How beloved is Randy Newman by his peers? When noted journalist, longtime L.A. Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn wrote his new biography, A Few Words in Defense of Our Country, on Newman, he reached out to some of the greatest songwriters to write testimonials on Newman. The first to respond: Bob Dylan. Then Paul Simon, Don Henley, Jackson Browne.

When a quartet of the greatest songwriters will speak publicly about your brilliance that says it all. I spoke with Hilburn about his celebration of Newman.

Robert Hilburn: Yeah, it sure has changed. That's why I left the LA Times, because I could see it was changing. The internet was taking over and pop music was changing. So, I really thought my era was gone at the paper, the kind of singer/songwriter, rock and roll kind of thing. That's why I decided to write books. I left the LA Times 20 years ago.

Hilburn: Oh, the thing that surprised me, I knew the artistic arc of Randy. The reason I wanted to do the book was he's on my list of top five American songwriters, top three probably. But when I would meet people and say Randy Newman they would say I love “Short People.” They think of him as that song or “^You've Got a Friend In Me.” Almost nobody, I'm talking about general public, knows anything beyond those songs. And to me, 95 percent of his legacy is those other songs, the songs he wrote about the shortcomings he sees in the American character; racism, sexism, greed, homophobia, all of those ugly issues. And the reason people don't know about him is radio never played them, they were controversial. You couldn't understand him sometime because he's talking in the words of an unreliable narrator. He's not Randy speaking. His characters are speaking. So, all that stuff confused radio, and they just said sorry, except for “Short People.” That kind of popped up and they played that. So, my goal was to get people to understand him and search out his greatness. The message in these songs, one thing I've said over in the book, I said, "When I saw that 2 ,000 people stormed the U S. Capitol in 2001, millions of us said, 'How did our country ever get to this place?'’" The thing that struck me then was Randy had been warning us about these things, talking, writing about these things, trying to amplify and educate about these things for 50 years. And those songs remarkably are timelier, I think now than they were when they were written because look at our country. These issues are still the headlines.

Hilburn: That's what I wanted to find out. wanted to cause I knew the body of work, but the thing that I learned and wanted to address is how that came about. How did his creativity get to the point from when he was five years old, sitting down at a piano, his father encouraging him to be a film composer, the pressure of the family history, Alfred Newman and stuff. He thought he was going to be a film composer, and he was intimidated by that. He was frightened by that. How did he get from that to “I Think It's Going to Rain Today” and the songs in Dark Matter. That was the discovery. I spent a lot of time with him, and he's a very private person. That's why he's never cooperated with anybody before on a biography, because his uncles, when he was a kid, because they were film composers, would always come into the family gatherings and make fun of the movie stars because they're always bragging, they're always telling us how great they are and this kind of stuff. So don't brag. Let your mu sic speak for itself and don't let people know about your personal life, your personal thoughts because they'll use it against you. He didn't only get the music nurture or nature he had this kind of insecure, frightened, "Don't tell people about yourself, hide your own feelings.” And that's why the unreliable narrator was helpful for him, because he could speak about these things without him saying the voice in the song. But the thing was, the more I talked to him about some of these things because I wanted to know about his personal life. I wanted to know about his childhood. I wanted to know about the things that bothered him maybe when moving back to the table. He didn't want to talk about these things. He has successfully kept his personal life out of the stories for almost all this time. There were a couple of interviews. He did long interviews with Rolling Stone where he talked about it, but nothing almost since. But it was a lot of pressure on him. He was expected to follow Alfred into film music, and he would visit Alfred when he was a child, and he saw Alfred was terribly insecure. He was a tortured writer. This was so hard. He would turn to some time, an eight -year -old boy say, "Is this any good?" He would throw up before our concert because he was so nervous. Alfred Newman. So, Randy at eight and nine and ten said, "What am I getting myself into? How can I do this?" And the great breakthrough and an unbelievable incident. At the age of one, he met his best friend who would be his best friend for life and who would lead him into the music business, and he become president of Warner Brothers Record, Lenny Waronker, at age one and two. As they get older, Lenny keeps hearing Randy play this great classical music. They would go to the sound stages and watch Alfred conduct the music for a film. And Lenny's father owned Liberty records, which had Eddie Cochran and Julie London. He would go there as a little boy and listen to some of the songs they were getting sent by songwriters. By the age of 10 or 11 or 12, he was convinced Randy could write better songs than they did. So, he sat down and said, "Randy, why don't you think about writing pop songs?" And Randy, "No, I've got to do these film scores.” He didn't listen to him. He didn't. That was never something he ever considered as an option. But finally, one day, at age 15, when the intimidation was almost terrifying to him, he said, "Okay, Lenny, I'll try pop songs." He told me, "It wasn't because pop songs are easier. It's because I knew I would have someone there to tell me I'm great and would back me up. My uncles weren't doing that.” And that's what he said, Lenny was my spine, my backbone, my courage. He was everything. If there hadn't been Lenny Waronker, there probably never would have been Renny Newman, the songwriter.

Hilburn: It was an interesting thing. He would open up occasionally, but it was painful for him. He got angry at me a few times because I kept asking these questions. To my mind, they were just normal questions, a moment asked. But he thought I was invading, pressing too hard. I would have an occasional breakthrough. But there was a magical moment. I could answer your question almost to the day and the hour. Because I was sitting with him, we were about two -thirds of the way through the book, struggling all the time to get him to tell me more of that. And Lenny would help sometimes, but he said one day very casually, "Are you going to talk to my children?" And I thought, "Oh, sure, I'll say hello to them and stuff. I'll shake hands with them." I didn't have any indication that they were going to really be helpful in the book. Because in my whole experience at the time, artists didn't want you talking to their family and kids, because they were afraid they were going to say something wrong or embarrass them, or blow their image. When I met with the first of the five children, it was Eric, and all the things I was asking Randy, he told me the answers to all those things. He was frank, he was open. He was forthcoming. These are things I would not have particularly told anybody. If someone were interviewing me about my father, I don't think I would have told somebody these things, but he was just delightful. And then the other brothers, and Alice, his daughter, said the same thing. It would have been terrible if one son said this, one son said this, Alice said something else and had to choose. But they all said the same thing. And Gretchen, Randy's wife, also answered those questions for me, talking about things, what he's like, this and that. When I went back and told Randy that they had told me all this stuff, thinking that he was going to really be on edge, he said, “Okay.” Randy is not afraid of the truth as long as someone else says it. He didn't want to say things that maybe were insensitive to his family or insensitive to his father and he certainly didn't want to tell people about being cross eyed as a boy because he didn't want people thinking of him as a victim. He didn't want people going to his shows and he'd be playing "You've Got a Friend In Me" and say, "Oh the poor guy is cross eyed." He always wanted to keep himself out of the family history. But he was great with the fact that they said it. There was an interview he did with The New York Times, and he said, "I think something like it was uncomfortable at times," talking about the book

Hilburn: Of course.The way “I Love L.A.” got started was Don Henley, who's a friend and a great fan of Randy, said, "Why don't you write a song about L.A .? We got New York and we got the San Francisco songs.” Randy says, "I hate those songs." He says, "Well, you write something about L.A." And Randy went back and said, "I don't know if I can." But he finally writes it. Oh, here, let me read you something in fact, okay? He told me, "You can't write a sort of worshipful song about an American city today. If asked to write a song about, say, Sacramento, I could do it, but I'd have to lie.” Then in “I Love L.A.” there's that line about there's the bum on his knees. See, people think it's a great celebration, but he's kind of making fun of people who are just so in love with L .A. they can't even see the homeless. And it's that subtly he puts in songs again that made radio confused about most of the songs. But here he says, "That song, the guy in the song is sort of aggressively ignorant. He thinks the great thing about the city is rolling down Imperial Highway in a convertible with a redhead by his side. To him, everything is so great. He doesn't really see things at all. He doesn't distinguish between that mountain, those trees, and the bum on his knees. And the truth is, Imperial Highway is kind of a s**tty street. In fact, all the streets in the song are kind of undistinguished. There's nothing taller on Imperial Highway than I am.” The attitude he has in the songs is really interesting. And it's really hard to tell sometimes because

Baltin: What do you want people to take away about Randy from this book?

Hilburn: I want them to first of all know he's not just the guy who wrote “Short People.” He's not just the guy who wrote “You've Got a Friend In Me.” I think he's one of the three or four best songwriters in America. Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Randy Newman would be the three I'd put. You could debate who else would be in that five, but that's the three I think are certain to me. And the thing is nobody has talked about America, its problems as seriously and as consistently as Randy, and no one has shown the compositional skills. He has that film score, all that orchestra conducting, he has all that, he's a great arranger. But mainly the thing he's going to be remembered for is that subject matter of those great songs. I want people to realize he is one of the great songwriters, and then I want them to be motivated enough to sample some of the songs and hear the message. Because the message is so important today.