UNEARTHED: RANDY NEWMAN - RANDY NEWMAN

Just one short year after Sgt. Pepper forever altered the DNA of popular music, not only were record stores flooded with albums by artists taking the Fab Four's psychedelia to its logical endgame but you already had a rebuttal to this trend by the rustic likes of Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding and The Byrds' Sweetheart of The Rodeo.  And in the middle of this clash between incense sticks and scratchy Emmett Miller 45s, in waltzes Randy Newman with his eponymous debut album (subtitled, to the man's eternal embarrassment, Creates Something New Under The Sun) which is perhaps the era's weirdest and most subversive record. It is also one of uncommon insight and empathy as Newman writes with real affection about America's middle class "Silent Majority" who were being scared shitless by the evening news and by political hacks into believing that they were living on a proverbial Hellmouth. In many respects, Randy Newman is one of our great moralists and from his records you can gleam a vivid, secret history of post-WWII America; the thorny relationship between the north and the south during the civil rights movement, the cruelty and excess of Reaganomics and the mid-life crisis of the baby boomer generation as it looks back on its deeply compromised ideals are all clearly articulated and skewered by Newman. And, like all great moralists, Newman is hardest on himself, which protects him from ever coming off like a bitchy scold.
 
The record begins with "Love Story (You And Me)" which Newman originally intended as a joke where the narrator lays out his entire banal life as an adult from marriage to death in four short verses. You can't help but laugh as this guy imagines an existence for himself so boring that, even in fantasy, he's too tired to go out dancing with his wife and would rather stay in and watch late night television.  Following each verse is Newman's delightfully creepy chorus which consists of "You and me you and me, baby" repeated over and over again, its unsettling intensity and plain oddness in deliberate contrast to the gentle orchestral lull of the verses. The expression "the devil is in the details" comes to mind with this song as we get some telling glimpses into a world that may not be quite so placid as we are led to believe.
 
"We'll have a kid
Or maybe we'll rent one
He's got to be straight
We don't want a bent one
He'll drink his baby brew
From a big brass cup
Someday he may be President
If things loosen up"
 
This is Eisenhower's America gone a little mad and although satirizing the "Back in the good old days" nostalgia is a Newman staple ("Dayton, Ohio-1903" and "My Country" being two particularly strong examples of this) there is an underlying, very real sweetness to this song that sets it apart from the rest.  While Newman might have intended the song as a bit of mockery, he has commented in recent interviews that the life the narrator lays out for himself is pretty damn good; likeable in-laws, healthy kids and someone to grow old with. It's only for the hilariously mundane details (and that insane chorus) that this song isn't a completely straightforward paean to the simple life much like, say, Dylan's underrated "Sign On The Window."
 
"Come on, Big Boy
Come and save us
Come and look what we've done
With what you gave us
Now I've heard it said
That our Big Boy's dead
But I Think He's Hiding"
- “I Think He's Hiding”
 
 Newman has written a number of songs throughout his career that have addressed his views on God and religion; "If We Didn't Have Jesus," "Old Man," "God's Song" and pretty much everything off Faust. Although not as sinister as "If We Didn't Have Jesus" or as vicious as "God's Song," "I Think He's Hiding" is pretty stiff swipe at an absent deity.
 
"Cold gray buildings where a hill should be
Steel and concrete closin' in on me
City faces haunt the places
I used to roam
Cowboy, Cowboy - can't run, can't hide
Too late to fight now - too tired to try"
- “Cowboy”
 
Inspired by the excellent 1962 Kirk Douglas film Lonely Are The Brave, "Cowboy" is a quintessential Randy Newman character sketch. Part of what makes Newman unique is that, in a generation of confessional singer/songwriters, he has kept mostly to himself. You get brief glimpses of the private man in songs like "I Miss You" (from 1998's excellent Bad Love) and "Mama Told Me Not To Come" (Newman was a bit of a rough and tumble youth) but for the most part he wrote these well crafted miniatures about people whom he shared little in common with.  What often gets overlooked though is that he still invests his characters, even the unsavory ones, with humanity and clarity. Here of course, he has one of his more noble and likeable characters. Like Douglas' character in Lonely Are The Brave, our cowboy is the last of his kind and has no interest in being a part of the modernized world.  It's the stuff of great drama, sensitively handled by Newman, and later Harry Nilsson would take the song even further on his masterful Nilsson Sings Newman album.
 
"Broken windows and empty hallways
A pale dead moon in a sky streaked with gray
Human kindness is overflowing
And I Think It's Going To Rain Today"
- “I Think It's Going To Rain Today”

One of Newman's best regarded songs, "I Think It's Going To Rain Today" is an absolutely harrowing depiction of crippling isolation and depression. Although he will never be mistaken for Charlie Rich, Randy Newman has long been overlooked as a canny vocalist who knows how to get his songs across to an audience. Here he is given a perfect showcase for his seriocomic bluesy growl and it is difficult to imagine any other vocalist locating the core of this song's terrible pain the way Newman does when he sings "Tin can at my feet/Think I'll kick it down the street/That's the way to treat a friend."
 
"I think we can persuade him to do
The famous Fat Boy Dance for you
Give me half a chance
I just know you'll like my fat boy's dance"
- “Davy The Fat Boy”
 
Easily the album's most notorious song, "Davy The Fat Boy" is a wicked piece of black comedy that is still virtually without peer. In the song, Davy's parents, on their death bed, request that their son's only friend watch after the boy after they're gone. Naturally, the friend reneges on this promise and instead pimps Davy out as a circus freak. Oh, and it is suggested that he also slept with Davy's mom.
 
Produced by Lenny Waronker and Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman relies a little too heavily on its grand, sweeping orchestral arrangements (arranged and conducted by Newman himself) which frequently drown out the lyrics and just plain overpower the material at times. Still, the record is fascinating because the themes that Newman will continue to explore throughout his career (when not doing the Hollywood composer thing) are all here and all fully formed; God, depression, bad love and bizarre characters best described by Bill Hicks as "serious pockets of humanity." And although he would hone his sound to stunning effect on 12 Songs, Sail Away and Good Old Boys, his first album remains an essential purchase for anyone interested in the process of this great master.