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Looking and listening were always something of a problem for Newman. He grew up comfortably in Southern California, in the midst of much music. His uncles Lionel, Emil and Alfred formed a triumvirate of movie composer-conductors, whose august company Newman joined with his excellent score for Ragtime in 1981. His father, a highly regarded internist, once wrote a song that Bing Crosby recorded. At three, little Randy could identify the symphonies of Beethoven ("A comedown from Mozart," he observes glumly, "who could play music at that age"). Soon after, his parents installed an upright piano in his room. "I didn't know what the goddam thing was," he recalls. 'It was like I was supposed to write a sonata or something. Maybe that's why music has always been just a job to me. I never sit down to play for fun."
Plagued by cross-eyes, now largely corrected, and double vision, which still troubles him, Randy had some difficult early times. His father remembers his son once walking into school backward so his classmates would not notice his eyes. "It wasn't a great big deal," Randy says now, "but it was a little tough. I know it was a long time before I could look people in the face. I mean, my eyes look all right to you, don't they? I don't think they had anything to do with my songwriting.
I don't know. I wouldn't want to admit to it."
As a high school student, Newman handed in his math homework scribbled on brown-paper lunch bags. He had already started to buy rhythm-and-blues records and play games of arranger-producer with his pal Lenny Waronker, who eventually became co-producer of Newman's albums. Waronker's father founded a record company, Liberty, with which Newman landed a songwriting contract when he was all of 17. At 24 he released his first album, which set the Newman style: odd lyrics, inventive orchestrations, vocals like a blues singer on novocaine, and a rolling piano technique that sounded like a shotgun marriage of Hoagy Carmichael and Fats Domino: It also established the Newman sales curve: rave reviews and wobbly revenues.
Short People, his first major commercial success, seemed to signal that Newman was turning from the bold directions of Sail Away and Good Old Boys, his concept album about the redneck South, toward the easier, more insinuating comedy of a Tom Lehrer. Trouble in Paradise corrects the course. Lavishly produced and orchestrated, with a host of highly commercial guest stars chipping in their platinum vocal talents (including Don Henley, Rickie Lee Jones, Bob Seger, Linda Ronstadt, two members of Fleetwood Mac and Paul Simon, who good-naturedly joins in his own self-demolition on a piece called The Blues), Trouble in Paradise challenges and surprises as no other recent record has. Go ahead, risk it. Invite Randy Newman to the party. He may leave early, but at least he won't walk in backward.
— By Jay Cocks. Reported by Denise Worrell/Los Angeles