Interviews

Published on August 3rd, 2021 | by Jimmy Star

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Randy Edelman – “Comin’ Out The Other Side” by Eileen Shapiro

Music royalty with a career challenging the longevity that rivals the Queen of England, composer, conductor, singer and celebrated piano phenomena Randy Edelman has long been given tribute as one of the most profound and recognizable film, television, and sports soundtrack architect on the planet. A hybrid fusion of Mozart and Bruce Springsteen, there seems to be a certain bedazzlement or wizardry connected to him and his music that leaves a trail of glitter behind never to be forgotten.

Raised in Teaneck New Jersey, Randy was born with the ability to hear music and transcribe it onto the piano. After a brief quarrel with fate where Randy was temporally thrust into the pursuit of pre-med, he moved into full-time piano and composition study at the Cincinnati Music Conservatory where he was then able to follow his unquestionable destiny. He eventually procured an arranging assignment at James Brown’s King Records. In 1970 Randy relocated to New York to work as a staff writer at CBS Records while simultaneously playing piano in Broadway pit orchestras.

Like a seductive alchemist Randy began to write and record his own albums transforming the world’s anguish into a narrative of truth and granting him a thriving audience in the UK and a television spot on “Top of the Pops.” After enjoying the triumph of the British collective effervescence at the London Palladium and Drury Lane Theatre’s, Randy began to pursue a new interest in LA where he became interested in creating the life, blood and essence of the movies through music, making the plainest faces come alive with promise.

Randy is responsible for creating an endless cascade of many of the world’s most known soundtracks including: “Ghostbusters 2” “27 Dresses”, “While You Were Sleeping”,  “The Last of the Mohicans”, “ Kindergarten Cop”, “Dragonheart”, “XXX”, “Twins”, “My Cousin Vinny”, “The Mask”, “Beethoven”, “ Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story”, “Anaconda”, “Mummy 3”, “Gettysburg”, “Billy Madison”, “Leap Year”, “ The Whole Nine Yards”, “EdTV”, “Daylight” and an endless array of others. Some of the Television shows and series he scored include: “MacGyver”, “Mr. Sunshine”, “Backdraft 2” for Netflix, and “Citizen X” for HBO. These credits only touch the surface of his accomplishments. He has also created the music for “Dare Mighty Things” for NASA’s final Shuttle launch, “Wimbledon, Grand Slam Tennis Series” for ESPN, “ESPN Sports Century”, and even the NBC “on air” Olympic Theme, of which he has celebrated over 20 years of Olympic themed glory keeping the musical flame alive.

Aside from crafting and orchestrating the scores that gave life to the films, a myriad of artists have covered and recorded Randy’s original songs from his solo albums. Included in that catalog is Barry Manilow, “Weekend in New England”, The Carpenters, “I Cant Make Music”, and Nelly’s, “My Place”, reaching number 1 on the Billboard hip hop charts. Others include Willie Nelson, “Down in the Everglades, “Patti LaBelle, “Isn’t it a Shame”, “Olivia Newton John, “If Love is Real”, Blood, Sweat & Tears, “Blue Street”, Royal Philharmonic, “Grey”, and a list that continues endlessly. Randy has also opened live in breathtaking arenas for icons such as Frank Zappa, and The Carpenters.

Randy has also received some of the most prestigious awards including BMI Top Grossing Film Awards, BMI’s highest honor, the Richard Kirk Award for Outstanding Career Achievement, the Lifetime Achievement Award in Film Scoring and Composition, the Best Accolade from the Los Angeles Film Awards, an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts and an Emmy for the close of the Olympic Broadcast.

Like a musical Chameleon Randy continues to compose and record lighting up the world like fireworks plunging into the night sky and shattering the darkness. The grand composer of modern and future times has just released his highly anticipated anthemic song of hope and inspiration titled “Comin’ Out the Other Side.” The single is now available worldwide via Soho Records. The song promotes an epidemic of joy and happiness as a grand finale to a time best forgotten….

He continues to work on the score for his musical, “Short Cut,” telling of the construction of the Panama Canal.

Most recently Sony Masterworks is releasing Randy Edelman’s orchestral score to “Ghostbusters 2” in all formats….

How did you come to write “Comin’ Out The Other Side?”

I woke up during the night and I started thinking about the fact that when they say it’s ok it would be great to get out of the house ….and that’s how it started. Then I wrote the lyrics to it. It’s about how much fun it’s going to be when we’re all let out.

How did Covid affect your career if it did at all. Some artists say it was the most creative time for them ever….

It didn’t really affect me because whatever it is that I was doing I would’ve been doing anyway. If I say I’ve been working on my musicals, I’m working on that. They asked me to put together many years later my old score from Ghostbusters 2. I wrote some songs, I’m scoring a movie of which I don’t like to talk about any of my scores before they come out. I wasn’t particularly affected, but if you’re talking creative wise for me that really wasn’t the case. I wasn’t going to London to write the scores because I wasn’t allowed to, but creatively I was still moving on with whatever I was doing. Whatever I was doing I could be right here.

You’ve been in the music business a long time and it’s changed considerably….

I was a classical musician when I was a kid. I was a musician when I was very young and I started out on Broadway and conducted for well-known figures. I started writing songs because I was out on the road and I had nothing to do during the day. The music business changed because people selling records were not music publishers going around looking for songs. 90% of the records were from artists like the Beatles, James Taylor, Bob Dylan or Elton John. But this changed and really the most important recording artists wrote their own stuff. If you wanted to write songs, you needed to have a big market to go to. So, people like me who could barely carry a tune were forced to do their own thing because it was hard to get songs recorded. I was never going to be a songwriter or an artist or anything like that. I had no idea that it would go on for such a long time. I was basically a serious-minded composer, arranger and conductor. But I was very young, and I always loved pop music. Then along the way I started doing other things that I was musically interested in. I fell into the songwriter/artist thing even though I was classically trained and already working with Dionne Warwick and on Broadway. I had already started working but I was still a kid. When I went to Las Vegas, you were supposed to be 21 in order to conduct and I had to get special permission. So, I fell into the singer songwriter thing because at the time that’s what was happening. When I signed my first record contract, I figured I’d probably never be doing that again. But I was an odd case. Even if I didn’t have hits people recorded my songs. Then I went to England and all of a sudden I had these very big hit singles. So, I became a different animal over there. I continued this thing until eight albums later and nobody gets to do eight albums. Nobody gets to do that in the United States and well I hold the record. I was an opening act and doing concerts. But in the meantime, I was always dabbling because I was always interested in other musical ventures before the change happened when I started scoring films.

Randy have you had your ultimate stage fantasy?

I did many times. For instance, when I did my first album at the time if you were a songwriter you had to see who was recording records, outside material. There were a couple of people and one of them was The Carpenters. So guess what?  They heard my album and not only recorded my stuff but took me out as they’re opening act and we’re talking about places like Madison Square Garden. That was my first concert. So suddenly someone who had been singing in the shower becomes the opening act for The Carpenters. There’s an experience right there, I mean holy shit that’s like a fantasy. I’ve had all kinds of things like that happen to me as far as conducting orchestras, The London Symphony, and The New York Philharmonic. The Carpenters were kids like myself. They were innocent even though they were traveling in their own private jet. It was only the pilot, me and them. The rest of the people were in another jet. I couldn’t believe that this was happening. I was playing the only 10 songs I knew in front of stadiums and universities.

We did the first three concerts and then I got a call. We were down south and I get a call in the afternoon while I was still kind of freaked out about the whole thing. I was informed that my next concert was a week from that day. They informed me that they had someone else who wanted me to open for them….Guess who it was?  Frank Zappa! Now how could you go from the whitest of white innocence of The Carpenters to Frank Zappa? It was at a place called the Phoenix Celebrity Theater that had a revolving stage. For the first concert I went out there and it’s surrounded by a completely different audience than The Carpenters. I walk out and people are screaming “get off the stage.” I sat down at the piano and I’m surrounded by these huge speakers and all this equipment and I start my “act.” It was pretty noisy in there and people weren’t exactly listening. I was looking at my watch because I had 45 minutes. Well I didn’t know that the stage was revolving because I never looked up. It was revolving so slow that you literally couldn’t feel anything moving. I was at the piano trying to get through the fucking thing. When I got done with the show I stood up and turned around and I went to walk off through the backstage the way I walked on. But guess what, the piano wasn’t there. It was somewhere else. I walked off and all of a sudden I’m looking for the place but there was no place. The audience knew it, they could tell what had happened. So I jumped off the revolving stage into the aisle and I went and got a hotdog. Everybody was screaming and laughing….

What a great story.

I have a million stories about the films with people like Ron Howard, Alan Parker, Michael Mann and Rob Cohen. The list goes on for all the different kinds of films. It was a while though before I started doing films like Kindergarten Cop, Twins, and that kind of stuff. Luckily, I look younger than my age so when I started doing films I was like the new kid on the block. People on the record side of it knew me but not film directors. So it’s been interesting. But it’s all related to writing music. That’s what I love to do since I was a kid and that’s my story.

Download  “Comin’ Out The Other Side” by Randy Edelman on iTunes here:

https://music.apple.com/us/album/comin-out-the-other-side-single/1572826946

Stream “Comin’ Out The Other Side” by Randy Edelman on Spotify here:

https://open.spotify.com/album/0aT1lsKdCcbUKuyfQrI1eh?si=7KWeRl3STiChWQtYV-wyog&dl_branch=1

The official website for Randy Edelman may be found at https://www.RandyEdelman.com

Photo Credits: Billy Hess


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