Randy Newman
 Randy
Newman was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Southern
California.
His career in music began while he was at UCLA, thanks to his
childhood friend Lenny Waronker, whose father owned a record
company called Metric Music.
Metric engaged Newman to write songs for them, for a hundred
dollars a month. In the years to come, his songs would be recorded
by scores of famous performers, including Ray Charles, Judy
Collins, Three Dog Night, Fats Domino, Joe Cocker, Harry Nilsson
and many others.
Newman's early albums such as 12 Songs (1969) and Sail
Away (1972) were carefully crafted, intelligent works that
attracted immediate critical acclaim, but were not hugely
successful from a commercial perspective.
Newman created a furore when he made repeated use of the word
"nigger" in a composition called Rednecks on
Good Old Boys (1974). The record was a scathing attack on
racism and bigotry of all kinds, but for some reason, a huge chunk
of the public did not catch Newman's drift.
In 1978 he was beset with a similar wave of heated
misunderstanding following the release of Short People, a
single from Little Criminals in which he parodied
bigotry on - or so he thought - an absolutely ridiculous level.
Filled with confidence, Newman put out his next LP - a
seething, nihilistic critique of the record industry titled Born
Again, without doing interviews or a tour. It died a
shockingly speedy death.
The nephew of two heads of music at 20th Century Fox, Randy
Newman always felt he had a musical in him. But as the most ironic
of American singer/songwriters he was never going to write a We
Will Rock You-style opus.
Instead he opted to re-work the Faust legend as a
comedy, casting himself as the Devil, The Eagles' Don Henley in
the title role, James Taylor as a golf-playing God and Elton John
as a bitter archangel.
Even if the tunes are not some of Newman's best, the 1995 album
- simply titled Randy Newman's Faust - was certainly
one of the funniest records ever made.
 "My
music has a high irritation factor. You can't put it on and eat
potato chips to it and invite the neighbours over for a
barbecue. It's got 'prick' in it, and 'wop' in it, and 'I'm
gonna take off my pants.' I entertain."
Randy Newman. 1979
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