One of Britain's first champions of Newman was the former Animals' keyboardist, Alan Price, who had a minor British hit with his take on "Simon Smith" on the U.K. Decca label (find the UK-only album A Price On His Head for a nearly all-Newman song selection); in the U.S., the song appears on his album, This Price Is Right, on London-subsidiary Parrot label, 71018. Also featured are two songs appearing on Newman's debut, "Bet No One Ever Hurt This Bad" and "So Long Dad", and a lively cover of "The Biggest Night of Her Life." Among nine Newman covers recorded by Price (his poker-faced take on Newman's live-only cut "Tickle Me" remains its only cover), just one other song dates from the Metric period, "Come And Dance With Me."
In Newman's own demo (a 75-second edit appears on a promo-only Interworld Music sampler from 1970, The Songs Of Randy Newman, IMG 1000), he gives voice to a lonely wall-flower watching the other kids dance, his vocal barely rising to an audible level as a funereal melody crawls along: "I watch them dancing by me/Lord, I'm dyin'/They don't know it/I'm so lonely/I can't show it/ Someone please/Come and dance with me." Undoubtably custom-written for every shy guy who sat home during the prom, Newman's utterly dejected vocal suggests little hope short of suicide as a way out; Price's version is better controlled and more sympathetic, the pathos leavened by some graceful strings. Besides Price, no other artist has had the stomach to cover this self-pity classic.
During the mid-to-late '60s, Newman's demos became quite widely distributed in Britain's pop underground (Apple Records exec Derek Taylor sent Newman a telegram requesting a song for Mary Hopkin, mentioning that the Beatles were all impressed by his album debut); among the U.K. artists' covers to appear was a 1967 record by Beverly, "Happy New Year" (Decca subsid- iary Deram's first single, 101). Founded on a solid piano melody that builds up a funky gospel rhythm, the lyrics lay into a lover-who-left: "A cheer of New Year spirit/Dies on the still night air/ I shout but you don't hear me/And you don't care/Happy New Year." One of Newman's stronger compositions, the single went nowhere and is now near-impossible to track down, particularly the tiny U.S. edition on Deram 7502. Obsessives should check instead for the track on the Charley import collection, Deram Dayze (Decal 9). Rock trivia note: during this period, Beverly (future wife/ex-wife of celebrated Brit-folkie John Martyn) was briefly linked with Paul Simon while he lived in England; hers is the voice heard in the "I surely was a tailor.." bridge of Simon's song "Fakin' It."
On the topic of tough-to-find collectables, another Decca label Newman cover appears on the underappreciated Ricky Nelson's now-scarce 1969 album, Perspective (Decca 75014). In an attempt to form a suite of sorts on side two, producer John Boylan strings together four unrelated Newman songs, "Wait Till Next Year," "Love Story," "So Long Dad," and "I Think It's Going To Rain Today" with various sound effects (a bar crowd, lapping water, airplanes departing -- and, yes, a rainstorm intro) into a disjointed mess. Storyline aside, Nelson's vocals are warm and on target, particularly on the Metric-era "Wait Till Next Year," where he gets off a volley of wry (pre-Garden Party) shots at his "Play 'Hello Mary Lou'!" audience: "Your world is restricted/And I have been evicted/Condemned and convicted/For being myself." Rarely have Newman's lyrics connected more aptly with another performer, his most playful, cynical and witty of the Metric period. As for next year: "I got an image to nurse/A role to rehearse/And by this time next year/ I should be even worse." Possibly following his ex-bandmate Alan Price's cue, the Animals' Eric Burdon also covered this tune (and two later Newman-recorded songs) on his Eric Is Here LP (MGM 4433), singing in an unfathomable mix of cockney and Welsh accents before switching to British upper crust for the song's outro. Mindboggling. A horn-powered cover was also cut by Lee Hazlewood for his album, "Forty" (LHI 12009).