Randy Newman on the ‘Toy Story’ project: “It started a terror in my stomach”
Music composers are arguably the greatest unsung heroes of some of the finest movies of all time. What would the Steven Spielberg epic of Jurassic Park be without the magnificence of John Williams’ score? In addition, the Sergio Leone classic The Good, the Bad and the Ugly would be far more dull without the gentle tension of Ennio Morricone’s gentle soundtrack. Or, how about Pixar’s Toy Story without the playful soul of Randy Newman?
Whilst both Williams and Morricone are recognised as titans in the field of music, Newman doesn’t quite get the credit he deserves, having provided the soundtrack for countless iconic movies throughout his time and being an iconic musician in his own right. A professional songwriter from the age of just 17, Newman released his first single in 1962, ‘Golden Gridiron Boy’, which inevitably flopped, leading to him focusing on songwriting – a far more successful venture.
Penning songs for the Fleetwoods, Jerry Butler, Petula Clark, Dusty Springfield and Irma Thomas, Newman also took to the film industry, composing a soundtrack for his debut film project Cold Turkey in 1971. This led to countless other high-profile collaborations, working with Milos Foreman on the 1981 film Ragtime, Barry Levinson on the 1984 movie The Natural and Penny Marshall’s 1990 award-winner Awakenings with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro before Pixar came calling in 1995.
Totally new to the world of animation, Newman wasn’t sure how to approach the new project, despite the fact that Pixar was extremely keen on his musician for his warm sounds that spoke to the dream of suburban America. Recalling getting the call to do Toy Story, Newman told NPR, “It started a terror in my stomach, you know, that it was so different from what I’d done…I mean, there’s no competing with Toy Story, in terms of the reach of it. It inevitably appeals to, you know, hundreds of millions that I wouldn’t appeal to.”
Speaking about Newman’s appointment, the executive vice president of music at Walt Disney Studios, Tom MacDougall, explained: “Pixar was almost the anti-Disney, that they didn’t want to do musicals, or princess movies, or have magic and those types of things…I would say Randy is as important as Tom Hanks or Tim Allen…If we didn’t have his music in there, you would feel it, for sure. And you might not even want to make it without him.”
Newman’s soundtrack, which included such bouncing classics as ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me’, ‘Strange Things’ and ‘I Will Go Sailing No More’ became the perfect tracks to score Pixar’s feature-film smash hit that told the story of a group of toys which came to life when their owner wasn’t around.
Wanting the soundtrack to be quick and bouncy to replicate the movement of the toys, Newman was anxious to get the soundtrack right, explaining, “You have to take their feelings, their emotions, seriously. It’s not like unimportant when somebody’s feeling bad.”
But, even though he is best known for his work on the animated classic, he doesn’t want to be remembered for his efforts solely on the 1995 film, “I want them to know other movies, and that I write songs, you know. When I step off, I think it’ll be the songs that are mentioned more. You know, when the obituary in the Courier Journal is there, I think it’ll be ‘singer-songwriter.’ But I’m not sure. I’ll never know.”
