THE DEVIL YOU KNOW

By JAY COCKS

"Once a man's 30, he's already old," Goethe observed in Faust. "He is indeed as good as dead. It's best to kill him right away."

Randy Newman, 51, has long since trumped Goethe by writing and performing some of the best songs in contemporary American pop: Sail Away, Take Me Back, Dixie Flyer, Rednecks, Mr. President (Have Pity on the Working Man), Rollin', I Think It's Going to Rain Today. Now he's trying to beat one of the world's best poets at his own game by writing a contemporary Faust as a ferocious musical Valentine to temptation, damnation, redemption and the beguiling persistence of evil. It is classic pop and prime Newman. The tunes are jaundiced, lyrical and funny; the libretto (by Newman, with a tip of the hat to Johann Wolfgang) winningly softhearted and hardheaded where it counts. The composer has also exercised his artistic prerogative by giving himself the best part. He plays the devil.

Randy Newman's Faust (Reprise), which just arrived in record stores, is a worthy thematic successor to such wonderful Newman albums as Good Old Boys and Land of Dreams, but this time it comes bundled as part of a larger dream. A stage version has just opened at California's La Jolla Playhouse for a six-week engagement, and will be followed--if the good Lord is rather less capricious than Newman portrays him in Faust--by a Broadway run, perhaps even as early as the late fall. The theatrical form seems to suit him perfectly, both by training (he has released 17 film sound-track albums) and by birth (his uncles Alfred and Lionel were two respected musical figures of the Hollywood-studio Golden Age). Newman remains braced by anticipation, but wary. "I believe," he comments, "I'm too young to handle success."

Faust is fueled by soaring ballads (Feels Like Home), Newman's characteristic brand of lopsided New Orleans blues (I Gotta Be Your Man), some certifiable rock-'n'-roll earthshakers (The Man), a little gospel, a brush of soul, and an overall acid bath of Newman's corrosive wit. It's music of an ambition and quality not often heard outside the work of Stephen Sondheim (whom Newman reveres), and it is performed on the album with tremendous brio by James Taylor, who sports a no-sweat self-mocking cool as God; Linda Ronstadt as the tremulous, winsome Margaret; Bonnie Raitt as Martha, a piece of trade tough enough to wring out the devil's heart; and Don Henley as Faust, reborn here as a guitar-strumming freshman at Notre Dame who's slacker enough to sign Satan's contract for his soul without great thought, or even a quick read through. Even the devil thinks Faust is lame.

Before anyone picks up the phone to call the local Ticketron, it should be pointed out that these rock worthies appear only on the album, not in the stage production. Nevertheless, Newman's work is savory enough on its own to guarantee a fair return under any auspices, except, perhaps, Carol Channing's. Bilious, outrageous and full of flinty, funny challenge, Faust has undergone sardonic transformation from what the author calls Goethe's "big brain thing" into a fleet Newmanesque parable of eliding destinies and colliding cultures. It is also guaranteed to contradict any lingering impression that, as Newman notes, "people think I've disappeared." But, he adds quickly, "it's not like I'm selling a million records and the public is begging for the album and there are pseudo intellectuals out there crying for Newman."

Yet it does seem as if he's been away a long time, partly because he laid low after some personal trials (the loss of his parents, a tough divorce) and partly because he's been spending a lot of time on the sound stage. Newman has always been a cool hand with those film sound tracks (Ragtime, The Natural, Maverick, Disney's upcoming animated feature Toy Story), but he's best taken neat, uncut and unfettered by any vision but his own. On Faust his lyrics are like tasers, crackling out jolts to anyone who gets too close. They are salutary shocks to the system, delivered while he tussles with a new form that has its own social and aesthetic challenges.

Like working with the actors in preparation for Faust's stage debut. "I always had a contempt for actors," says Newman, who once vexed a substantial portion of the population with a tune called Short People. "They are small people with big heads. I couldn't speak the language. I'd say, 'Go a little slower,' and it was like I hit 'em in the head with an ax. It wasn't like talking to an oboe player. [But] the actors bring things that're better than what's on the page." Whatever his incidental struggles, what's on the page has inspired a signal Newman album. That's a fair Faustian bargain. This is one devil who's earned his due.

--With reporting by Patrick Cole/Los Angeles

With reporting by Patrick Cole/Los Angeles