One of the most sardonic, iconoclastic, musically adept and stylistically diverse singer-songwriters in the music industry, Randy Newman, remembering his relatives sweating out their movie score deadlines, initially avoided following in the outsized footsteps of his famous film composer uncles Alfred, Lionel and Emil and made his mark instead as a ground-breaking pop songwriter of the 1960s and 70s. ("Before gangsta rap, I was the roughest stuff there was, in terms of language and what I was dealing with.") Early on he developed his slightly arch trademark style of telling his songs in the third person, writing what has been described as "salon music"--subtle, urban lyrics set to understated, sophisticated melodies--and singing it in his distinctively gruff voice once compared to a frightened bison. Though he penned the occasional hit like 1970's "Mama Told Me Not to Come" for Three Dog Night and his own "Short People" ("one of the least controversial things I've written") in 1977, his eccentric lyrics about eccentric people have appealed for the most part to an intellectual cult following, hailing his message in songs like "Sail Away" (1972), for which he adopted the voice of a slave ship captain. Perhaps Newman could have remained content as pop music's ironist par excellence, churning out more songs about moralistic rednecks and decadent child murderers and the like had not the family business beckoned so strongly. After dipping his toe in the water as music director and performer for "Performance" (filmed in 1970; released in 1972 and starring Mick Jagger), he received his first songwriting credit for "The Pursuit of Happiness" and wrote his first score for Norman Lear's "Cold Turkey" (both 1971). His early film work gave scant hint of the haunting, hypnotic waltz score he would compose a decade later for "Ragtime" (1981) or the epic reach of the inspirational Grammy-winning music for "The Natural" (1984), and it was definitely hard to square the voice-and-piano intimacy of his recording style with the latter's sheer grandness. One of his peers said that people have won Oscars by copying "The Natural" (Newman did not), and composer Hans Zimmer declared that Newman's Oscar-nominated music for Barry Levinson's "Avalon" (1990) is "the most beautiful American score ever written" (with a tip of the hat to Aaron Copeland). Though his jaunty Western score for the Mel Gibson vehicle "Maverick" (1994) didn't receive an Oscar nod, that same year's song "Make Up Your Mind" for Ron Howard's "The Paper" did. By the time he picked up nominations for score and song ("You've Got a Friend") for "Toy Story" (1995) and score for "James and the Giant Peach" (1996), the total stood at nine.
Newman, who also co-authored the screenplay for "Three Amigos!" (1986), decided to stretch himself artistically by writing a musical version of the oft-adapted "Faust". He developed a fascination in 1982 when he was reading Goethe and wrote a couple of songs and an embryonic version of the book before putting it aside until 1993. He set his version in South Bend, Indiana where the Almighty, an out-of-touch corporate executive, and an aging, sexually impotent Lucifer vie for the soul of the nearly soulless Tony Faust, a 19-year-old student at Notre Dame. Released concurrent with its theatrical debut in 1995 was a concept recording album featuring such heavyweights as James Taylor (God), Don Henley (Faust) and Newman (as the Devil himself), but mixed reviews in Chicago convinced the playwright to put the project on temporary hold (it resurfaced as part of the 1999-2000 season at Washington DC's Kennedy Center). In 1998 he accomplished something pulled off only once before (by Andre Previn in 1960) when he received Oscar nominations in three different categories (Original Musical or Comedy Score, Original Dramatic Score, Song) in three different movies ("A Bug's Life", "Pleasantville" and "That'll Do" from "Babe: Pig in the City"). He finally took home the coveted Oscar for his original song "If I Didn't Have You" from the animated feature "Monsters, Inc," (2001) on his 16th career nomination, a total that pushed him ahead of Uncle Lionel's 11 (Lionel did win one). Though he was no where in the vicinity of Alfred's 45 nominations and nine wins, he was setting the pace for the second generation of Newman movie composers, which included Alfred's sons David (one nomination) and Thomas (four nominations).
Profession(s):
composer, arranger, orchestrator, singer, pianist, conductor, screenwriter
Sometimes Credited As:
Randall Stuart Newman