A Few Words in Defense of Our Country by Robert Hilburn
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A Few Words in Defense of Our Country: The Biography of Randy Newman
by Robert Hilburn
Hachette Books, 2024
Randy Newman is one of the greatest songwriters in popular music. That is the opinion of most of his peers and of a few tens of thousands enthusiastic fans around the world. The "tens of thousands" in this instance is meant to seem diminutive, as Newman's performing career started in step with those of such seventies stars as James Taylor and Elton John. Considering Newman inspires characterizations like that by the late rock critic Lester Bangs of "a moralist disguised as a sarcastic misanthrope", his failure to attain mass popularity is not hard to justify. Bangs adroitly described the special quality of the Randy Newman canon. "Newman allowed us to wallow in our need to relegate anybody to the status of baboon,” he writes, “to feel the repugnance, the naturalness, and a kind of curious kind of objectivity all at the same time."
In plain contrast to such descriptions, among younger generations his wholesome You've Got A Friend in Me from the movie Toy Story has been so ingrained in the mind and culture as to accord Newman a composer's highest honor, that of becoming anonymous. The latest book by longtime Los Angeles Times pop critic Robert Hilburn (following biographies of Johnny Cash and Paul Simon), A Few Words in Defense of Our Country, is the first major publication ever in English wholly about this elusive American artist.
The beginning, about Newman's early years, is the most fertile section of the book. Hilburn's main source is his own interviews with Randy Newman and his immediate environment. Here we find some of that sought-after illumination about the man and his work through the lens of his childhood. He was pushed into music by his father, himself a dentist in a family of illustrious musicians. Newman’s crossed eyes "left him open to puzzled stares or cruel taunts”, Hilburn writes, “likely contributing to his empathy for underdogs of various sorts." The focus shifts at the point Newman begins performing. A chronological survey of his professional career becomes the narrative backbone, concentrating on the critical reaction to the music. This is supplemented by all too generous a sampling and discussion of song lyrics, particularly those with political and social content. Which brings us to the theme stated in A Few Words in Defense of Our Country’s title:
As millions of Americans reexamine the country's past to find heroes who stood for principle during troubled times, Newman is a prime candidate for even greater respect and acclaim. His songs will speak to Americans for generations to come about a strange and tragic period in the country's history, a time when ideals of diversity and justice were pitted against some of the nation's darkest impulses.
There is no missing the point, as the volume both opens and closes with references to Donald Trump. Bookends aside, the political slant doesn’t overburden the body of the book, which is supported by regular quotes from Hilburn’s interviews and from the most eloquent commentators on Newman’s work. For example, this reaction by English critic Charles Shaar Murray to seeing Newman perform:
The emotional effect is almost overpowering, this big, unassuming, sleepy-eyed man seemingly almost possessed as he strums at the keyboard and these voices from elsewhere spill from him almost at random. All of America is inside him: the white, the black, the rich, the poor, the generous and the flint-hearted, the passionate and the numb. He teeters on the high wire of his own irony, but he never misses a step.
Too little of the person who can reliably excite such reactions is glimpsed in these pages. Hilburn confesses that the songwriter “wanted the songs to be the story, not his life, and that goal made it difficult”, he says, “to explore the connection between his art and his experiences.” Newman didn’t follow the rock star lifestyle and when not composing spent his time reading and watching television, retreating into “indolent privacy”. But there is surely space for a broader and more detailed psychological portrait of the man in maturity than the one painted here.
The portrait we get is of a person seriously concerned with his craft and people’s perception of it, but who doesn’t allow the second to interfere with the first. What we learn about his relationship with his first wife probably hints at both the best and worst elements in his character. Which are neither so good nor so bad. In the end, we are left to account for how such a normal person could have achieved the complexity of feeling that is expressed in the best of Randy Newman’s songs.
In a 2014 interview in Vienna, Newman, with characteristic self-deprecation, joked “Talk about life being unfair, I’ve lived more than twice as long as Schubert.” It is very well that this biography is here now. Robert Hilburn has drawn some invaluable material out of the musician, for which his affectionate admirers will be grateful. At the very least, this volume is a deserved celebration of a deeply loved artist. An indispensable book for fans of the singular Randy Newman.
Nikolas Mavreas is a reader living in Athens, Greece.