Randy Newman has two kinds of days.
One comes when the legendary American composer-songwriter is working on a movie, either composing a score or writing songs for a soundtrack. After he wakes up and eats breakfast around 7 a.m., he works until dinnertime. The breaks are minimal, and when he’s not writing, he’s looking at the film’s early scenes or character sketches for inspiration.
“The deadlines are usually so onerous that, when you’re awake, you have to be working,” Newman said recently from his Southern California home.
The other kind of day comes when the Oscar-, Emmy- and Grammy-winning Newman is working on his own, non-film material. The man behind “Sail Away,” “Louisiana,” “Short People,” “I Love L.A.” and the “Toy Story” soundtracks gets up around the same time, but the work isn’t as consistent. He’s easily distracted but plows forward with the hope that he still has it in him to write a good song.
“I can’t do more than three to four hours at a time, because I’ve always lacked self-discipline,” Newman said. “Writing for the movies, you at least have a framework within which to work. You know if they’re chasing somebody around or if it’s a love scene or a good guy-bad guy scene, but in writing a song for yourself, it’s all on you.
“I’ve been doing it since I was 16, but still, every time I write one I think I won’t be able to write another one.”
Wait a minute. Randy Newman – the man who landed two Oscar nominations with the first film he ever scored, Milos Forman’s 1981 movie “Ragtime” – still faces self-doubt after all these years, hits and triumphs?
“Just in the last few years, I’m getting better with the confidence,” Newman said proudly. “But it took me a long time to get to that point.”
Newman, 63, is a veteran. He knows how the game works, For that matter, he still relishes the game. He says he now enjoys scoring films – composing the music whose brash or subtle interplay illuminates a movie’s moods – more than he does writing songs for their soundtracks. But it’s obvious that music is still in his heart.
And that’s why Newman has the kind of draw to play four nights at the Lincoln Center, a run that wraps up tonight and Saturday in Fort Collins.
“They’ll be sick of me, and I’ll be sick of myself,” he said of his extended Colorado stay.
Newman doesn’t tour much these days. He’s splitting his time between two very different projects, making for very different days. Some he spends working on songs for an upcoming Disney animated musical (a la “The Little Mermaid”) tentatively titled “The Frog Princess.” Others he spends mulling over tracks for his upcoming solo record, a long-overdue project that is only now taking form in his recording studio.
“Because of my bad work habits, I don’t write as much as I should,” Newman said. “What is it, 11 records in over 40 years? There are a couple of straight blues songs at the moment, and certainly one of them will make it on there. There’s some talking on there too – not always talking blues, but speaking.
“There’s a song, for example, called ‘A Few Words in Defense of Our Country,’ sounds like a real fat, comfortable country guy, even though he’s being facetious.”
Yet to be recorded, the song is already making headlines. Newman is a master of satire – witness his classic 1974 album “Good Old Boys” – and he employs yet another character here to tell the story of the current administration.
“Usually I don’t like to write songs about things that are happening immediately – I’d rather write about something that will last,” Newman said. “But I thought I had to write about this administration, because this is such a remarkable kind of anomaly. We’ve never done this badly with so much incompetence and arrogance – never – and I don’t ever expect this to happen again.
“While it’s around, you can’t ignore it,” he said. “And so in this song, I write some words in their defense, saying that there have been worse … the Caesars and such. I read a good deal of history, and I don’t think there’s been an administration that has been less competent. Harding had bad friends. Buchanan was terrible. Jackson had his awful side, but it’s hard to compare what he did to what our president is doing.”
Newman said he wasn’t apprehensive about coming out with such a bold stance.
“The song is funny whether you’re pro or against this bunch,” he said, adding that he’s been careful to be clear and honest about his intentions. All of this brings up the fact that, especially for someone as opinionated and honest as Newman, working in film can be difficult.
“I don’t like being told what to do, but I will do what I’m told to do because film is a director’s medium,” Newman said. “With this job, the ego gets submerged because you’re trying to help the picture. You’re not doing it for yourself. I don’t care about being noticed, but if I can help the movie go by faster or be funnier or help someone in the audience feel what they’re supposed to be feeling at that moment, that’s my job.”
While Newman doesn’t care if he’s noticed, he disagrees with the contemporary trend in film scoring that downplays the composer’s work as background music.
“These people just want us to stay out of the way, saying our music is just ambiance,” Newman said. “It isn’t necessarily a comment on what’s happening. Music’s supposed to be a subliminal thing, and directors think they’re doing us a favor. I don’t know what it is. They think music is being manipulative, as if the camera and editing aren’t manipulative. We’re all manipulating the audience. If you can make a love scene more romantic, great, that’s your job.
“Johnny Williams did that with the first ‘Star Wars.’ His music made you not notice the cardboard the spaceships were made out of.”
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
Randy Newman
AMERICAN POP|Lincoln Center, 417 W. Magnolia St. in Fort Collins; 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday|$38-$40|fcgov.com/lctix or 970-221-6730
