Listen to Tim Riley’s narration:
“Stay Away,” by Randy Newman
Watching an episode of Black Mirror ("Fifteen Million Merits," 2011), I looked up the song that Jessica Brown Findlay sang (“Anyone Who Knows What Love Is”), and reeled back to find Randy Newman’s name next to Jeannie Seally. I started going through discogs.com and finding a buried history of tracks he’d written for others during his long apprenticeship before landing his own record deal in 1968. Many of these, including a baller like “I Think It’s Goin to Rain Today,” took hold long before he started singing his own material and “Sail Away” wound up in Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train. Three years ago, Randy Newman wrote a PSA for KPCC, his local radio station. He turns 80 on November 30.
RANDY NEWMAN’S SONGS carry a scorpion’s sting, but he sings them with a piquant charm. He recently performed his pandemic verse “Stay Away” for a public service announcement, crooning “wash your hands and don’t touch your face” with a Toscanini box set sitting on a shelf behind him and a book about Alban Berg in a pile to one side. He’s shy until he starts playing, and then you hear the bracing candor of that familiar voice adrift in cosmic quarantine. The title rhymes nicely with 1972’s “Sail Away,” and the song’s novelty brings back the ironic glory of Newman’s only pop hit, “Short People,” from 1977.
As he turns 77 on November 28, Newman’s career continues to toggle between over a dozen keenly wrought rock albums—from his eponymous 1968 debut up to 2017’s Dark Matter—and smooth Hollywood scores: Toy Story (1995), Marriage Story (2019). That he projects authority and comfort in such disparate musical zones speaks to both his range and his disquiet. He’s a musical intellectual who has managed to get by without the typical celebrity headaches. There didn’t seem to be much new to learn about Newman, starting with his early breakout numbers (“I Think It’s Going to Rain Today,” from 1966), to the tribute album Nilsson Sings Newman (1970) that turned him into a brand, to the standout number from the soundtrack for the 1970 film Performance, “Gone Dead Train,” that rang out completely unintimidated next to Mick Jagger.
Cross-pollinating romanticism with foreboding, “I Think It’s Going to
Rain Today” came into view slowly
as a minor classic: rock ’n’ roll distrust
dressed up in Cole Porter threads.
But then, strangely, one of his early numbers from a forgotten ’60s songwriting gig resurfaced on television recently to break this tidy frame, summoning the ghosts of Newman’s salad days and giving us a glimpse of his early sensibility in development. In the second episode of the dystopian British sci-fi series Black Mirror, Jessica Brown Findlay enters a TV talent show and sings an Irma Thomas track from 1964, “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand).” The show’s producer, Charlie Brooker, used the original recording of the criminally underrated New Orleans soulster, with the chirping backup singers giving the song’s stylistic kitsch strange new depths. But check that songwriting credit: Jeannie Seally and Randy Newman. At the time, he was a nobody, and Seally had to wait until 1966 for her breakthrough with “Don’t Touch Me,” which won her a Grammy.
Seally worked as a secretary for Imperial Records, which handled Ricky Nelson, Fats Domino, and a lot of Dave Bartholomew productions. Imperial had bought the Minit label (where Thomas cut many exquisite soul sides), and then got absorbed into Liberty, where Newman worked. Her one and only Randy Newman session was a moment of pop kismet, when the Gods smile on pure chance and a minor classic spills out. “I had stayed after work because I had this idea for a song,” Seally, now 80, recently told me over the phone.
Now, first of all, you need to know I’m not a musician. I can hear these chords. And I had the verse written and I could hear where I wanted that melody to go. And I stayed after work to use the piano. I still couldn’t find it and then I heard Randy come down the hall. So I hollered at him.
I said, “Will you come in and help me figure out what I’m hearing on this?” And Randy was such a great guy. He was always just so quiet and incredibly talented. So anyway, he came in and helped me, he heard what I was hearing …
The phrase was something she’d seen in a magazine ad for pantyhose…
also
the riley rock report playlist for this article
Greil Marcus on Dusty in Memphis (1969); Stephen Holden on Sail Away (1972)
Discogs.org: Randy Newman
Ace compilations, On Vine Street: The Early Songs of Randy Newman (2008) and Bless You California: More Early Songs of Randy Newman (2010).
Flack Attack: Elvis Costello
Dangerous Amusements: Riley Playlist
incoming
There I Ruin’d It, interview coming in January
Year-End Lists (see 2022)
album of the month
I forgot that Newman collaborated with Jeanie Seally. The lede really hits on Newman's appeal.
Even if I don't love all his stuff, Newman has one of the most fascinating careers going - thank you for illuminating this early corner of it!