Did Randy Newman's Debut Album Influence Brian or Dennis?

[harrisonjon]

The album's arrangements* and plaintive vocals seem to have similarities to some of Brian's more laidback pieces after 1968. The vocals could be late Dennis or smoke-voice Brian.

*There is also a Smile feel to the harmonica, accordion, organ and strings, but Brian obviously got there first with that, so the influence is two ways, maybe? And I can also see a thread to Orange Crate Art by VDP.

[Pablo.]

Well, VDP was producing with Lenny Waronker, and the Wrecking Crew is there. Of course, a few years later Sail Away was a favourite of Brian and an influence on his mid-70s vocals.

[rn57]

Randy’s first album just might still be my favorite of all his records. I’m not sure it’s his favorite though- he’s sometimes expressed pretty ambivalent attitudes toward it in interviews, and understandably so. For one thing, he says he signed away his publishing on all the album’s songs. For another, when it was released in June 1968 with the original cover showing Randy standing in front of a blue sky and clouds, it bombed badly in sales terms, though the handful of reviews were mostly favorable.

Part of the problem seems to have been that Reprise tried to market it to easy listening stations. A lot of program directors, no doubt expecting something like Trini Lopez, must have been thrown by tracks like Beehive State and Davy The Fat Boy. And it sure didn’t fit in with what AM Pop or the handful of FM rock stations were playing. At the time there were very few singer songwriters as such and they all came from a folk background, and folk was one element that has rarely figured in Randy’s music.

It wasn’t until Randy adopted the stripped down approach on 12 Songs and his live album that he started to make commercial inroads. It was then that listeners could hear his Fats Domino and Ray Charles influenced piano and so connect him to rock and roll.

And so it was that the first album tended to be forgotten for a time. It went out of print toward the end of the 1970s, and wasn’t reissued till it came out on CD in the 90s.

Worth mentioning that Nick Drake was a big fan of that record.