YouSaid · the spoken record

Randy Newman

lines on the record: 47
first: 2008-10-19
most recent: 2008-10-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think I take the late Beethoven quartets. It's a lot of music and I could really look at it hard. It's funny how, you know, on my desert island I'm trying to work myself. You know, I think I'm going to have to think of a way to fill that time. But I also, you can't go wrong with it. It's great music.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I take Dante's The Divine Comedy in Italian with an English translation, and I try and translate it. I understand some Italian, and I guess I'd have enough time to pick up a little more.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Final piece of music is Ray Charles singing Camerana Kumshan. You know this may have been my favorite record. I mean, I don't know how many records I've bought, the non-classical records, but it's not 15. This record I loved, and I loved him, loved him.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Harshly, I imagine. Not harshly. No, I think this last record I made is the best record I made. And the one before that I thought was his second best. In fact, I'm sure of it. I don't care what anyone says in something like that. If I didn't think so, if I thought I was getting appreciably worse and really sliding, I wouldn't do it anymore. I mean, I wish I'd done more. What can I say? You know, I've done three albums in 20 years. I mean, that's pathetic. It really is. And I'll try and do better. What can I say?”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I spent a lot of time with them and thinking about them and talking about them and stuff. So that's been what my life has been about. My brother just retired from medicine. He's younger than I And he has hobbies, he and his wife are pals. I don't know whether my wife's my pal or not. I don't have any hobbies. I don't know what I do.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I get along. I don't have like a knee-jerk reaction to Big Corp hate them automatically. They're human beings. They're people more or less. The process is different with Disney. I like getting assignments. It's the easiest thing that I do is write songs on which I've given parameters and an assignment. And I'm proud of the songs I've done. You try and find the guys to work for I do because I've had the luxury of doing so since I also do something else, guys you can stand to be in the same room with and who are on the same wavelength musically as you are.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How did doctor tell me once? He said maybe that's a connection to your father because he'd give me stuff, you know, like amphetamines. Everyone else has taken them as a composer. He didn't want me to get behind the other composers. So it sounds awful now, but it was different time. You know, it was like he lived in the age where they discovered penicillin in those miracle drugs. He just loved that kind of magic that medicine could do And I think he knew that it was psychological. He took amphetamines to write, as a lot of the guys did. You get to thinking, if you don't have them, you can't write. And of course it's not true. Kids, are there any of you still left? It's not true.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there is those two extremes cocaine really cut a hole in pop music in Los Angeles. A few missing years in people's lives.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't do it. I never liked alcohol that much. There's like minor substance abuse. There's some genetic substance abuse rattling around in the family, it would seem.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He turned the chair around and have a drink at 5 o'clock bam. Used to call post time. There were a lot of that in my family.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I'm going good, it's all right. When I don't know what to do, tortured for a moment, if I only had the ability to look ahead at consequences, I mean, I'd realize that things are going to turn out okay. I mean, I've done it so many times that I know I'm going to get an idea that'll get me out of this scene. And I know that I'm going to write another song because I've written 100 before. And if I take this drug, I'm going to feel awful tomorrow. The low will be worse than the highest. But I've never been able to look ahead like that.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Story that was delivered. It turned out irrespective of how much the music meant to it, I hope it meant a lot, those are good pictures.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first picture I did was a picture called Cold Turkey, and it was about a town that was quitting smoking. And I did. I turned down a lot of pictures, but I'm not sure I was wrong in the ones I turned down. I used to make my choices on what I was going to do on how important music would be to the picture. If I didn't account for anything, I didn't do it.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the beginning of Shastakovich 15th and 70. Some of the things I like, like this piece, are when composers are sort of beyond caring about public or anything else. And this sounds like Shastakovich was writing for himself.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But it's no one likes us. I don't know why. We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try it all around even our old friends put us down. Let's drop the big one and see what happens. Now again, there's nobody that nuts. But there is a jingoism in America and always has been. Nationalism gone a little bit too far. So I did write that and now they don't laugh in Europe at that song.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ya by little people. I got a death threat too in Memphis. Then my manager said, you know, I used to be in the road with the carpenters that this would happen to them all the time. And I said, really? And he said, yeah, yeah, you know, about once every three. When I was done, I said to him, you know, it was pretty good that I did. That was kind of brave, actually, you know, because I was thinking by getting shot. And he said, yeah, you know, you had your head behind the mic half of the show. And then I said, did the carpenters really get that many death threats? He said, no. I just tell them to you so you go on.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah I do little cars go beep beep beep, little voices go peep peep peep. I thought it was funny and I didn't know people were so sensitive”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean that's what I ended up saying, but it was about someone who was crazy, it was nothing. I'd say it reached people whom I normally don't reach, you know, on top 40 radio in the US. So Disjockey will call me with one of those voices. He'd talk like this regularly. He said, Newman, this song, Short People has caused a lot of controversy. It's about prejudice, isn't it? And I'd say, yeah, it's about prejudice. Thank you. So you don't really hate short people, do you? And I said, no, but I'm getting it. I didn't say that. But it was just about a guy who was, there's no cabal against short people. I mean, he was just nuts, that's all.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While Stravinsky is a big deal, important yellow's three pieces he wrote in the early part of the last century and Fireberg. They're tremendous pieces, the right spring particularly. He was a great composer. I mean, it's one of those things, you know. I mean, you leave Shostakovich off, you put him on, or Bartok's not on my list anymore. I didn't know what the hell to do. This was bad. It's nice talking to you. I mean, this was difficult.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My wife on Mary Tun asked me not to play it when she was at a show. I can't remember whether I did or not. It's really a good song I might have, but I didn't need it.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's what that song's about. Last song to you. Your first one. No one's ever noticed that. It's about, it says, I'd sell my soul and your soul for a song. That's what I mean about. I set up. I would do this is what it's saying, and it says, and I wanted you to know it's saying all this stuff about how you miss someone, that you should have been nice two, twenty-five years ago. So writing a love song for your first wife, all married to the second one.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe he was, I'm not ashamed of saying anything about myself, I'd answer anything you asked. So I don't think I'm reticent about that. And lately, I've been doing more stuff that's closer to being biographical than I've done, because that's where I'm finding the stuff. I take a song wherever I found it. I wouldn't care whether it hurt me. close to me or anyone. It's life and death to me.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I'd often think something that I wrote was a hit, and I played for someone. They'd look bad. I was crazy, you know. If that's a hit. But I always wanted to sell records. I always think, well, this isn't hard to understand. You know, it's not Joyce.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The next piece of music is Fletcher Henderson and has been with Stampede. In some of these things by Henderson around nineteen twenty seven, nineteen twenty nine, there's like five good ideas in a piece. I don't know whether it was the Arranger or the Tune itself. But they're my favorites.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't like it better than anything I had written because I liked us proud of things I'd written before that, but it was different. And I just always thought why not have the latitude a short story writer has. I mean, you know, Alice Monroe or William Trevor, they don't have to be William Trevor, Alice Monroe in their short stories. They never are. And why do we have to be that? But what I felt comfortable with. Now I learn that it's probably because of shyness.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was actually writing a song for Frank Sinatra Jr. at the time when I wrote Simon Smith, and I did. I just. Had a lyric that had tear and there and bear got in there and I just took off in the direction I ended up.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was like pretending to read music and he was playing, I think it's going to rain and talking about minor key and things like that. It was funny to see that kind of insecurity. I mean, maybe it was lonely.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We did. Me and Lenny went to see him. We took, I wrote it for him. I thought it'd be funny if he did a song like Lonely at the top, which is someone whining about, oh, even though I'm famous and I have everything, it's lonely. And I thought it'd be kind of hip if he did something like that. But he didn't.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jean McDaniels, I think, or I was just writing. Every step I've made, sort of major thing, except performing, I was kind of pulled or pushed into it. A friend of mine letting Warricker was really interested in pop music, and I was studying, you know, harmony and counterpoint and classical music. And I like pop music plenty. I listen to it all the time. And he said, why don't you try and write some songs? So I did. They were sort of okay.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I've always been shy. Maybe it's my eyes, they don't fuse. You know, I see double. Like I see two of you. So I tended not to look people in the eye. And that made it difficult to say, hey, would you like to go to the dance with me or anything?”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love George Jones. I love his voice. You know, in high school it's too backward to have girlfriends really, many of them anyway, any to tell the truth. But I remember I broke up with somebody later in life And I couldn't believe that billions of people had gone through this. And I remembered driving on listening to George Jones, and all of a sudden I realized why all these crummy lyrics. You know, things that would have embarrassed me about how sacrine they were. They really kind of hit home. You realize, well, the whole repertory is based on songs like that. I'd never noticed. I just thought it stunk. But when you're in a state like that, that stuff kind of resonates. More than that, it rips your guts out. And he's a great artist, a great singer.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. He seemed as if he weren't happy. He'd work every day from nine to five. I never saw him do anything else that he'd have a drink and have a few more, and ultimately I guess go to bed. And that was what his life was like.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it must have impressed me. The sound of it certainly did. It was a great orchestra to have in my ear at that time I was very lucky.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and the audience was standing up, and I said, you know, you're so happy about it, why don't you give it to me a long time ago? I don't want your sympathy. But I was kind of choking up and I said, my God, you know, I'll never live it down if I break down up here at something like this shallow. So I pulled myself together there and took it and went. But it really surprised me, shocked me that I was so moved by this. It's not meaning. I mean, it'll be the first sentence of my obituary, no doubt about it, no matter what I do. The second sentence will be about short people. But, you know, it's not the song, it was almost the least... Worthy thing I've ever had nominated, maybe, but there you go.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't think it would matter because I know that merit is not necessarily what wins those things. But then I got out there and the orchestra was standing. It really touched me that they would do that because they told him not to. They told me later.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, he was. My brother became a doctor and he became an oncologist because he wanted his people to really be sick. My dad says, look, 50% of the people that come to me, they're not sick, but they think they're sick, so you got to treat them as if they were. And he did. I mean, he treated the rolling stones when they were in town, as I remember. And I said, what were they like? He said, they're the whitest people I've ever seen. Assessment.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You look like a Southern Belle. I mean, that was hairstyle and things like that. I sometimes think that she might have been happy if she stayed down in New Orleans. She got treated differently there. But they loved each other in no way. They really did.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He took up a lot of room. My mother kind of got squashed, I think. Every time I did talk to her about something substantive, she made a lot of sense and helped, but my father would jump in, and so I mean I didn't get to hear her finish much of what she was thinking about.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He never said that But I think he did. It looked like a great life to him from the outside. He thought it was just that, you know, the highest art form, film music, I think. He admired his brothers a great deal, and he thought that would be a great thing to be.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He went past the fourth grade. I think Alfred, who was the oldest brother, wanted him to be a doctor. He may have wanted to be a musician. I don't know. He played clarinet. He had a band at the University of Alabama called Newman and the Newmaniacs. I think that's where his heart was, really.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There were seven brothers. Three of them were film composers, and the third one. I don't know how much composing you did, but he conducted, and he conducted really well, AML. Anyway, Alfred won 9 Academy Awards and did Hub Green was my valley and almost all the Rogers in Hammerstein musicals, King and I.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People that you had known and worked with. Some of it's faster than that. I should have picked something like no milk today. But there were great musicians, and I was lucky to hear them when I was a little boy. I didn't know that they were sort of world-renowned, but They were people they knew and they made this great record.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first track is one of the late Beethoven quartets. They're all great. Everything he wrote almost. This is 135 in F major with the Hollywood string quartet played in the studio orchestra at twentieth century Fox, and I worked with a few of them, and many people think that their versions of the late Beethoven quartets are the best versions, and that would make it, since some of the best music ever written, about the best thing that ever came out of Hollywood. Unless you like movies”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, for that I'm sorry. I mean I should have produced more than I did. Schubert only lived to be thirty one. I mean I'm sorry to use my name in the same sentence, but I mean lived to be like 31 and I think he did more in his last year than I've done. And he was sick. I don't know why that is, but I wish I'd produced more.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For being grumpy, no, I'm not grumpy as a person, I don't think. Never have been. I mean, people figure I'm grumpy because I'm from my songs where I'm not sunshine and moon beams and rainbows particularly.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, because the thing is, it's never been exactly where I went for relaxation. I'd watch television. I want to go to sleep at night, like a voice going on that isn't my own. So, you know, I end up listening to actually the BBC News, which they have on one in the morning there.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I like being interviewed this was the most difficult sort of preparation for any interview I've ever done. This was hard, really.”
2008-10-19 · Desert Island Discs · Randy Newman · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source