Randy Newman will be performing a free outdoor concert at Lincoln Center on July 25
Damrosch Park Bandshell
Amsterdam Ave. between 62nd & 63rd Sts.
Saturday, July 25, free, 7:00
randynewman.com
lcoutofdoors.org
Singer-songwriter Randy Newman has had his trigger finger on the pulse of the dark side of America for five decades, with a particularly wry focus on the south and the economy. Melding pop, rock, blues, folk, and Tin Pan Alley, the seventy-one-year-old Newman, who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013, has been commenting on the state of things for nearly fifty years, and he’ll be making a rare appearance in New York City on July 25, playing a free show in Damrosch Park as part of the Lincoln Center Out of Doors summer festival, along with Wycliffe Gordon and His International All-Stars and Lil Buck. The sardonic, cynical, bitterly funny Newman was born in Los Angeles and spent parts of his childhood in Louisiana, and he got a good look at both Hollywood and New Orleans. He mixes the flavor of both in clever songs filled with sarcastic, ironic humor, bittersweet romance, and sharp insight. He celebrates capitalism, in his own unique way, in such songs as “It’s Money That I Love” (“Used to worry about the poor / But I don’t worry anymore / Used to worry about the black man / Now I don’t worry about the black man / Used to worry about the starving children of India / You know what I say now about the starving children of India? / I say, ‘Oh mama’ / It’s money that I love”) and “It’s Money That Matters.” He takes on fame in “Lonely at the Top” and “My Life Is Good” (“The other afternoon / My wife and I / Took a little ride into / Beverly Hills / Went to the private school / Our oldest child attends / Many famous people send their children there / This teacher says to us / ‘We have a problem here / This child just will not do / A thing I tell him to / And he’s such a big old thing / He hurts the other children / All the games they play, he plays so rough’ / Hold it, teacher / Wait a minute / Maybe my ears are clogged or somethin’ / Maybe I’m not understanding / The English language / Dear, you don’t seem to realize / My life is good, you old bag”). An atheist, he tackles religion in such tracks as “God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)” (“I recoil in horror from the foulness of thee / From the squalor and the filth and the misery / How we laugh up here in heaven at the prayers you offer me / That’s why I love mankind”) and “Harps and Angels. He also has written tender, heartbreaking ballads (“Marie,” “Real Emotional Girl”) and songs made popular by others (“You Can Leave Your Hat On” by Joe Cocker, “Mama Told Me Not to Come” by Three Dog Night). But it’s his songs about race that resonate the most now.
After releasing six studio records in the first eleven years of his career, Newman has made only four in the last thirty-five years, instead following in the footsteps of his uncles and cousins, composing soundtracks for more than two dozen films, from A Bug’s Life, Cars, and the Toy Story series to Ragtime, The Natural, and Meet the Parents, earning twenty Oscar nominations (with two wins) to go along with three Emmys and six Grammys. But Newman is nothing if not a political junkie, and he’s never shied away from hot-button topics, from slavery and racism in “Christmas in Capetown” and “Rednecks” to poverty in “Mr. President (Have Pity on the Working Man)” and “The World Isn’t Fair.” Singing such lines as “In America you’ll get food to eat / Won’t have to run through the jungle / And scuff up your feet / You’ll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all day / It’s great to be an American” in “Sail Away” and “They got little baby legs / That stand so low / You got to pick ’em up / Just to say hello” in “Short People,” Newman has found himself misunderstood and becoming the subject of controversy. But we need Randy Newman, perhaps more than ever now, as wealth inequality grows, racism keeps rising up, and wars seem inevitable. “No one likes us — I don’t know why / We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try / But all around, even our old friends put us down / Let’s drop the big one and see what happens,” he offers in “Political Science,” continuing, “We give them money — but are they grateful? / No, they’re spiteful and they’re hateful / They don’t respect us — so let’s surprise them / We’ll drop the big one and pulverize them.” In his 2007 song “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country,” a public response to what he deemed the failures of the Bush administration, Newman sang, “The end of an Empire is messy at best / And this Empire is ending / Like all the rest / Like the Spanish Armada adrift on the sea / We’re adrift in the land of the brave and the home of the free.” On Saturday night we’ll hear what thoughts he has on America today.