In 1948, his tour of duty over, Randy's father returned to New Orleans and relocated the family back to Los Angeles. Though he saw relatively little of his father while growing up, Randy now credits Irving Newman to a great extent for his tacit direction towards music. In a 1979 interview with White, he said, "My dad wanted me to take piano lessons, to be a showbiz guy, although he would deny that he pushed me into it."
Irving Newman also served as a sounding board for Randy's expanding consciousness and identity. Newman's father told White, "When Randy was a kid, he was invited to the Riviera Country Club by some girl for a cotillion. The night of the ball the girl's father called and said, 'I'm sorry, Randy, my daughter had no right to invite you because no Jews are allowed.' (Randy) said, 'That's all right, sir,' and he hung up the phone and he said, 'Hey dad, what's a Jew?' I decided he needed to know something and I told him he better start reading. So he read every book you can think of, including the Bible, and he decided he wouldn't believe in anything. He was about eight or nine then."
Beyond hinting at the inspiration of a future Metric-period song ("The Debutante's Ball"), the story also sheds significant light on how early on in life Newman realized his atheism (boldly articulated in 1972's "God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)" on Sail Away, Reprise 2046, though inevitably dwarfed by 1995's Faust, Newman's album-length meditation on all aspects of religion).
During his adolescence, he also developed a skepticism toward public hero figures -- as he told White in 1979: "I guess I don't like heroes, don't have any. I don't believe in them or trust people who do. There's no one I ever liked that much, although I admire my father, some baseball players, my uncle Al."
His particular world view has inevitably shaded his writing -- as told to Jim Ladd: "I'm not someone who's into self-revelatory kind of stuff, I'm not writing about myself. Now that may be some kind of defense mechanism, but I don't think so. I think a lot of people who..ostensibly write about themselves -- if you know them, they're not like what their songs are. How could anyone be like what these heroic songs are?"
While Newman's approach to narrative has undeniably opened up his options as a songwriter (and led to his assuming the first-person voice of some increasingly unsavory characters in later songs), it is only recently -- on 1988's Dreams -- that he has attempted something closer to autobiographical writing, without the irony. Initally off-putting in their directness, these self-referential songs eventually rank among Newman's strongest.
Still, he remains dedicated to his vision: "I wonder why more people don't do it...write third-person songs, have a character be somebody else -- I mean, why not? You don't have to do 'I Gotta Be Me' or 'God Love It I'm A Country Boy' (sic), you can be anybody else you want... you don't have to write love songs, either, all of the time. That's what 95% of the stuff you hear is, and I'm not interested."
And indeed, looking at Newman's earliest compositions -- about 95% of which were love songs (the public was not interested) -- it becomes clearer why he chose the path he has taken.