What’s the cow doing here?
The sunny, spotted beast–with a bright pink udder, no less–greets visitors outside the gate of this Mandeville Canyon aerie, just west of O.J.-land. It’s only a mailbox, but the painted face isn’t what you expect to find outside the home of songwriter Randy Newman, master of dark humor and the embodiment of Lucifer on the just-released soundtrack to “Randy Newman’s Faust.”
A composer, pianist and satirist of undeniable talent, Newman has for more than 25 years challenged listeners with his caustic observations about the deeply troubled world in which we live. His landscape of humanity, as described in a distinctively foggy voice, is populated by a sad gallery of grotesques that includes several varieties of outcasts, losers, demagogues and unfortunate fringe players in a planetary passion play.
The 51-year-old artist has excoriated the evils of racism and poked fun at the excesses of rock ‘n’ roll–he has even immortalized a river so polluted that it caught fire and, in “Political Science,” advised our leaders on nuclear policy (“Let’s drop the big one now”). While demonstrating an ability to dissect his victims with a surgical skill that is almost scary to behold, the New Orleans native and father of five also is skilled at documenting loss and loneliness with heartbreaking compassion.
When Newman masks his own persona–as he did in the masterful first-person sketches of the 1974 album “Good Old Boys”–many people in his audience are left wondering where the artist leaves off and the characters begin. Fans and critics alike are still scratching their heads over the fluke hit “Short People,” which seems to pick on those lacking in physical stature.
Yet, here, in his spacious living room, Newman’s cherished Steinway is surrounded by stuffed toys belonging to his young children. Upstairs, in a memento-filled studio, exercise contraptions share space with keyboards and computers.
In this setting, the cow on the mailbox hardly seems out of place.
After spending the last several years scoring movie soundtracks for such films as “Avalon,” “Awakenings” and “Parenthood,” Randy Newman is back in the public eye.
His adaptation of the Faust legend currently is on view at the La Jolla Playhouse, a two-hour commute south from L.A. A separate, star-studded soundtrack version of the Broadway-bound production has just been released by Warner Bros.
(He also has finished scoring Disney’s “Toy Story,” a ground-breaking computer-animated project that features the voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen. The feature-length film will be released in time for Thanksgiving.)
In addition to having created the music and book for “Faust,” Newman plays piano and sings the role of Lucifer on the album, which also stars James Taylor (as God), Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, Elton John and Don Henley. It is a dream project that has taken Newman more than a decade to pull off.
In updating Christopher Marlowe’s story and Goethe’s play to contemporary times, he has imagined Faust as a third-year freshman at Notre Dame. Lucifer–who has “proven to be an effective administrator” after being banished from heaven–barely has to raise a sweat in his seduction of the young man.
“It’s the old soul joke,” says Newman, describing a selfish slacker who’s perfectly willing to trade his immortal, if deeply submerged, soul for the possibility of fame and fortune on Earth. (“So, what’s the catch?” the student asks the dumbfounded devil.)
“Faust’s a kid who doesn’t read much,” he continues. “So the devil makes a big deal by handing him a contract and saying, `Sign this,’ with all the lights and smoke.
“The kid says, `OK,’ and the devil says, `What do you mean, OK? Don’t you want to read it?’
“The kid says, `No, I don’t like to read much on my own time.’ “
All Henry Faust really wants to do is run a video-game company in Indiana and listen to heavy-metal music. Meanwhile, several other characters in the musical manage to find humorous new ways to frustrate Lucifer and the Lord, who isn’t terribly fond of Faust, either.
Although Newman is a novice when it comes to Broadway–and a bit of a cynic on the subject–many theater boosters are hopeful that “Faust” soon will find its way to Manhattan, where original, made-in-America musicals are in short supply. If the production does end up there, it will find the path from La Jolla to New York to be one that’s well beaten, considering that “Big River,” “Tommy” and “How to Succeed in Business” have also made the trek.
“We try to contribute to the development of work and nurture the artists,” said Terrence Dwyer, managing director of the La Jolla Playhouse. “Audiences have high expectations of us. They wouldn’t accept anything schlocky.”
Newman has family ties to Hollywood–two of his uncles, Lionel and Alfred, were celebrated composers for films–and he has been making critically lauded albums since 1968’s “Randy Newman.” Still, the allure of Broadway remains something of a mystery to him–and the possibility that audiences might pay $60 or more a pop to see “Faust” elicits a gasp.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “I like the comedies, I like to laugh. But I don’t get `Les Miz’ particularly. . . . It looked like a children’s pageant to me.”
“They’ll just be lying in the weeds for me with this kind of talk. I must admit, I don’t understand the aesthetic and may well prove it,” he added, with a roaring laugh. “They’re waiting for something, but I’m not sure this is it.”
Why Faust?
“It’s old, 13th Century–the legend has endured in world literature,” he said. “It’s a tremendous thing, there’s no doubt about it. And it’s not hard. It isn’t a difficult masterpiece, like `Ulysses’ or some of Shakespeare. It’s an easy one.
“Mine is very different, in that what interested me about it wasn’t good and evil, or anything like that. It was the idea of heaven and the idea of God and the devil, trying to play that game now with people.
“Both the devil and God have a great deal more in common with each other than they do with the people down here. They just can’t do anything with them.”
Newman’s vision of heaven seems to be a country club in Hawaii, where everyone sings and rides roller-coasters and God keeps in touch with his creations via a golden laptop computer. His hell more closely resembles a strip mall on the outskirts of Las Vegas.
In imagining God for his liberal translation of the legend, Newman eliminated an initial impulse to have him smoke cigars and gave him a pipe, instead.
“It changed the actor, made him a little more confident . . . more like Bing Crosby, which is good,” said Newman, whose wide range of musical tastes is on full display in “Faust.”
Several songs that appear on the soundtrack album, including the delightful “Northern Boy” and rollicking “Happy Ending,” have been eliminated from the production in La Jolla and a couple of new songs have been added. Among other things theatrical, Newman says that he also had to learn how important it is to reprise a song during the course of a show.
He agrees with critics who have pointed out that, while the songs are undeniably strong, further work needs to be done on the musical’s book. Still, he’s mostly happy with his creation.
“There’s a lot in it,” he says. “You have to listen to it more than one time. It’s complicated.”
It’s now up to the backers of the show, who include “Saturday Night Live” producer Lorne Michaels and Warner Bros. Records, to decide if and when they’ll take “Faust” to New York, although next October would appear to be a target date.
Newman is clearly reluctant to wear the mantle of the new Great White Way Hope, as he knows that rock ‘n’ roll has yet to make much of a lasting dent on Broadway.
If he stumbles there–and there’s no reason to think he will–he might borrow something he put into the mouth of his modern Mephistopheles:
“When you’re on the bottom, like I am today
And those around you are losing faith in what you’re tryin’ to do
There is only one thing a man can say
You can’t keep a good man down.”
