The artist Randy Newman called the best rock has to offer: “No tricks”
Ever since he escaped out of a back door on Tin Pan Alley in 1968, Randy Newman has outsmarted the world to such an extent that he has inadvertently imposed his own obscurity. His anthem on the insanity of prejudice, ‘Short People’, ended up enraging people to the point that he received extremely prejudiced death threats.
Tom Jones scored a huge hit covering his floundering track on meek sexual ineptitude, ‘You Can Keep Your Hat On’, by making it about macho sexual prowess. Newman even cataclysmically claimed that all his fans are “ugly” in the disastrous antithesis of Richard Ashcroft’s successful marketing quip that he’s “never had a bad review off a good-looking person.”
Indeed, Newman has, almost by design, made himself hard to market. How can someone be the Dean of Satire and the Master of Children’s Music? It’s a confusing dichotomy, one of many in the stumpy six-footer’s existence that continues to beguile as he enters his 80s. It has ensured that over the years, he has garnered a consistent fanbase of 200,000 globally. That isn’t many for a musical genius, and he’s smart enough to see why, but his integrity is such that gaining further followers is beyond him.
There are some stars, however, who can have their cake and eat it. This made Newman sorely jealous of Neil Young. Bemoaning is own unfortunate position, Newman quipped in promotion of Roman Holiday, “Neil Young once drew 80,000 people in Italy and he doesn’t speak a word of Italian.” The ‘Sail Away’ songwriter might usually be laced with irony, but this time, he was being earnest about Young’s ability to connect.
Recently, during a Glastonbury headline set on the Pyramid Stage, the ‘Old Man’ singer performed perhaps the most stripped-back and intimate bill-topping show that Worthy Farm has ever seen. Yet, the lack of histrionics didn’t set the crowd shifting towards the more bombastic Charli XCX or have them hoping for a headline-grabbing special guest. It was just pure music, and this is what Young has always done best.
As Newman told Douglas Cruickshank, “Most people did their best work when they were younger. Neil Young is as good as he ever was, which is quite an accomplishment … It seems like there’s no tricks to him. I don’t know if you could name anybody better who came out of rock and roll.”
For Young, it has always been integrity uber alles. It might have meant that ‘Heart of Gold’ remains his only number one song, but as a fellow who actively avoids the income that Spotify would afford him in protest of streaming royalties, he’s a rare artist who doesn’t care a jot about that lack of relative commercial success.
In doing so, he has followed his muse like a shadow, in the process penning some of the most gorgeous folk songs ever written, defining himself as the godfather of grunge, and rousing great protest tunes with unflinching zeal. If that doesn’t make him the best rock ‘n’ roll has to offer, then Newman thinks at the very least it puts him in the top one.
