The final three and a half weeks have satisfied Griffin Goldsmith that he would possibly, as he places it, be “living in a simulation.”
On Jan. 8, the drummer of the rootsy Los Angeles rock band Dawes misplaced his Altadena residence within the devastating Eaton fireplace. On Jan. 25, Goldsmith’s spouse gave delivery to the couple’s first little one, who made his look a month forward of schedule. Final week, Dawes — which additionally contains Goldsmith’s older brother, Taylor Goldsmith, on vocals and guitar — carried out as a part of the all-star FireAid profit live performance at Inglewood’s Kia Discussion board.
And to cap it off? Dawes opened Sunday night time’s Grammy Awards ceremony with a rowdy rendition of Randy Newman’s basic “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 mother and father’ residence was additionally destroyed, mentioned with a bit giggle the day earlier than the Grammys. “On the other hand, the highs have been so high that it’s just like: This is unreality.”
To listen to how the Grammys second occurred, The Occasions spoke with the Goldsmiths and Newman and with Ben Winston, one of many government producers of the Grammys telecast, who acknowledged that he and his crew spent “a long time” debating what the present’s opening quantity needs to be given the widespread destruction attributable to the fires.
“It was important for us to find the right tone,” Winston mentioned.
Launched in 1983, “I Love L.A.” grew out of Don Henley’s suggestion to Newman — a lifelong Angeleno who’d established himself within the ’70s with a sequence of albums beloved by pop connoisseurs — that he write a music about his sophisticated hometown. And certainly it’s hardly as simple as its title would possibly indicate.
“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 mentioned with admiration of the tune, which Newman reduce within the studio with members of the band Toto and which options 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 considered one of pop’s nice cultural satirists. “Look at that mountain / Look at those trees,” he sings within the unique recording as if he’s designing a tourism pamphlet. After which: “Look at that bum over there, man / He’s down on his knees.”
“I think if you’re singing the song, riding with a redhead in the car, it just feels good,” Newman mentioned, 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 provides of his narrator, “that’s just part of being ignorantly aggressive, which is what he is.”
Regardless of its sophistication — or maybe due to it? — “I Love L.A.” has been adopted as a victory anthem by most of the metropolis’s professional sports activities groups, together with the Lakers and the Dodgers, each of whom blast the tune each time they win a house recreation.
Says 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 fashioned Dawes not lengthy after they graduated from highschool. The band launched its debut album in 2009 and shortly was touring and recording with the likes of Jackson Browne, John Fogerty and Robbie Robertson.
Griffin and his spouse, Equipment Goldsmith, moved to Altadena round 2017 — “It’s paradise,” he mentioned — and ultimately satisfied Griffin’s mother and father and Taylor (who’s married to the actor and singer Mandy Moore) to observe them to the neighborhood nestled within the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Taylor’s residence studio burned down within the Eaton fireplace; collectively the brothers estimate they misplaced 20 years’ price of musical gear.
In mid-January, Taylor and Griffin carried out a stripped-down rendition of Dawes’ music “Time Spent in Los Angeles” on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night present as a fundraiser for the Recording Academy’s MusiCares group, which says it’s distributed north of $4 million to greater 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,” mentioned Winston, who additionally obtained a advice from his buddy 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?” (Lately, the Grammys opener has been carried out by the likes of Dua Lipa, Dangerous Bunny, Bruno Mars and Harry Types.)
Griffin mentioned Dawes rehearsed the quantity Friday with the opposite musicians — Paisley has turn out to be a detailed buddy to the brothers in recent times — and “after a few hours, we sounded like a band.”
On the producers’ request, Griffin mentioned, the band tweaked a couple of of Newman’s lyrics — the road in regards to the bum, for example, which (as Newman has at all times identified about his work) is perhaps interpreted with much less subtlety than he supposed. “We’re not here to offend anyone,” the drummer mentioned, although he did initially push again 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 mentioned “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.”
Winston and his crew wished to interchange “We were born to ride” with “We will take in stride” — “which is very poignant,” Griffin mentioned. “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 drawback with the modifications. “They were fine,” he mentioned. “I mean, I’ve seen some awful ones.”
At any fee, the essential factor in his view was doing what he might to assist fireplace victims. Reached at his residence in Pacific Palisades simply days after coming back from a prolonged evacuation, Newman, 81, known as the affect unprecedented.
“The sight of some of this stuff is gonna stick with people for a lot of years — kids who saw neighborhoods decimated. 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.”
Within the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Newman’s mid-’70s music “Louisiana 1927” — a couple of Southern metropolis being washed away — turned one thing of an anthem amongst storm survivors in New Orleans.
“Now I’ve got a song for this too,” he mentioned.
