Randy Newman

Lovely melodies, brutal ironies and cartoon heroes – here’s how a comic genius built one of American music’s greatest catalogs

- David Fricke

‘IT’S ALMOST ALWAYS SOMETHING I play on the piano,” singer song writer Randy Newman says of the genesis moment in his craft, the first step he takes into a new tune and story. “It inspires a code of some kind – maybe dummy lyrics, something I can get rid of. But after a couple of lines, it will become what it’s going to become.

“It’s always been a job,” says Newman, 73, one of American pop’s greatest and most acclaimed songwriters for more than a half-century and an Academy Award winning composer for animated films. “I go to the piano, and I’m supposed to think of something. It’s always been that way – maybe because of the way I grew up.”

Born in Los Angeles and raised for a time in New Orleans, Newman – who has just released Dark Matter, his first studio album in nine years – was fated to go into his family’s business. His uncles Alfred, Lionel and Emil Newman were famous Hollywood composers – two of them won Oscars. “As a kid, studying music,” Newman says, “that’s where I hoped I was headed.”

He took the long road, starting in the early Sixties as a songwriter for other singers. Many of his early classic songs were recorded by artists such as Gene Pitney, Dusty Springfield and Three Dog Night. Newman’s only major hit under his own name was the jaunty 1977 satire of bigotry, “Short People.” But his six Grammys and his 2013 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame reflect the greater enduring impact of Newman’s slippery storytelling, pointed social observations and rapturous melodies, delivered in a singular, deadpan Everyman voice.