Library Rock's Backpages

Who Is Randy Newman?

Steve Turner, Beat Instrumental, February 1972

The name of Randy Newman kept cropping up in the interviews I wrote for Beat Instrumental. First of all it was Keith Reid who claimed that he was the best lyricist around and then it was Marc Bolan who was raving about a performance he'd seen at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. I thought I'd already got a pretty extensive knowledge of Mr. Newman so I didn't really need to go to all the trouble of listening through his albums. I mean — I knew where he was at. Hadn't I, after all, listened to ‘Simon Smith And The Amazing Dancing Bear’? Didn't I know that he was the man behind the creation of ‘Mama Told Me Not To Come.’ Oh yes, I knew all about Randy Newman.

Total word count of piece: 1574

Subscribe

Becoming a member is easy. Membership gives you access to all the thousands of articles in the library.

Click here to go to Subscribe page.

Click here for academic and other group subscriptions.