Randy Newman, Music’s Most Biting Storyteller, Gets His Own Story Told: Ex-L.A. Times Critic Robert Hilburn on Penning the Singer-Composer’s Biography
variety.comChris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic For the last 55 years or so, you’ve had a friend in Randy Newman, if you have a thing for songs that offer eviscerating, uncompromising, even devastating dissections of the human condition and the American experiment.
Or, sure, kids’ tunes, or laugh-out-loud funny ones, or memorable film-score cues — yes, all of those things, too. But the case for Newman as popular music’s greatest social commentators is the one being pressed most of all by critic-turned-biographer Robert Hilburn in his new book, “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country: The Biography of Randy Newman.” Since leaving his post as the nation’s most well-known rock critic, a job he held down at the Los Angeles Times from the late ’60s through 2005, Hilburn has written four books, including the ultimate biographies of Paul Simon and, before that, Johnny Cash.
He sat down with Variety to discuss why he was driven to celebrate the life of Newman, who somehow continually comes up as underrated even while being easily one of the most lauded rock singer-songwriters of all time.
Hilburn gets into the impact of growing up under the shadow of three famous film-composer uncles (Alfred, Lionel and Emil), being steered away from classical and driven into pop music by his childhood friend Lenny Waronker (who went on to guide his career at Reprise Records), and how a turn into film scoring fulfilled his family destiny.
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