Around the summer of 1966, a song on the radio recorded by Italian American pop crooner Julius La Rosa caught Bob Dylan’s ear: a forlorn, impressionistic ballad called “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today,” penned by a 22-year-old publishing company staff writer from Los Angeles named Randy Newman.

“Randy’s song was so mysterious,” Dylan recalled. “I never heard a song like that before; it was so cynical.” Newman’s own rendition later stood out to him for “the sadness in Randy’s voice. Sadness and cynicism, it’s a strange combination but Randy always manages to pull it off.”

Dylan’s testimonial is one of many in “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country: The Biography of Randy Newman,” by former Los Angeles Times pop critic Robert Hilburn (out Oct. 22).

“It’s an honor to have Dylan say something nice about me,” Newman said during a recent phone interview. Though he’s received plenty of accolades — including seven Grammys, three Emmys and two Oscars, as well as induction into the Rock & Roll and Songwriters Hall of Fame — Newman, now 80, admitted, “what I really wanted was to have the respect from fellow workers in the field. That Bob or Paul Simon, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Linda Ronstadt, that those people liked what I did mattered to me — maybe an inordinate amount.”

While Newman has never enjoyed the broad commercial success of his peers, his work has on occasion clicked with the culture. His somewhat controversial 1977 satire “Short People” was a bona fide hit that gave him his only gold album, “Little Criminals”; “I Love L.A.,” a wry celebration of his hometown from 1983, became an unlikely anthem for the city’s sports teams; the earnest “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” from Pixar’s 1995 movie “Toy Story,” soundtracked millions of childhoods.

In truth, far more people have heard the 20-plus film scores Newman has composed since the early ‘80s than any of his singer-songwriter records. “It’s sort of a funny hand to be dealt,” he said.

While Hilburn’s book functions as a conventional, often penetrating, biography, it’s “also a personal, critical argument on Randy’s behalf,” Hilburn said in an interview. “It’s fine to enjoy ‘You’ve Got a Friend in Me,’ but the greatness of Randy Newman, his real legacy, are all the brilliant songs he’s written about the shortcomings of the American character.”

Over the course of 11 solo albums released between 1968 and 2017, Newman has written memorably, movingly, comically and, at times, shockingly about the American experience. His version of history has often been told through a series of unreliable narrators, drawn in caricature: malignant racists, unrepentant greed merchants, jingoistic lunatics, and all manner of hucksters and con men. In 2024, it certainly feels as if America has become, in a word, Newmanesque.

“I was always interested in aberrant personalities,” Newman said. “Early on, I decided I wasn’t a good subject for my songs, and I’d rather write about those types of people instead. Maybe that’s why my records weren’t more successful. People generally want songs about ‘I’ and ‘Me’ and ‘You’ and ‘We.’ They want things that are immediate, and my songs aren’t that — my stuff is slippery.”

AT A TIME when Newman’s work feels more relevant than ever, he’s largely been absent. His most recent album came out in 2017, his last score in 2019, and since the COVID-19 pandemic he’s played just a handful of concerts. Mostly, Newman has been sidelined, dealing with major health issues.

“I broke my neck twice, unbelievably enough,” he explained. “I was chasing after a dog when I stepped in a hole. And broke it again with another fall.”

Newman, one of the most distinctive piano stylists in pop music, had to retrain himself to play the instrument during a long recovery. “I lost about 80% in my right hand, and about 40% in my left hand,” he said. “But I’ve got it all back pretty much now.”

The time away from the stage and the studio allowed him an opportunity to reflect for the biography. Hilburn — who’s previously written bios on Johnny Cash and Simon — said the book’s thesis crystallized on Jan. 6, 2021, as he watched the attacks on the U.S. Capitol. “Like millions of Americans, I wondered, how did we ever get here?” he said. “And the thought in my mind was that Randy Newman had been warning us about this for 50 years.”

While the book posits Newman as a writer of sociopolitical import, its emotional narrative is driven by the more personal aspects of his story: a complex family legacy, childhood struggles with strabismus (crossed eyes) and a lifelong tendency toward sadness and isolation. “Some of it was difficult to talk about,” Newman said. “But there’s nothing I was ashamed of particularly.”

Born in Los Angeles in 1943, Newman was heir to an accomplished Jewish showbiz family. His uncles Alfred, Lionel and Emil were top film composers. Newman’s own father, Irving, had become a successful doctor but wanted to be a songwriter. “He pushed Randy into music,” Hilburn said. “He literally pushed a piano into Randy’s room when he was 5 years old.”

Though Alfred Newman was a dominant force during Hollywood’s golden age — collecting nine Oscars — he seemed to a young Randy pathologically uncertain about his work. “He was the best conductor there ever was in America,” Newman said. “But he was always worried about what he did, even after he did it.”

Alfred’s daughter, Maria, sums up the family tsuris in the book: “The Newmans are a combination of gifted and insecure,” she said. “If Randy wasn’t so insecure, I wonder if his music would be so profound.”

Still, Newman, who studied music composition at UCLA, might not have had a pop career without Lenny Waronker, the son of Liberty Records co-founder Si Waronker. The two met as infants, and over a relationship that’s spanned nearly 80 years, Waronker has served as Newman’s friend, creative champion, A&R man, producer and record label head.

“At a very young age, I just knew,” Waronker said in an interview, noting Newman’s preternatural facility on the piano and knack for rearranging old songs. “There was something there, something so advanced about his musicality.”

Newman might have gone directly into the movies, but Waronker helped him land a job at Metric Music, the publishing arm of his father’s label. At the time, Newman’s models were the Brill Building teams, particularly Gerry Goffin and Carole King. “They were the best writers, and I was trying to write like that,” said Newman, who made his debut recording in 1962 with “Golden Gridiron Boy.”

As the ‘60s wore on, Newman kept plugging away, getting his songs recorded by established artists like Gene McDaniels, Frankie Laine and Bobby Darin, though none became hits: “Somehow, my stuff was always a little off.”

An unconventional number, “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” — with its stunning opening couplet, “Broken windows and empty hallways/A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray” — helped break him in 1966, when it was recorded in rapid succession by Julius La Rosa and Judy Collins, and soon after by Dusty Springfield and Rick Nelson.

Though it remains Newman’s most recorded song — covered by Nina Simone, Barbra Streisand and Peter Gabriel, to name a few — he was critical of its “maudlin” lyrics for years. “People would tell me how much they liked that song, and I’d say ‘It’s not one of my best,’” Newman said, laughing. “I eventually learned that if someone says they love something you’ve done, you shouldn’t tell ‘em they’re wrong.”

More artists recorded his songs, including Ella Fitzgerald, the Everly Brothers and Newman’s formative influence, Fats Domino. Harry Nilsson cut an entire album of Newman tracks; Three Dog Night took his “Mama Told Me Not to Come” to the top of the pop charts.

Still, Newman “was rarely satisfied with a producer or an artist doing one of his songs,” Waronker said. “I think his desire to become an artist partly came out of the frustration of wanting to have his songs done the way he heard them.”

The opportunity for a real solo career arrived in 1967, when Waronker went to work at Warner-Reprise, helped get Newman signed, and produced his self-titled debut. A richly orchestrated record — featuring story songs like “Davy the Fat Boy” and “So Long Dad” — “Randy Newman” was a critical hit but a commercial flop, selling less than 5,000 copies. A more rock-oriented follow-up, “12 Songs,” again generated raves but sold just as poorly. “Lenny,” a dejected Newman recalled telling Waronker in the book, “nobody cares.”

Waronker persisted in pushing his friend, and after Russ Titelman, a songwriter and former Phil Spector protégé, came on board as co-producer, Newman’s third album, “Randy Newman Live,” captured him in a concert setting, telling stories and playing solo piano renditions of his songs at the Bitter End in Manhattan.

“It was a perfect picture of who he was as an artist,” Titelman said. “Great vocals, unbelievable piano playing, tremendous songs — plus it had an audience who laughed at all his jokes. That became a springboard for what came next.”

Starting with “Sail Away” from 1972 — with its audacious title track, an advertising jingle for American slavery — Newman spent the next decade turning out a series of increasingly ambitious albums that took aim at knotty topics: race, religion, politics, sex and violence.

His barbed tales, delivered in his drawling deadpan voice, were wrapped in gorgeous arrangements that drew equally on New Orleans R&B, classical music and the Great American songbook. Still, Newman managed to bring an empathy and dignity to the marginalized, the outcast.

If the influence of Newman’s cutting character pieces can be felt anywhere in contemporary culture, it might be in a current wave of cringe comedy: Tim Robinson’s hit Netflix series “I Think You Should Leave,” the surrealist YouTube spoofs of Conner O’Malley and the various projects of Tim Heidecker. “I found a kindred spirit in Randy,” said Heidecker, an avowed Newman acolyte. “While Randy was satirically examining these characters on his records and songs,” he added, “it also feels like in some of the things he’s writing, he’s also investigating his own shortcomings, his own inadequacies and fears.”

Hilburn noted that his biggest challenge as a biographer was trying to pin down Newman in his songs, something the musician resisted. “A lot of that goes comes from his own childhood,” Hilburn said. “He got bullied in school. He had struggles with his father,” he added. “Randy didn’t ever want to be ever seen as a victim. He’d much rather talk about the songs and the music than whatever his own hurt was.”

EVENTUALLY, AND PERHAPS inevitably, Newman found himself pulled into the family business, beginning his film career in the early 1980s with an Oscar-nominated score to Milos Forman’s historical epic “Ragtime” and the evocative music for Robert Redford’s baseball fable “The Natural.”

In the mid-’90s Newman began a relationship with the fledgling animation company Pixar, writing the music for its box office hit “Toy Story.” He went on to work on its various franchises (“Monsters Inc.,” “Cars”), earning major paydays and a pair of Academy Awards to go along with his 22 nominations in the best original song and score categories.

As his film work flourished, Newman’s pop career simmered on the back burner; the gap between his albums stretched to a decade at a time. He signed to Nonesuch in the early 2000s and put out a few solo songbook albums before releasing a new collection of originals, “Harps and Angels” (2008), followed by “Dark Matter” in 2017.

In recent years, Newman’s self-critical stance about his work has softened. He seems willing — albeit grudgingly — to accept his legacy as “a unique 20th-century pop song maestro,” as Paul Simon described him in the book. Newman has even found himself listening to his old records. “I never used to look back, but I do now. And I’m proud of what I’ve done,” he said. “I mean, there’s a little tremble in my voice when I say that. I have to push through admitting I’m proud of anything.”

Newman said his only regret is that he didn’t make more records. But even amid his continued physical recovery — just last month he had surgery to repair a bad knee — he’s started writing again.

“I guess there’s always the possibility of making another record. And I really want to get back on the stage. Maybe work on a couple more movies, too,” Newman said, chuckling. “Those are the things I’d like to do before I take up the harp and head upstairs or grab a pitchfork and head down.”