"Randy Newman may not have lived rock & roll's reprobate life of sex, drugs, and rehab, but it turns out to be a fascinating story anyway.  Robert Hilburn's biography fills us with renewed awe for Randy's courage, humor, and musical genius - and with love for his deep humanity.  In earning the trust of his subject - and the trust of his subject's family and friends - the legendary L.A. Times critic gives us full sense of Randy's character and brilliant mind."
- Barney Hoskyns
Author of Waiting for the Sun and Small Town Talk

​Bob's new book coming Oct. 22, 2024
Pre-orders being taken now

Randy Newman and the Award-Winning Film Music

When Rand Newman awoke on his fifth birthday in the family’s apartment across from
Beverly Hills High School, the surprise present that his father, Irving, had slipped into the room
overnight told him a lot about how he would spend the rest of his life: a brown upright piano.

Growing up Randy had heard countless tales about the legendary role his uncles played in Hollywood film music. Alfred Newman, the most notable, received forty-five Academy Award nominations and won a record nine Oscars. Randy’s father wanted him to follow in his uncles’ footsteps, and Randy dutifully began preparing himself, studying classical piano lessons and taking musical  composition courses at UCLA. In time, however, the idea of a career in film music became increasing daunting as Randy realized the expectations he’d have to meet.

Gradually, pop music became an increasingly attractive alternative he switched his focus
to pop music, where he began making acclaimed albums in 1968, concentrating on songs that
decried what he saw as defects in the American character, from racism to homophobia. It wasn’t
until 1988 that he had the confidence to commit himself to film music. At that point, he had only
written three film scores in twenty years. Over the next twenty, he would write eighteen and a
musical.

Newman met the family expectations. He received twenty-two Oscar nominations and won two Oscars for such films as The Natural and Marriage Story, and phenomenal Toy Story series. He has been able to excel in both
 Picture
Photo Credit: Tony Newman
film and pop music because he brings a sophistication and sweep to his songs that far exceeds the three-chord playbook followed by most pop and rock songwriters; it has been said he plays an orchestra the way Hendrix played a guitar.

​Randy loved working with orchestras in films, but he felt the songs in his albums were ultimately more important, the songs about conditions in the country. Re-focusing on pop in the late 1990s when he was nearing sixty, an age when most of the best songwriters are long past their peak, he delivered three albums—Bad Love, Harps and Angels and Dark Matter—that reflected the commentary and ambition of his best early work. He had exceeded all family
expectations.

- Robert Hilburn

Read more blurbs on Inside Randy Newman

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