Newman renews friendship with city
If Pittsburgh’s had a friend in Randy Newman, it’s been a longdistance relationship.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer hasn’t shown his face here since 1977, when he played to a small crowd at the Syria Mosque. On Thursday night he finally renewed the acquaintance, magnificently, joining the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for the final installment of the Thursday Night Icons series.
This was a perfect match for the singer-songwriter-pianist-composer-humorist, who’s been a friend to orchestration since his debut album in 1968. Actually even before that. These weren’t just whole notes that a synth player could do with one hand; they were subtle arrangements with lovely, whimsical touches, as was evident right away on “Birmingham” — which he quickly undercut with a piano-only version of his novelty hit “Short People,” sounding more absurd and hilarious now than ever in this PC climate.
In Heinz Hall we could savor every brilliant, biting word delivered in his raspy talk-sing: His sobering message to Karl Marx on “The World Isn’t Fair”; the woeful “I Miss You,” introduced as “a love song I wrote to my first wife while married to my second”; his twominute-something history of the world on “The Great Nations of Europe”; the risque foreplay song “You Can Leave Your Hat On.”
Everything he said in between was poignant or funny, like expressing his appreciation for the musicians behind him spending hours alone in a room perfecting their craft, “like snipers do.” In his bit about rockers going on and on, he took a playful shot at Paul McCartney, saying, “You’re not as good as you were in Wings. ... I don’t know why I bring him up. Just bitter.” Later, he revealed the dropped plot of “Toy Story 4”: “There’s a big romance between Woody and Buzz.” (Don’t believe that.)
Having won a pair of Oscars, among many nominations for his film work, he was the first of the Icons to conduct the PSO in four of his own suites, “Toy Story” and “Maverick” (that’s two cowboy movies), “The Natural” and “Avalon.” The brass wasn’t quite crisp in the section where Buzz tries to fly ... Just kidding. I have no idea. It sounded terrific! And he was awed by their playing.
Mr. Newman had the best Heinz Hall intermission line ever, saying, “We’re gonna take a short break. I’m gonna shoot up, and then we’re gonna do the rest of the show.”
The second half opened with two of the suites and a rollicking satire about Vladimir Putin and then continued as a Randy Newman greatest hits — or, should-have-been hits — with such classics as “Sail Away,” “You’ve Got a Friend in Me” and “Louisiana 1927.” Drawing huge laughs was drop-the-Big-One satire “Political Science,” even more perfect now in these Fox News times.
Fans here waited a long time to see him do these songs, and, except for his voice getting a little more hoarse late in the show, it was probably as good now as it would’ve been 20 years ago. The good news is, he spent the afternoon taking a tour of his lost friend Pittsburgh and concluded, “I like it better than almost any city I’ve been in. ... I’ll come back.”