Randy recalled to White in 1988: "When I was five, I woke up one day...and there was a piano in my room, this sort of hulking thing, as if, in case I was Mozart, it would be around there. I felt this kind of implied pressure, I think." Starting with piano lessons at age seven, Randy went on to learn harmony and theory in his teens, eventually studying music at UCLA. And great deal of his spare time was spent absorbing his uncle Al's arrangements at Fox.
"I knew my uncle Al's music the way I know Brahms," he told White in 1979. "It's part of me. I remember he hated working, writing; wished he'd been a conductor, he'd say. And it might have bent me out of shape seeing this great guy doing this great stuff and hating it. Made me hate it maybe.." Typically ambivolent about his work, he recanted to White in 1988: "I've enjoyed it.. it's more than enjoyment when you write something -- an exhilarating feeling -- but a lot of time, it's been work to me, and it's only been the last ten years or so, when I've liked (it) a little better.."
Newman's younger brother, Alan, told White about Randy's first attempts at writing: "He started...at about fifteen. One of the first things I can recall him writing was a thing called 'Puppy Love.'" (In a subsequent interview with White, Newman's childhood pal Lenny Waronker recalls "Don't Tell On Me" as Randy's first song, reportedly pitched to Liberty singer Bobby Vee, who passed on it -- neither song has been traced to a demo). "He was a lonely guy, no girlfriends, was hard to get through to, and he'd work so hard on those songs. But he'd get terrible writing blocks and couldn't ever satisfy himself."
To this day, Newman finds the writing process fairly excruciating, needing to totally isolate himself from other people to write: "I know Paul Simon and Rickie Lee Jones and other good writers that I've seen have notebooks and take things down all the time. I never do. I never get an idea when I'm not trying to get an idea. I never have -- except what I'm going to eat or watch on television.."
Randy's writing problems may also stem from the conflict between his setting unusually high standards of songwriting for himself (on pop music:"There isn't a whole hell of a lot more than to tap your foot to in most things you hear...I try to do more than 'to tap your foot to.' Always."), and his unusually low artistic drive ("I've never been real ambitious. I never wanted anything, particularly. I didn't see the point. Also, being lazy and unwilling to endure any pain"). The result has been torturous gaps between album releases for his small but dedicated audience; his most recent album project, Faust, was worked on for more than a decade. Newman's concern with quality over quantity, however, may ensure that his recorded works withstand the passage of other short-lived musical fads and trends.