people who were waiting for him to start playing! I’m not kidding. There were six people at that point. I counted them!

I walked over and introduced myself to Newman, thus swelling his crowd to seven. He shook my hand, then gestured to the bustling line outside the window and said, “I tried to warn Alanis not to hold her event on the same day as mine, but she wouldn't listen. I guess it serves her right.”

Randy Newman is one of my true heroes, both as a writer and as a person. His music may not make me pound my fist in the air to the beat, and he doesn’t dazzle me with arcane metaphors, but he is an endlessly brave, honest, singular songwriter. There’s no mistaking him for anybody else, and that’s how it should be—for everybody, in every walk of life.

Please listen to Sail Away if you’re not familiar with Newman’s “Randy Newman albums,” as opposed to his movie work. Understand, though, that you’d be doing yourself a huge disservice if you didn’t also check out Good Old Boys, Little Criminals, and Land of Dreams, at the very least. You can thank me later.