{"id":832,"date":"2016-08-29T03:00:11","date_gmt":"2016-08-29T07:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/?p=832"},"modified":"2016-11-08T23:59:50","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T04:59:50","slug":"perfect-menage-randy-newmans-pretty-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/2016\/08\/29\/perfect-menage-randy-newmans-pretty-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"Perfect Menace: Randy Newman&#8217;s &#8220;Pretty Boy&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was thirty-seven years ago this August that Randy Newman released his sixth studio album, <em>Born Again<\/em>. It\u2019s an underrated album, as are most of Newman\u2019s studio albums in terms of mainstream recognition. It\u2019s full of wry and sarcastic tunes throwing haymakers at the facile, the ignorant, and the depraved. He addresses attitudes toward masculinity (\u201cHalf A Man\u201d), upper class success (\u201cMr. Sheep\u201d), and greed (\u201cIt\u2019s Money That I Love\u201d). He tells peculiar tales of an ELO-like band (\u201cThe Story of a Rock and Roll Band\u201d) and perfect marriage gone wrong (\u201cThey Just Got Married\u201d), the latter with a startling and cruel punchline. It was his sense of humor as much as anything that doomed Newman on <em>Born Again<\/em>, which fizzled on the charts. Jeff Giles explored that in a <a href=\"http:\/\/<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/736CcdvsR0g\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>&#8221; target=&#8221;_blank&#8221;>fantastic article for <em>Ultimate Classic Rock<\/em> last year<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>There is one song in particular that stood out to me \u2013 \u201cPretty Boy.\u201d I only found the album a couple of years ago after having listened obsessively to Sail Away for several years. I\u2019ve always enjoyed Newman\u2019s sense of humor and his ability to tell a vivid short story in three or four minutes. The first time I heard \u201cPretty Boy,\u201d I must have hit repeat dozen times. It\u2019s a thrilling and unsettling piece of songwriting.<br \/>\nThere is more menace in \u201cPretty Boy\u201d than in ninety percent of the songs I hear across however many genres packed with volume and swagger, engineered to intimidate philosophically or sonically. <\/p>\n<p>Newman\u2019s lyrics are fantastic, but I would urge you not to read them before you listen. It&#8217;ll lose a bit of its impact. In fact, listen to it now before you read this rest of what I have to say about it. I don\u2019t want to ruin it for you. Find a place where you can pay attention to the words.  <\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gR3ALzcWZiM\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\u201cPretty Boy\u201d is understated, musically. Newman doesn&#8217;t shout. You don&#8217;t see the knife, but you know it&#8217;s there, and you know it&#8217;s about to be revealed. It&#8217;s a trick directors use frequently, implying the violence and letting your imagination fill in whatever frightens you most. Everything happens off-screen. Think of the &#8220;Ear Scene&#8221; in <em>Reservoir Dogs<\/em>, when the camera pulls away to the shot of the warehouse door, and Michael Madsen steps outside into the silence and casually retrieves a gas can from the trunk of his car, and how much scarier that is than what happens once he&#8217;s back inside. That&#8217;s the moment this song captures. Masterfully. It&#8217;s a four-minute Scorsese film.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/736CcdvsR0g\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>At the time, that approach was seen as a drawback to some critics. Stephen Holden <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/albumreviews\/born-again-19791004\" target=\"_blank\">didn\u2019t pan the album outright in <em>Rolling Stone<\/em><\/a>, but he wasn\u2019t glowing in his interpretation, either, especially concerning \u201cPretty Boy.\u201d \u201cBorn Again&#8217;s dramatic setups ring as false as its moralism,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe almost impenetrable \u2018Pretty Boy\u2019 suggests an incipient street fight, but the song ends before the action starts.\u201d I find it satisfying, though, that Holden reviews Born Again in tandem with the soundtrack for Stephen Sondheim\u2019s Sweeny Todd. <\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s strange to me about that is how vivid the song was for me the first time I heard it, and how the view expanded the more I listened. \u201cHave we got a tough guy here?\u201d Newman sings over spare, droning piano. \u201cHave we got a tough guy from the streets? Looks just like that dancing wop in those movies that we seen.\u201d No way to misinterpret this character\u2019s intentions. He is contemptuous and violent. Whatever follows those words, blood will be involved. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n<em>With the cute little chicken chit boots on, his cute little chicken shit hat.<br \/>\nHis cute little chicken shit girlfriend riding along in back<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now we\u2019ve got a complete image. A wannabe tough guy behind the wheel of his car has the bad luck to run into some actual tough guys. Newman doesn\u2019t mention that the wannabe has a friend riding shotgun. But for some reason, the girlfriend is riding in the back. What that tells me is that the wannabe knew they were about to drive through a neighborhood and didn\u2019t want his girlfriend to be seen. That\u2019s failed now. The toughs have seen her, and if they could have escaped, there wouldn\u2019t have been a second verse. Now they\u2019re trapped. Now they have to wait for whatever\u2019s coming.   <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>What&#8217;s been happening with you boys?<br \/>\nAre you having a nice time on your trip?<br \/>\nAll the way from Jersey City, you look pretty as a picture<br \/>\nPlease don&#8217;t hurt no one tonight<br \/>\nPlease don&#8217;t break no woman&#8217;s heart<br \/>\nHow &#8217;bout it, you little prick?<br \/>\nHow &#8217;bout it?<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cBoys\u201d makes me wonder if there\u2019s another wannabe in the car, but tough guy never uses a plural again. But he has size up Pretty Boy perfectly. Knows his type, knows where he\u2019s from, knows his bravado, which is being severely tested, if it hasn\u2019t evaporated already. And there\u2019s a shift in attitude in the last part of the verse, from mocking to outright hostility, which leads to the bridge. Newman plods heavily on the piano as cello\u2019s take up the dramatic them. A high-pitched tone like an emergency broadcast test, or like an oncoming aneurism, swells in the background until it\u2019s popped with blasts of synth. When the volume settles back down, Newman\u2019s voice is calm again. <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Hope we&#8217;re gonna get the chance to show you &#8217;round<br \/>\nHope we&#8217;re gonna get the chance to show you &#8217;round<br \/>\nTalk tough to me, Pretty Boy<br \/>\nTell us all about the mean streets of home<br \/>\nTalk tough to me<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The tough guy is done talking, and that\u2019s where the song ends. As terrifying as his talking might have been, it\u2019s when he stops that the real terror starts. And just like in Reservoir Dogs, you get to use your imagination to fill in the rest. And Newman has led you to a point where you can only imagine the worst, and that scene, the one he didn\u2019t write, will be the most frightening, because it will be personal. It will be the listener\u2019s creation, whatever they find the most terrifying. Most probably, that\u2019s not going to end with the tough guy putting Pretty Boy in a headlock, giving him a loving noogie, and saying, \u201cJust kidding! Whoooeee! You should\u2019ve seen your face, man. Here\u2019s a greeting card with some glitter in it. We all signed it. My regards to Jersey!\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Nope. Talking is done. Time for action. Time for blood. <\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was thirty-seven years ago this August that Randy Newman released his sixth studio album, Born Again. It\u2019s an underrated album, as are&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[550,557,558,552,549,551,553,554,555,556],"class_list":["post-832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","category-perfect","tag-born-again","tag-jeff-giles","tag-martin-scorsese","tag-michael-madsen","tag-randy-newman","tag-rervoir-dogs","tag-rolling-stone","tag-stephen-sondheim","tag-sweeny-todd","tag-ultimate-classic-rock"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Newman_BornAgain.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7lGwW-dq","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1164,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions\/1164"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickzaino.com\/departmentoftangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}