The best lyric writer America “has ever produced”, according to Randy Newman
If you’re going to skewer the world as all great satirists do, you first have to look it straight in the eye. Randy Newman‘s bespectacled gaze has been as firm as any. As a songwriter, the Los Angeles native has captured the woeful ways of the world—perfecting the punchline to the human comedy that continues to unfurl at a lick of a laugh a minute.
He takes these jokes deadly seriously. Behind them is a great deal of honesty and reflection. As per his assessment, with only a perpetual total of 200,000 fans worldwide to call his own, he’s only ever living off the back of his next song. He doesn’t rest on his laurels or resort to doing simply what he knows. He seems to think, ‘Well, I’ve dealt with man’s relationship with God, what about God’s relationship with man?’ And so the next masterpiece begins.
Not every songwriter has found continually returning to the square root of inspiration all that easy. When that 200,000 number stretches into the millions, and your stock of credit is through the roof, a safe bed of laurels becomes fairly appealing. In Newman’s book, this is what beset Bob Dylan’s writing during his more fallow years.
As he explained to the Guardian: “Dylan knows he doesn’t write like he did on those first two records. The tremendous praise that the last two have gotten, I’m not so sure [that would have happened] if they didn’t have his name on it.” However, as the old adage goes, form is temporary, but class is permanent. Newman had no issue admitting that Dylan could justly be forgiven for his sins in the 1980s and ’90s.
“You forgive him a lot because he was the best ever. He’s the best lyric writer this country has ever produced… along with maybe [Lorenz] Hart,” he explained in an interview with Bob Costas. When pressed on whether he even surpasses Cole Porter, Newman opined, “Even more so, because Cole Porter writes for people of a sophistication, while Dylan deals with a wider range, I think.”
That seems wholly true. The US has produced a host of first-rate lyricists, but did any of their words spear the zeitgeist in the manner of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’? Did any of them kickstart a genuine revolution, the sort the FBI would actively try to neutralise, quite like ‘Masters of War’? Did any of them prompt 250,000 upstanding citizens to march on Washington as ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ did? No—and that is why Dylan is the greatest.
But such gargantuan heights are difficult to maintain. As Newman’s song goes, “It’s lonely at the top”. Dylan himself admits that there was a period when he tumbled from the spire. And even the most ardent Dylan fans – Newman included – would agree that he, as the original vagabond put it himself, ”[he] lost his power and dominion over the spirits.”
Dylan adds: ”I had it once, and once was enough.”
Once, indeed, was enough. It was even enough to ensure that when the ’90s came around, the criticism wasn’t quite as cutting as Newman thought it might have been had the trough been ascribed to a different pen. But thankfully, Newman adds that there was a time when he was “at the head of the class, he really was”. From the 2000s onwards, you could even argue that he has returned there.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter
All the latest stories about Bob Dylan from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.