Randy Newman at the Guthrie
Randy Newman’s a funny guy. For those of us habituated to tongue-tied indie rockers stumbling through their between-song banter, the 67-year-old’s easy stage presence at the Guthrie Monday night was a genuine relief. Seated alone at a piano, Newman interspersed a 35-song set with enough comedy to justify the ticket price on its own. Some of the humor was anecdotal: Newman related how he had to discourage Robert Goulet from ad-libbing “babe” when singing “You’ve Got A Friend In Me” for Toy Story 2. (Goulet’s response: “Oh, I get it—no soul, huh?”) The old guy’s also accumulated a store of one-liners: “Schubert always makes me laugh, because I’ve lived twice as long as him.”
Of course, Newman’s songs can be funny too. His heart may have been in his renditions of more recent ballads like “Feels Like Home” or “Losing You,” but he didn’t shy away from the broad humor of “Short People” or “I’m Dead (But I Don’t Know It)” (performed as a sing-along). Then again, a too-hearty audience reaction can strip Newman’s songs of their subtlety. “The World Isn’t Fair,” addressed to Karl Marx, is so clever on a line-for-line basis it’s easy to forget we’re hearing a wealthy liberal seeking to justify his own privilege. Similarly, “God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)” isn’t just the deity’s sour joke on his creation, but a rumination on humanity’s irrational need for faith. And how exactly are we financially comfortable white Northern progressives supposed to respond to the race-bait-baiting of “Rednecks” (some of the attendees thought we should clap along), or “It’s Money That I Love,” the punch line of which is that Newman isn’t entirely joking?
His natural satiric instincts have always dueled with his humanism and sentimentality, his eagerness to score a point sometimes interfering with the effort it takes to make a point. And those contrasts were on full display as he dug through his extensive songbook—what he summarized as “40 years of writing songs for money.” Maybe “I Love L.A.,” which wasn’t built for solo piano, sounded glib after two of Newman’s finest historical ballads—“Louisiana 1927,” about the aftermath of the Great Mississippi Flood, and “Sail Away,” a slave trader’s promise of the good life in America to his African prey. But following his Pixar hit “You’ve Got A Friend In Me” with the lecherous “You Can Leave Your Hat On” was a brilliant show of tastelessness—the work of a real pro.
