Randy Newman’s iconic ‘I Love L.A.’ opened the Grammys. Here’s how the performance came together
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The last three and a half weeks have convinced Griffin Goldsmith that he might, as he puts it, be “living in a simulation.”
On Jan. 8, the drummer of the rootsy Los Angeles rock band Dawes lost his Altadena home in the devastating Eaton fire. On Jan. 25, Goldsmith’s wife gave birth to the couple’s first child, who made his appearance a month ahead of schedule. Last week, Dawes — which also includes Goldsmith’s older brother, Taylor Goldsmith, on vocals and guitar — performed as part of the all-star FireAid benefit concert at Inglewood’s Kia Forum.
And to cap it off? Dawes opened Sunday night’s Grammy Awards ceremony with a rowdy rendition of Randy Newman’s classic “I Love L.A.” that featured Sheryl Crow, Brad Paisley, John Legend, Brittany Howard and St. Vincent.
“It’s been a pretty historically unlucky run,” Griffin Goldsmith, whose parents’ home was also destroyed, said with a little laugh the day before the Grammys. “On the other hand, the highs have been so high that it’s just like: This is unreality.”
The 81-year-old songwriter and composer is the subject of a new biography by former Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn.
To hear how the Grammys moment happened, The Times spoke with the Goldsmiths and Newman and with Ben Winston, one of the executive producers of the Grammys telecast, who acknowledged that he and his team spent “a long time” debating what the show’s opening number should be given the widespread destruction caused by the fires.
“It was important for us to find the right tone,” Winston said.
Released in 1983, “I Love L.A.” grew out of Don Henley’s suggestion to Newman — a lifelong Angeleno who’d established himself in the ’70s with a series of albums beloved by pop connoisseurs — that he write a song about his complicated hometown. And indeed it’s hardly as straightforward as its title might imply.
“A key change and an interlude after the first chorus, the solo introducing a new progression, an iconic intro riff that never returns,” Taylor Goldsmith said with admiration of the tune, which Newman cut in the studio with members of the band Toto and which features backing vocals by Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac. “This song breaks so many pop-songwriting rules and yet achieves that status of everyone knowing it without even knowing they know it.”
Lyrically, too, “I Love L.A.” embodies Newman’s instincts as one of pop’s great cultural satirists. “Look at that mountain / Look at those trees,” he sings in the original recording as though he’s designing a tourism pamphlet. And then: “Look at that bum over there, man / He’s down on his knees.”
Ahead of Sunday’s 67th Grammys, here’s a ranked list of all 66 songs that have won record of the year since the Recording Academy’s first ceremony in 1959.
“I think if you’re singing the song, riding with a redhead in the car, it just feels good,” Newman said, paraphrasing his lyric about “rolling down Imperial Highway with a big nasty redhead at my side.” “And if the guy takes a swipe at certain things,” Newman added of his narrator, “that’s just part of being ignorantly aggressive, which is what he is.”
Despite its sophistication — or perhaps because of it? — “I Love L.A.” has been adopted as a victory anthem by many of the city’s pro sports teams, including the Lakers and the Dodgers, both of whom blast the tune every time they win a home game.
Said Griffin Goldsmith: “I grew up a Randy Newman addict — it’s some of the most formative music of my life. But I’m also a massive Lakers and Dodgers fan. I think I went to eight Dodgers games last year. So you hear it after we win and it’s like, ‘F— yeah!’”
Born and raised in Malibu, the Goldsmith brothers formed Dawes not long after they graduated from high school. The band released its debut album in 2009 and soon was touring and recording with the likes of Jackson Browne, John Fogerty and Robbie Robertson.
Griffin and his wife, Kit Goldsmith, moved to Altadena around 2017 — “It’s paradise,” he said — and eventually convinced Griffin’s parents and Taylor (who’s married to the actor and singer Mandy Moore) to follow them to the neighborhood nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Taylor’s home studio burned down in the Eaton fire; together the brothers estimate they lost two decades’ worth of musical gear.
In mid-January, Taylor and Griffin performed a stripped-down rendition of Dawes’ song “Time Spent in Los Angeles” on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show as a fundraiser for the Recording Academy’s MusiCares organization, which says it’s distributed north of $4 million to more than 2,000 music professionals affected by the fires.
“I read about what had happened to Dawes, and I listened to some of their albums and found their story so moving,” said Winston, who also received a recommendation from his friend Brandi Carlile. “They lost so much in the fires yet they’re still doing so much for their community. They really epitomize the spirit that we felt was rising in L.A.,” Winston added. “Who better to take one of the most prestigious slots in all of music right now?” (In recent years, the Grammys opener has been performed by the likes of Dua Lipa, Bad Bunny, Bruno Mars and Harry Styles.)
Griffin said Dawes rehearsed the number Friday with the other musicians — Paisley has become a close friend to the brothers in recent years — and “after a few hours, we sounded like a band.”
At the producers’ request, Griffin said, the band tweaked a few of Newman’s lyrics — the line about the bum, for instance, which (as Newman has always known about his work) might be interpreted with less subtlety than he intended. “We’re not here to offend anyone,” the drummer said, though he did initially push back on one proposed change.
In Newman’s recording, he sings, “Santa Ana winds blowing hot from the north / And we were born to ride,” which Griffin said “is exactly what I wanted to hear when I lost my home. I had two days of feeling lost, and then I woke up and was like, You know what? I have a family to feed, and I need to house them. I’m gonna pick up the baton and keep going.”
The Recording Academy says it’s distributed more than $4 million to musicians affected by the fires. Sunday’s Grammys show is meant to raise more.
Winston and his team wanted to replace “We were born to ride” with “We will take in stride” — “which is very poignant,” Griffin said. “But I’m pretty sure I was the only one on the phone call with them who had lost his home. I was like, ‘I don’t want to pull a trump card here, but…’” He laughed. “I guess the new lyric accomplishes the same thing, but I think ‘born to ride’ has a cool colloquial aspect. It’s such a Newman-ism.”
Newman himself had no problem with the changes. “They were fine,” he said. “I mean, I’ve seen some awful ones.”
At any rate, the important thing in his view was doing what he could to help fire victims. (After the Grammys, Dawes released a studio version of its “I Love L.A.” with proceeds earmarked for MusiCares.) Reached at his home in Pacific Palisades just days after returning from a lengthy evacuation, Newman, 81, said the fires’ impact was unprecedented.
“The sight of some of this stuff is gonna stick with people for a lot of years — kids who saw neighborhoods decimated,” he said. “I’ve lived in the Palisades all my life basically. Got married and was in the Valley for a few years till I could fight my way back. I still remember the Bel Air fire [of 1961], and it was nothing like this. It’s a big American disaster.”
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Newman’s mid-’70s song “Louisiana 1927” — about a Southern city being washed away — became something of an anthem among storm survivors in New Orleans.
“Now I’ve got a song for this too,” he said.
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