Randy Newman - Sail Away

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Welcome to Master Tapes and to Randy Newman live at the BBC Maidervale Studios. One of the great American singer-songwriters. Randy is a storyteller whose bittersweet vignettes are seen through the eyes very often as unreliable narrations. He's an Oscar-winning composer whose many credits include the Toy Story films. He's released 11 solo albums. We're going to focus on one from nineteen seventy two, a record that many. You can't leave Thank you.

Some of the tracks from Randy Newman's third solo album, Sail Away, a record laden with the first time. Darkly comic songs about American people and places, about love and loss. It was hailed as a work of genius by Rolling Stone magazine in 1972 on its release. Randy Newman is here at the Maid of L piano, ready to take us back to the making of Sailorway. Welcome to Master Tapes, Randy.

To be here. Good. Well over the course of your career you've won and let's just have a look at some of the awards. Six Grammys, three Emmys, two Academy Awards. Oscar nominated in fact twenty times. Yeah, lost seventeen, eighteen straight times. Look on the bright side of things, but also inducted into the I had to go to the damn thing, you know. But let's start with Sailor Way. When you were making this record, where were you? Third record, where was your creative mindset at that time?

Well, you know, did the first record and I used orchestra on a lot of things. I mean it was as if I'd never heard the Rolling Stones and as if it was cheating to use a drummer to move things along. The second one I got rid of all that in reaction to selling twelve records.

And didn't use orchestra at all and then did twelve songs. And the third was a a combination. I was really, despite my record, I've always was trying to do something, excuse the expression, commercial. I mean uh trying to write music maybe people would like. But I would I don't do it. I mean I do it. People like it all right. But it's not like uh, you know, Bert Bacarak where he just turn out hits and stuff like that. That's just not what I did.

But you've been a professional songwriter from an early age. But before you started out on the solo career, you're all ready writing for a lot of other artists. I mean particularly here in the UK there seem to be a lot of artists, people like I do Tula Clark, I think, and Gene Pitney covered a couple of your I wrote for a brief period there. I was writing in a way that was sort of mainstream almost. This thing uh There was a syllabus. I can't swing it. And just one smile, Jean Pitney did.

Given that so many people were covering your songs and having a lot of hits there, why put yourself out as a solo artist? Was that always the game plan? Or was there was there pressure? Well, none of it was. But people were interested in the demos I'd made on my songs, a couple of record companies. And I thought if I don't do it I'll miss out on the experience. You know, there's so much literature and romance about performing and being in front of the footlights.

So I did it. I mean there's no excuse for me to have continued for fifty years, but but I did do it for that reason, just to see what it was like, to see if I'd like it.

But you didn't like it originally. beginning I was a little I saw a review recently someone was going back down memory lane with me and it said that Newman came on stage like a frightened buffalo. Which really I felt like you know. But I got over it fairly quickly. And there was resistance to your voice as well. I mean it is incredibly distinctive, the slur delivery, the gruffness to that tone.

Yeah, there was and is, I assume. I mean I don't I don't guess it's for everybody, though doing the the uh you know um But that's it. That's where the voice also works. It sorta makes it respectable, yeah, being in a in a big movie like Toy Store. Yeah. But there's that sense of empathy and there's a sensitivity as well, isn't there? Which which is kind of implied in that voice. It sounds like I'm feeling things. I was struggling to express that, but you uh you managed to do it perfectly.

No, no, no. It's something that I I'm very hard on myself writing and dancing, whatever I do. But I always liked my voice. I always felt fairly comfortable with it. But it's it about the expression though, isn't it? And that has driven the whole career. Music's about it. If it doesn't have some emotional impact, it's not worth it.

It's also about the lyrics and the tone is set for Sail Away, this album that we're focusing on this edition of Master Tapes, by the title. You put the needle on the record and there you get it's almost half a beat of the hymn like overture of the brass and the strings and the first line comes in straight away in America you'll get food to eat. There's a sense of optimism, there's a sense of hope.

It's cheerful the whole way'cause it's a s sung by a recruiter for the slave trade. When I play it, I don't announce it that way. It's been recorded as a happy come to America song. One of the lyrics is Climb aboard a little wog, sail away with me. And Bobby Darren did it little one, he said, so which takes this. On a sawf it, but it is isn't what it was about.

Yeah, yeah. And you're gonna play it for us now. We're gonna talk about that song more in a moment, but will you play us a live master taste function? You're not gonna I was warned about you. Due to contractual restrictions, we're unable to include the complete performance in our download. If you want to hear the song in its entirety, head to the MasterTapes pages on the radio form. These are classic unreliable narrow. He's not as lovable as most of my people are. Yeah. Peace out. Not true.

Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok Landing Newman performing Sail Away, the title track from the 1972 album, which provides the focus for this edition of Master Tapes live at BBC Maydevale Studios. And are you somebody who is really interested in trying to understand to get into the mind of somebody who is repulsive or arrogant or awkward? Or is it just because it plays interestingly,'cause you can have this particular narrative which sits at odds very often with the melody and and the rhythm?

Uh you know, I don't know really. It's a good question why I have an interest in these kind of narrators. It interested me to write things other than love songs. Not the brightest thing I've ever done, because that's what people like. They've liked it for a thousand years. And there's a reason why people write love songs. But I just chose at a certain point I think not to do so. It wasn't a conscious decision, but it just interests me more to write a thing like this to

Than you know, to write, you know, feels like home or something. This interests me more, yes.

So that's the lyrical perspective, and let's talk also about the musical settings as well. I mean, you were born in Los Angeles, but spent some years in New Orleans, and the South is there in the music very often, isn't it? It's hugely influential. Probably it is, yeah. I mean the blues and the gospel stuff. But again is that you tapping into something from childhood or again i i is Don't know the answer to I don't know what I saw down there. It's cloudier than L A. Uh there is music in the air.

It's a very strange and different place. My mother was from there and she was different than the people in Los Angeles. I guess thematically the South has recurred as well. Yes, man. The album after Sail Away, good old boys. I mean there there's a narrative all the way through of trying to get inside the head of the redneck protagonist. Yeah. I mean Louisiana nineteen twenty seven. I mean that song. It's a song about a devastating

Flood, yeah. And it also has in it the storm comes in from the north, which is a lie. They don't come in from the north. When it rains big, it's from the south. And in the song, President Coolidge comes down and says something that's worth nothing. So it's blaming the North vaguely for this gigantic horrible storm they had. There were people to blame because they diverted water into the cotton fields so it wouldn't hit New Orleans, but it wasn't the North. Yeah. Yeah.

What's really interesting is that we haven't discussed what we're gonna be talking about. You've got no idea and yet just it's really interesting that you've just turned to the piano, you've put your fingers automatically go to those keys. Those things. You're very good at it, bro. I have noticed that it's my best event. Yeah. But just in terms of all of those songs which are hundreds and hundreds of songs, they're all hardwired.

You know, they're there. I I just made a new record and those are there, you know, less certainly maybe. It's an interesting thing that hard word. It's muscle memory, all right. Yeah. You know, it isn't like thinking. But you do have such an incredible innate musicality. I'm just gonna tell a story in sound check you were sitting here and you were trying out one of the songs.

And you stopped and you said, Hang on a minute, is this piano in four forty or four forty two? And I didn't really know what you're talking about. And it's the tuning of the piano. And we got a tuner here and it turned out that it was four forty two, which meant that it was Very, very slightly out. It was at four forty two, yeah. I can't really hear that, but I could feel that it was higher because I was going like this a lot.

It's a tiny, tiny thing. I don't have that that good an ear. But yes I did. I knew it was bright.

Well I'm gonna bring the tone right back down and really to another song which touches on devastation and in the song it talks about squalor, filth and misery. Okay. This is God's song in which the Almighty is mocking mankind. He's well Laughing at the prayers that are offered up to heaven. The Lord is speaking to us through me, which is a big surprise. You'd think he Clapton would do it or something.

But yes, he's he is and he says how we laugh up here in heaven at the prayers you offer me. I'll play it. Remember you can hear this live performance in full on the Master Tapes pages of the Radio Forward. Yeah. I don't have any. Super. But I have a great deal of respect for Yeah. If you want to hear a full version of this song or any of the others recorded live at Maid Avail, Yeah.

Head to the Master Tapes pages of the Radio 4 website, where you'll also find photographs and videos from the session. God song. Live at Made Avail. Remember you can hear that song complete and uninterrupted on the Master Tase pages of the Radio Four website, along with all the other music performed here. Um you are an atheist, eh? Well, you know, let me answer it this way. Yes.

But I'm not uh I am not gonna say, Come on, men, follow me out of the trench and be an atheist. I mean I've got a song, a new record. where there's a sort of a debate. It's eight minutes long, which is the longest thing I ever did. What it's about in the end. is the power of the accoutrements, you know, connected to religion. Gospel music, there's a gospel tune in there.

Bach, Beethoven, Bruckner, you know, and people whose names bleak in with another letter than that. But the music is powerful, you go in those places and the ceilings four hundred, five hundred. We don't have anything like that in our country. So it's, you know Oh you can't win. Here is the greatest song about reason. You don't you don't have the goods to do it with. Right. Remember you can hear this live performance in full on the Master Tapes pages of the Radio Four Way. Thank you.

On the new album Dark Matter, which, as we can hear there, continues the lyrical themes and the exploration. It's something which you do return to. It's a big thing. It is I've written about money a number of times. I've written about race a number of times and and faith, yeah.

But the bleakness and the bleakness of the world, the world view is pretty dark very often. I mean on Sailor Way itself. I'm trying to can't get fans here. Maybe it is, but I am more often than any other pop writer trying to make people laugh. Is it ever To make people angry as well and to promote activism as as a s think of another song on the album. There's stuff I'm angry about, yeah.

Burn on, that song Burn On Sailor Way, which is about it addresses the issue of the Cuyanoga River in Ohio, which اشتركوا في القناة Some people say that was the birth of the environmental movement in America in the late sixties. So is that reportage, that song? And is that responding to your own personal concerns? Is that where we get the closest to Randy, the concerned liberal? I don't think so. I was just amazed at it. The river caught on fire. Because it was so polluted.

Uh yeah, I I thought it'd make sort of a funny song. Admittedly, I rode the wave, you know, at the end of it I make some gesture toward being sincere. But my camera let me Thank you. So you like the image of that, but as I was suggesting there, that is your also your personal concern coming through. But what is it? That's some concern.

Yeah. But let's look at a song like Political Science, where we have it told from the perspective of a reactionary, right wing isolationist American who is looking at the world and saying, We don't need the rest of the world, just drop But I've always thought he was crazy. I would write crazy You know, it's the type of thing that when I play it on the continent, they don't laugh anymore. I didn't think anyone in positions of power would be quite that nuts. But now we got it.

But that's why I'm asking, because this is a song which is suddenly incredibly timely. We give them money, but are they grateful? No, they're spiteful and they're hateful. It reminds me a couple of years ago in an interview you were asked about Trump's chances and he was talking about running for the presidency and you said no chance whatsoever, America is not that bad.

I didn't think so. I still don't think the people who voted for him are as bad as he is. I don't think they'd want to be friends with this guy. I could say something enormously pejorative like they wouldn't want him on their bowling team, but I it's too low to say. But I mean, I admit it I I don't understand it. It's worse than I ever thought. We

There's a huge range of lyrical concerns on this album. It's not all about darkness and despair and political satire. Let's talk about You Can Leave Your Hat On, as covered by Tom Jones. Joe Cocker, a really lascivious kind of swinging kind of get up there. It's a celebration of sex in the way that they It's a lot sleazy, isn't it? Well what are you gonna celebrate if you listen to what the guy's saying, you know, I I'm Down there where it's womp womp. Maybe they have sex different than I do.

And uh Lo que hicieron fue... I could have done it, I didn't think of it. Amazing though, the key change changes the meaning of the song. It does it. It really does on that one. That's all Well, they're voices too and the band and uh lots of Yeah. You couldn't I I mean Rai Cooter was playing guitar. He was louder than I was it sounds like I'm gonna fall into the mic. Just m missed the boat on that one.

This hasn't been a career full of regrets though, has it? No. It has not been I could have done it. Do you know what a a privilege it is to come over a thousand miles from my home? That's kind of a joke. And uh And have people come hear a radio show and and you're on it. No, I mean it's a great privilege to earn your living in this strange way.

Well it's a great pleasure to have you here. And we're only halfway through that radio programme because there'll be more stories and music in the second part of this edition of Master Tapes when we'll look beyond Sailor way to some of the other key works from Randy's career, including the film scores that have won him two Oscars and a whole new generation of fans with songs such as So for now my thanks to Randy Newman.

Head to the Master Text pages on the Radio Fall website. You can listen again or download this and previous editions of the full versions of all of you! Including this one from the first time. at the top. from BBC Radio 4. Each two part edition of Master Tapes consists of my interview with the artist, which you've just And then a second programme in which the audience at Maida Vale Studios gets the chance to ask some of the questions.

This is a sort of two for one podcast, so enjoy the second half of Master T.

Welcome to Master Tapes, to Randy Neeman playing live for our audience here at the BBC Maid of Ale Studios, taking us back to the making of his classic 1972 album, Sail Away. If you missed the first part of this edition you can listen again or download it through the Master Tapes online pages. Well now is the turn of our studio audience to ask the questions. We'll have more live music from Randy reflecting his work both as a storytelling singer songwriter and as an Oscar winning film composer.

Whose credits include, of course, Monsters Inc., A Bug's Life, Toy Story, and Method. Randy Newman, we focused on Sail Away in the first part of this program, the third of eleven studio albums so far. Then there are all those film scores which meant a whole new audience for your music. But what about the hardcore fans? You know, they're very loyal fans, Randy Newman fans. People help. Do you write for them or are you writing for yourself principally? I'm writing geeze, that's a good question.

I'm writing for them but I don't wanna exclude other people, you know? But I I th one of the reasons I think maybe I did comedy so much, I've done comedy so much, is because you sorta know you're all right if people are laughing. You could be great and you don't know it because people are just sitting if you're not trying to make them laugh. Either absolute silence is nice. As is laughter. It's a great thing to experience. Mm-hmm. So you prefer to make people laugh.

Well, it depends. If I'm getting paid to do Toy Story I'll make'em cry. No, I just go where the song takes me, very much so. It sounds like bullshit that excuse me, it uh that kind of a thing. But you go where the music wants to go.

All right, let's get our first question from our audience here at Mayvale. Uh this one comes from Marilyn Natchbull Hugerson. And Marilyn says that Randy Newman has been my musical hero for the past fifty years. Thank you very much. From nineteen sixty eight when both you and I were in our twenties, we fans could look forward to a new album from you every couple of years or so. And then there was one in the nineteen nineties and one in the naughties.

Mm-hmm. Has the film writing got in the way, or are we all just getting very old and tired? She wants more albums for the biggest. I think it's inexcusable that I haven't produced more, to tell you the truth. I really mean it. I mean eleven albums in seventy three years. There's no excuse for it. I don't know what it is. I never like to work. I never like to write.

Even when I was making albums like that amount, they would have to sit on me to do it. Someone would sit outside the door sometimes to make sure I stayed in there. And it wasn't like I was gonna do anything particularly hip, you know, I wasn't gonna go up to Laurel Canyon with Stephen Yak. I I I was gonna watch television. So I've had problems with it. Would that I had done more. I apologize, you know, that I haven't done more because Not much of an excuse for it.

But there is a new album, isn't there? This is Dark Matter. There is. Just as melodically rich, lyrically scathing as anything you've done before. There's a song on there about Vladimir Putin, for instance. I can play at least a hunk of it. Due to contractual restrictions, we're unable to include the complete performances in our downloads, so if you want to hear the song in its entirety, head to the MasterTapes pages on the Radio 4 website. It's alive at the B2C Made Bell.

Remember you could hear all of the songs performed here live on the Master Tapes pages of the Radio 4 website. I read somewhere once that you'd calculated you have two hundred thousand fans in the world. How did you get to that? Oh I just I just mean that that's very high. But those are people who are willing to pay money to buy a record or come to a show. Fitch about. I don't know. I said that because I wanted someone to say no, three. No, I have no idea, really.

You say that's high, but I mean there is some truth in that as well, in that you have always worked just outside the mainstream. You are a very successful singer.

Outside. It's very outside, you know. It's it's only with you got a friend and things like that that I am allowed to go down the middle. I mean I'm very happy I get those opportunities to do that. You know, this uh I don't remember. But I mean that's Toy Story Two. You're very proud of that one in particular, I think. Yeah. I I am. But that's why I played it so well. I know where I want to But I've heard.

you talk about that in a way that very often you sometimes you don't disparage those songs that you've done for the films, but you sometimes there's a kind of a distance or you look on them in a way that's slightly different to the ones you've written for the solo albums. They're radically different. You think I'd write you got a friend in me? Sound like a used car salesman.

But that's what the picture needed and I can do that and I'm proud of that ability. See this song in Toy Story Two, there was a scene with a doll, Jesse, the cowboy doll. told her story, which was her owner, this little girl, she loved and was her boon companion. The little girl grew up and grew apart. So they wanted a song there, so I wrote it and they animated to it. I thought it was a mistake because I couldn't see five year olds sitting still for it.

But they said they will sit still. And goddamn they're right. You know, we're not good at algebra in the US, but at following movies and stuff, I went to a screening with a bunch of little kids. I almost had a smack in me to keep talking during an oboe solo. But they follow it. Fantastic. I was watching Mission Impossible with one of my boys years ago and I said, What the hell's going on? And he knew That's something to be said for America, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, we're good at it.

Okay. Let's get another question. This one comes from Ashio Shardot, who's from Paris. He's a songwriter and a composer and he's here studying composition and harmony in London. I'm sure you've heard this like a thousand times but I'm gonna ask anyway. Does it bother you when people take your songs too literally? For example, short people. Or more recently you heard a song called I'm Dreaming. I'm kidding me. Exactly.

Yeah, so If you go on YouTube and you you just read the comments sometimes it's frightening. Exactly, yeah. Take it too literally. I should just mention the short people thing there, Randy. For those who don't know, a song from nineteen seventy seven. It was released as a single, sparked quite a big controversy. The lyric apparently disparages Short people. You're making it sound like a lot of fun. Yeah. To answer your question, I've gotten used to it.

Sometimes I misunderstand, maybe I think I didn't do it well enough, and people aren't used to irony in songs. I mean, if you take that literally, the guy's nuts, the narrator. You know, no one has a phobia like that. Nobody. God knows, maybe Trump has that too. Who knows? What book do you have for harmony? Well I'm not sure exactly. So you're not a musician. Yeah. Uh no. Well, but getting back to short people, have you ever apologized for any of your side?

No, I never have. I had a song called Half a Man about a truck driver and a gay guy in a dress. And the truck driver's gonna kill him. And I had the guy in the dress say, I am but half a man. It was bullshit. He didn't mean he was half a man. He was trying to not get killed in the song. I'm not sure I did it well enough, so it was a giant mistake possibly. I apologize to one person for it.

But I thought I was all right. I'm careful about not going over that line, you know, because I'm very close to it at times. I mean very close. Let's get another question from the audience. Next one comes from Peter Henderson, who's a a management consultant from Scotland. He says his neighbours once complained when he was trying to learn the songs from little criminals. Were they were they short people by any chance, Peter?

I think it was a small town in Germany that uh was it was the last straw, I'm afraid. That is strong, yeah.

So, when you were writing your hit songs in the 70s and 80s, did you always feel it was your destiny to join the family business and score films? I did think as a kid I'd maybe be a motion picture composer. It looked like a job that was Possible. Just to explain, Peter said about the family business, three of your uncles worked in composition. I mean, particularly your father's Alfred, your uncle Alfred, he was the musical director of twentieth century Fox

So was his brother, yeah. He was a great, great composer. I'm just looking down at the credits. I mean he did All About Eve, Wuthering Heights, How Green Is My Valley, Greatest Story Ever Told, How the West Was Won. He won nine Oscars. Yeah. Nominated for forty five. So, alright. Right, all right, you think it wasn't you think it you think it was easy? Yeah. Yeah, I thought I'd go into it, but it looked hard. I mean he wasn't very happy.

I mean he'd ask what I thought of something when I was like eight years old and I didn't know anything. But he was not confident and he was the best there was. It's an odd business that. It's different now because there's a lot of hummers, you know, people who can just hum the music or do it on a machine. It used to be a business populated with drunks and wife beaters. It's a very difficult job I think. Did you spend time on the set at Twentieth Century Fox? On the sound stage, yeah.

You were watching you were seeing him at work the way he was I did. I did. It must have been a massive influence. It was. Certainly in my string writing and just in general the way I handle an orchestra, I think. I hope I had the sound of the Fox Studio Orchestra in my ear, and it was a great orchestra. I mean world class orchestra, no doubt. They're still awfully good, those guys. And I mentioned he's forty five nominations. I mean you got fifteen nominations before you won the first of two.

Was it fifteen? I thought it was fifteen sixteen. Yeah. And I got'em for like not my best work, you know, if I didn't have you or something. I didn't have you? Well that was the first one that you won, wasn't it? from Monsters Inc. Yeah. Yeah, I guess it's all right, you know, but you know, it's like the Grammys I have, therefore like best instrumental by a left handed composer over forty. You know, it isn't like album of the year or anything.

I mean I've got six of'em, I don't know what they're for. I'm grateful to the Grammy Association. But when you went up on stage to collect that, what was that? Two thousand and one when you got the first of those two Oscars. You said, I don't want your pity. Yeah. I didn't. I was very surprised. And to tell you this is the truth, I never minded that much not winning. I liked the nomination all right. You get a a kind of a glow for a couple of months out of it.

But I didn't mind. I knew from watching the Oscars a a few times that it isn't necessarily based on merit. When I went out there, the orchestra stood up. They told them not to, but they like me. There's no doubt about it. It got me, really got me, that those guys did that. And I thought I might cry up here. If I cry at this vaudeville show, you know, what is the matter? But I made it made it through all right. Yeah.

What is the essential difference between writing unless not the scores, but the songs that you write for those movies and you've done so many of those kind of Disney Pixar films and the songs that you write for the solo album? Well, the songs for uh Disney are something children can listen to and enjoy. They're straight ahead. Usually You Got a Friend and Me, uh, When Somebody Love Me, whatever Bug's Life was about.

That's a lot of my best scores But the darkness there, the undertone is similar, isn't it? No, I got no darkness in those. If I do, I'm doing it wrong. I mean it could be anyone writing it. Let me think. Oh there's Oh yeah, that's a little bit of darkness there. I just wanted to get that by, you know, in a movie like that. Thank you.

And just give us a sense of practically how you write for the films. Are you writing to a locked picture or to storyboards or just to ideas? They animated to the song in Toy Story Two, the When Somebody Loved Me. That's quite a. You got a friend they animated to that too. I wrote it, but they told me what they wanted. And it's easier assignment writing because you have some kind of parameters than what I usually do.

you're working with in terms of the overall score, you think about Bugs Life, you've got what, a hundred piece orchestra there and you have musical motifs which are echoing. I mean there's there's bits of Leonard Bernstein in there, Elma Bernstein, you know, with that's kind of My uncle used to call him the wrong Bernstein. It's not true. But were those conscious references to the magnificent seven, the great escape, those

Kind of maybe Magnificent Seven somewhere. But it might have just been me doing action. That was a tough picture. It isn't like doing a Merrill Street movie where y she looks up at the sky and you just go boom. You know, ha whole notes like that, bum about three hundred dollars from six hundred dollars. You know, a locust chasing a fly is you know, it's goddamn hard. I mean I I come from pop music. Really hot.

Next question. Next question comes from Helen Lyon, who's an environmental graphic designer for museums and exhibitions, including the Bowie Show that started at the VNA in London, which is a tour in the world. Helen, your question for Randy Newman. As a child, we listened to Tom Lehrer on a loop cassette. His songs made us howl with laughter. But as an adult I saw clearly the irony in his songwriting. Sure. Is it easier to write an ironic song or a song about love?

It's easier to write a song about love. I mean there it is. If the music's good, you're sort of all right. You know, there's Thank you. That's the beginning of feels like mom. I'm sorry I didn't play more. And it's atypical for me. You know, it isn't what I usually write. But even people who like me very much, you know, who know everything, they prefer it when I play it straight.

I am less interested so I don't do it so much. I have to trick myself into writing something like that. That's a problem. That's a disorder that I must have or something.

Time for one last question from the audience. This one's from Will Pearson. He's eighteen years old. He sings and plays the piano. He loves playing Randy Newman's songs at his gigs. And you are an inspiration to Will. Where's Will? It's funny, uh after one of these Academy Award things you have to talk to the press and They asked me, what advice would you give a young man trying to break into the record person? I said it would be like breaking into a bank that's already been robbed.

Uh are you talking about practical things that you might do or how to handle writing and stuff like that? Yeah. As in practical, yeah. However I could make it, basically. You know, there are people who believe that nowadays if you have talent you'll be found. But that's not true. I don't know how to do it myself, but I would avail myself of the internet somehow. Put stuff out there. I'll try it too. Uh huh.

And in terms of writing I can give you advice. The best advice is to show up every day for it. If you're serious about writing, do it at a certain time and be there for it.'Cause something good may happen, you know, there's something that they fall out on you.

And Will's Will's eighteen years old. You started out at a similar age. I mean you're already you're already working professionally fifteen, sixteen. But if you were now at Will's age, eighteen years old, given how radically different the musical landscape is. I'd make it I think because I'd write for whomever there was. I can do that if I had to write songs for You'll be the gun for it. Video head I mean, that's not likely. But I mean I could do it. I don't think I might be an artist.

But I could write almost anything. I don't know what it would be like. Well you've been proving that for a very long time now. That's it for this edition of Master Tapes. We're gonna go out with some more music from Randy Newman. But for now my thanks to our audience here at the BBC Mayedovale Studios and our very special guest, Randy Newman. Thank you. Head to the master tapes pages of the Radio 4 website to download this and all the previous editions of the

Yes, including Laura Marlin, Tom Jones, David Crosby, Noel Gallagher, Paul McCartney and many more. There are full versions of all the songs played live here at Maidervale, including this one by Randy Newman. We're taking it right down. I think it's gonna rain today. Yeah, always. Thank you for listening to this edition of my own. Master Tapes. Presented by me, John Wilson. The producer was Paul Cobrag.

Head to the Master Tapes pages of the Radio 4 website where every episode is available for download, along with videos and photographs from the sessions, and of course, complete versions of the songs performed.