WILLISEEYOUTCfNIGHTONADOWNTOWNTRAINEVERYNIGHTISJUSTTHESAMEYOULEAVEMELONELYNOW TOM WAITS BY ROB BOWMAN § IS THE CASE Lord Buckley, and Charles Bukowski; the pri­ with a select few mal rock & roll crunch of the Rolling Stones; genre-defining the German cabaret stylings of Kurt artists such as Weill; the postwar, alternate world of invented Miles Davis, Bob instruments and rugged individualism o f avant- Dylan, and Joni garde composer Harry Partch; the proto-metal MitcheH,Tom Writs, blues of 1950s and 1960s Howlin’ Wolf and over the course of his nearly forty-year their extension into the w orld o f Captain B eef- career, has operated under the maxim “He heart’s late-i96os avant-rock; the archaic for­ not busy being born is busy dying.” Refus­ malism o f 19th-century parlor ballads; Dylan’s ing to stay still and rest on his laurels, Waits early- and mid-sixties transformation of the has continuously sought new influences, possibilities of language in the worlds of both dramatically reinventing himself and his art folk and rock; the elegance of pre-war Irving along the way. In Berlin, Cole Porter, the process, he has WAITS SEEM S and Hoagy Carmichael; forged a highly the sophistication of original, personal, TO HAVE NO postwar Frank Sinatra; and idiosyncratic LIMITS TO HIS and, more recently, the musical lexicon, bone-crushing grooves resulting in one of IMAGINATION of 1980s and 1990s the most distinc­ funk and hip-hop. In­ tive, rich, and diverse bodies of recorded deed, the art of Tom Waits has altogether tran­ work in American popular music history. scended time and, to some degree, place. It is commonplace to refer to singu­ Waits was born in 1949 in Pomona, Cali­ larly original artists as being ahead of their fornia, and came of age in the San Diego area. time. Waits, though, has never been of las He began his performing career at San Diego’s time, ahead o f his time, or, for that matter, Heritage club and the Troubadour in Los An­ locked into any particular time. An out­ geles. It was at the latter, in June 1971, that sider artist before the term was in com­ Frank Zappa compatriot Herb Cohen first mon use, W its has been enamored, at var­ heard Waits and signed him to a management ious points in his career, with the cool of and publishing contract. A year later, at the 1940s and 1950s jazz; the 1950s and 1960s same club, David Geffen was similarly struck word-jazz and poetry of such Beat and by the young singer-songwriter’s" facility with Beat-influenced writers as Jack Kerouac, words and melody: Waits’s first album for MONJnHNOlïKHAVn-nOJl-ÎMVSÏHIlSnfSMHOINlïïïAÏNIVÏlNAlOINMOaVNOiHOINOiaOjtïHS-ITim Asylum, 1973’s Closing Time, proved to be an anomaly, containing also finely honed his shtick: billowing clouds of smoke emanat­ twelve rather mainstream examples of early-seventies southern ing from his ever-present cigarette, a beret or a porkpie hat slung California singer-songwriter soft rock. One song in particular, “O f low over his face, an oversize suit, and a loose-limbed, twitching, 55,” caught the Zeitgeist of the time and place so perfectly that the mannered-yet-mesmerizing visual style. Eagles chose to cover it for their third album, On the Border. The apotheosis of the first part of Waits’s career was reached By his sophomore album, The H eart o f Saturday Night, the in­ in 1980 with the stunning H eartattacf and Vine. On the title track fluence ofJack Kerouac and Steve Allens and on “Downtown,” his voice had become 1959 LP, Poetry for the Beat Generation, nearly corrosive in its intensity. Already a was evident as Waits began to re-envision masterful vocalist capable of nuanced ap­ himself as a neo-beatnik jazz hipster. With proaches to dynamics, percussive accents, a layer o f rasp now overlaid on his natural and timbre, Waits had now added an idio­ voice, the influence of R & B artists such as syncratic approach to enunciation involv­ Ray Charles and Dr. John was also mani­ ing popping consonants, otherworldly fest. The album is notable for the inclu­ vowel sounds, elided syllables, and inor­ sion of “Diamonds on My Windshield,” dinate amounts of sibitan.ee, breath, and the first recorded example of Waits recit­ spit to his arsenal of tricks. On “ "Hi the ing poetry over a jazz backing. His 1975 Money Runs Out,” there was, for the first live recording, Nighthawks at the Diner, time, a hint of a gospel-derived falsetto took things further, with Waits deftly that he was to use to great effect over the weaving extended banter and hilarious, next thirty years. Beat-inspired monologues seamlessly be­ If Tom Waits’s career had ended with tween each song, accompanied by a small Heartattack. and Vine, he would more than jazz ensemble consisting of drums, bass, deserve to be inducted into the Rock and piano, and sax. Roll Hall of Fame. As it turned out, his Sm all Change (1976) made it clear first seven albums were simply a prelude that Waits had evolved into a master sto­ to a reinvention so radical that, as was the ryteller, reflecting the influence of crime- case with both Bob Dylan and Miles Da­ noir writers such as Dashiell Hammett and vis when they went electric, he polarized John D. MacDonald. Arguably his first his audience, potentially risked his career, masterpiece, the album featured exqui­ and cafne out the other side as a vibrant, site piano ballads such as “Tom Traubert’s renewed, and, arguably, much more im­ Blues” and “The Piano Has Been Drinking portant artist. (Not Me),” the word-jazz of “Pasties and There were more than three years be­ a G-String,” and the tour-de-force tenor- tween the recording of Heartattacf and Vine sax-accompanied hucksterism of “Step and his next album, the pivotal and enig­ Right Up.” F o reig n A ffa ir s (1977) and B lu e m atically named Swordfishtrombones (1983). V alentine (1978) continued apace, as Waits In the interim, Waits married Kathleen gradually began writing about junkies and Brennan, who would become his creative as prostitutes instead of skid-row drunks. In well as life partner, and he wiped the slate songs such as “Christmas Card From a dean, parting company with his manager, Hooker in Minneapolis” and “Red Shoes producer, band, and record label. by the Drugstore,” his writing became Swordfishtrombones, his first album for ever more vivid, compact, and complex. HE HOWLED HIS Island Records, was shocking—to put it Vocally, he adopted a blacker sound re­ mildly. Brennan had turned Waits on to flected in the blues tune “$29.00” and the WAY THROUGH Captain Beefheart, and his voice became even more primal. “Once you’ve heard funky R&B of “Wrong Side of the Road” MAELSTROM and “Whistlin’ Past the Graveyard.” Bedheart,” mused Waits in 1999, “it’s hard Looking at film footage of his perfor­ OF SOUND THAT to wash him out of your clothes. It stains, mances in the 1970s, one is struck by the like coffee or blood.” WAS SIMPLY incongruity of his youth and his ravaged, Around the same time that Waits dis­ lived-in voice, world-weary posture, and UNPRECEDENTED covered the alternative sonic universe of bohemian, wise-before-his-time lyrics, Captain Beefheart, he also became hip to which chronicled poignant moments in IN THE WORLD the invented instruments and forty-three- the lives o f the dispossessed and disadvan­ tones-to-the-octave soundscapes of com­ O F ROCK taged—those who lived on the margins poser Harry Partch. Suitably inspired! he and drank to forget while populating the - dispensed with the omnipresent jazz saxo­ underbelly of mainstream America, a world consisting of greasy phone that had dominated much of his early work. For good mea­ diners, petty crime, seedy bars, and even seedier hotels. Part of sure, he also banished cymbals from the sessions that produced Waits s incipient genius, at least partially influenced by the writing Swordfishtrombones. The music of both Beefheart and Partch of Bukowski, was his ability to find humanity and tenderness in employed marimbas extensively, and marimba and marimba-like the disenfranchised hobos and drunks that populated 5th Street instruments now became an integral part of the sound force that in Los Angeles. As he alternated groove numbers and ballads, he’d Waits worked with for the next two-plus decades. Latin dance this page W aits with wife and collaborator Kathleen Brennan at the prem iere o f O ne. From the Heart, 1982; in the U .K. in the seventies. forms also became an area of interest, as reflected in S w o rd fish - M a ch in e, while tracks such as “Diamonds & Gold” {Rain Dogs) trom bones’ title track, while the raw contemporary blues of Missis­ and “Telephone Call From Istanbul” {Franks W ild Years) w ere sippi Hill Country artists such as R.L. Burnside and Junior Kim­ built nearly entirely around various percussion sounds, melody brough appeared to be driving songs like “Gin Soaked Boy.” being downplayed in the extreme. A few years earlier, Waits’s music had been galvanizing in its Stating that he wanted to work with instruments that no­ intensity. Now it was frighteningly surreal, as he conjured up sonic body liked anymore, Waits began using the accordion regularly firebombs while inviting the spirit to descend on such percussive in his work on tracks such as “Cemetery Polka” from R a in D ogs tracks as “ 16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought-Six.” He howled his way and “More Than Rain” and the plaintive “Cold Cold Ground” through a maelstrom of sound that was simply unprecedented in from Franks W ild Years.