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Title: One From The Heart & One For The Road Source: New Musical Express (UK), by Kristine McKenna. Photography, by Anton Corbijn. Edited version reprinted in "Book Of Changes: A Collection Of Interviews By Kristine McKenna" (Fantagraphics Books, 2001). Thanks to Kevin Molony for donating scans Date: Wayne's Cafeteria, Los Angeles. October 1, 1983 Key Words: Swordfishtrombones, Public image, Childhood, American culture, Los Angeles, Jack Kerouac, Voice, Harry Dean Stanton, Acting, Francis Ford Coppola, Musical trends, Fame Magazine front cover: Los Angeles, 1983. Photography by Anton Corbijn. Thanks to Kevin Molony for donating scan |
| Accompanying pictures |
 Two pages from New Musical Express. October 1, 1983 |
 Los Angeles, 1983. Photography by Anton Corbijn (Also printed in: "Famouz", Anton Corbijn photographs 1976-1988 (1989)). Thanks to Kevin Molony for donating scan. |
 Los Angeles, 1983. Photography by Anton Corbijn. Thanks to Kevin Molony for donating scan. |
 Los Angeles, 1983. Photography by Anton Corbijn. Thanks to Kevin Molony for donating scan. |
 Los Angeles, 1983. Photography by Anton Corbijn. Thanks to Kevin Molony for donating scan. |
One From The Heart & One For The Road
Q: How do you feel about yourself as a vocalist?
A: At best, I'm a barking dog, but I think my voice is well suited to my material.
Q: Have you taken steps to protect your voice?
A: Protect it from what? vandals?
With the release of his 'Swordfishtrombones', TOM WAITS talks about America, marriage, music and his film work with Francis Ford Coppola.
America's urban underbelly has been kitschified, neutered, defanged, rendered cute 'n' cosy.
Film noir, Damon Runyon, carnies and circus folk, the '50s Beats, pulp mysteries - all have congealed into a familiar lineup of lovable motheaten types. Two-bit gangsters, wino philosophers, whores with hearts of gold - you've seen 'em in a million corny movies.
None of this, however, changes the fact that actual poor people, transients drifting through life on a river of alcohol, social outlaws and fringe characters still exist, many of whom have stories and ideas worth hearing. Tom Waits makes music about these people and he does it with an impressively even hand. Waits never patronises his subjects, nor does he go for sympathy vote. His songs are often brutally funny, and Waits calls an asshole an asshole regardless of what is or isn't in his wallet. Being broke and drunk doesn't necessarily make a man brilliant. Nonetheless, some monumental souls do get lost in the cracks of this creaking world, and Waits is out to resurrect a few of them. Contrary to popular opinion, Tom Waits is not a bum. He is a performer with a palette of colours, a set of skills, and it's a credit to his abilities as an entertainer that people believe he is the picture he paints. This is not to say Waits is a fake. He frequents the boozy netherworld not as a social researcher, but because he genuinely likes it there. But Waits wasn't raised in a smokey pool hall either. Born December 7, 1949, as one of three children to a school-teaching mom and pop, Waits grew up in Southern California and had what he describes as a standard childhood. His parents divorced when he was 12 and he worked his way through the full course of miserable jobs until 1972, when he was discovered in an L.A. club and signed to Elektra Records. Waits reckons vocabulary is his main instrument, and though his growling, whisky-whisper of a voice certainly wouldn't do much for Gilbert & Sullivan, it is ideally suited to his material. Well versed in American musical idioms, Waits positions his characters in aural landscapes that incorporate blues, jazz, Tin Pan Alley, be-bop and R&B. There's a considerable amount of Lord Buckley's Hip Semantic in Waits' work too. Like Buckley, Waits is a latter-day vaudevillian who weaves folk tale and street patios into a hip new suit of his own design. Words count for a lot in his music - but that's not all. He is a gifted melodist as well, and many of his tunes exude a gorgeous, epic melancholy evocative of Gershwin; particularly evident on his 1974 masterpiece, 'The Heart of Saturday Night'. Waits has released eight critically acclaimed albums, and though other performers have scored hits with his tunes (The Eagles, Bette Midler). Tom has never had a one of his own. And he doesn't particularly hanker after one either. I recently met Waits to discuss some current developments in his life and career one hot afternoon at Wayne's Cafeteria, a greasy diner located in the heart of old downtown LA. He lives in this district (as does the ghost of Raymond Chandler in case you've been looking for that), and he arrived punctually. He is a courteous, articulate and rather shy man who measures his words carefully. He is boyish, yet old fashioned; the kind of guy who watches what he says in front of ladies. I was charmed. Topics to be discussed includes his new album (a significant stylistic change), his blossoming career as an actor and his relationship with Francis Ford Coppola, and the change in his life brought about by his marriage.
'Swordfishtrombones' is Waits' ninth LP, and the first for his new label, Island. Musically, it is different from his previous work; the instrumentation is bizarre, almost Beefheartian, incorporating marimba, bagpipe, harmonium and accordian. It also has a cinematic quality, segueing ballads, instrumental passages, raw blues, and the hilarious monologue, 'Frank's Wild Years'. What exactly, is this movie about? Lonesome soldiers, sweet Midwestern girls (Waits married one of those) and middle class dreams gone to seed. One of the highlights of the LP is a thumping cut called '16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought Six', whose jivey, nonsensical verse is worthy of Vachel Lindsay. Dig this American poetry:
"I filled me a sachel full of old pig corn
And I beat me a billy from an old French horn
And I kicked that mule to the top of the tree
And I blew me a hole 'bout the size of a kickdrum
Well I slept in the holler of a dry creek bed
And I tore out the buckets from a red Corvette
Tore out the buckets from a red Corvette
Lionel and Dave and the Butcher made three
Oh, you got to meet me by the knuckles of the skinnybone tree
With the strings of a Washburn stretched like a clothesline
You know me and that mule scrambled right through the hole."
Waits recently completed a video of the 'Swordfish' single, 'In The Neighborhood', which was shot by heavyweight cinematographer Haskell Wexler. It never hurts to have friends in the film community, and Waits has some powerful ones. He did the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's star-crossed experimental film One From The Heart, and has since become a permanent member of the Coppola troupe. He played a bartender in Coppola's The Outsiders, proprietor of a pool hall in Rumble Fish, and he has been cast as the backstage manager in Cotton Club, another Coppola film currently in production, whose story is built around the famous Harlem nightspot of the '30s and '40s. he also had small parts in Wolfen, Paradise Alley, and is scheduled to appear with Robert Duvall in Stone Boy. It was through Coppola that Waits met his wife Kathleen, who was a script reader at Coppola's Zoetrope Studios. They married in 1981, and had their first child, a girl, last month. There was a period when Waits had quite a reputation in LA. Living in a rundown hotel room crammed full of pawnshop junk, out all night, drinking hard, keeping company with colourful kooks. Waits really did look to be a character form one of his songs. His music has always been rooted in that sort of neon living and one would assume that his "settling down" would signal some major changes in his work. But the walls you live in don't necessarily frame your view of the world, and it's apparent listening to his new album that having found a peaceful valley he can live in which has not impaired his ability to empathise. He may no longer be living a gin-soaked life of busted dreams and chaos, but he still sees the people who are with a sharp an compassionate eye.
You once commented that "people will write about you in a way that what they're essentially doing is constructing your personality on rumour". Has the press shackled you to a persona of their own invention?
A certain amount of it is fiction. It's like when you tell somebody something which they tell somebody else who tells somebody else, and by the time it gets back to you you had three black eyes and a busted collarbone. So yeah, in terms of the folk process, a certain amount of information gets embellished. Pieces of 'my image' are right, and others aren't.
Much of your music exudes a melancholy sense of the past, a yearning for some intangible thing that seems to have been lost. Is memory a source of comfort and joy for most people, or is it more apt to be a source of pain?
My memory isn't a source of pain. Parts of it are like a pawnshop, other parts are like an aquarium, and other parts are like a closet. I think there's a place where your memory becomes distorted like a funhouse mirror and that's the area I'm most interested in.
Do experiences tend to be idealised by the memory?
Some things, yes. It makes other things worse than they really were.
What's your earliest memory fixed in your mind?
I have a very early memory of getting up in the middle of the night and standing at my doorway by the hall in the house and having to stand there and wait while a train went by. And after the train passed I could cross the hall into my parents' room.
Was there a trainyard nearby where you grew up?
Not at that particular house, but there were trains in all the places I grew up. My grandmother lived by an orange grove and I remember sleeping at her house and hearing the Southern Pacific go by. This was in La Verne, California. My father moved from Texas to La Verne and he worked in the orange groves there. I also have a memory of wild gourds that grew by the railroad tracks, and putting pennies on the tracks.
What sort of music were you exposed to when you were growing up?
The earliest music I remember was mariachi, ranchera, romantica - Mexican music. My father used to tune that in on the car radio. He didn't listen to jitterbug or anything like that.
You once told an interviewer, "There's a common loneliness that sprawls from coast to coast here. It's very tragic and it's very American". Can you elaborate on that?
At the time I made that remark I was on the road a lot, so I think that loneliness was something I had in my billfold.
You don't think there's a loneliness, a melancholy that's peculiar to the American people?
Yes I think there is. This friend of mine named Paul Hampton and I once collaborated on a thing called 'Why is the Dream Always So Much Sweeter Than the Taste?'(1) that was sort of about this subject.
Could that loneliness have to do with the sheer size of this country, and the fact that there are often great distances between people and places?
I think that's exhilarating, especially when you set out in the morning in a late model Ford, and you're leaving California, driving to New York. It's thrilling to know that the country is big enough that you can aim your car in one direction and not have to turn the wheel for seven days. I think there's a great feeling of flight there.
Are the clich�s about Los Angeles true?
It depends on where you live and what your experience here is. People come here to escape. L.A. is where everything's supposed to be alright. As soon as we get to California, honey, I'll have a flowered shirt and we'll have a little place at the beach.
Does that dream ever pan out for people?
Sometimes. You can make a lot of money in America and nobody will ask you how you made it - if you were a slumlord, or sold drugs, or smuggled illegal aliens into the country.
Does the Los Angeles that Nathaniel West wrote about still exist? He had a very dark, surreal view of L.A..
Yes, there are parts of his Hollywood that still remain.
You've often expressed your admiration for Jack Kerouac. Exactly what was it about him and his work that appealed to you?
He had a great stool at the bar and nobody sat there except Jack. But you know, he was writing his own obituary from the moment he began, and I think he was tragically seduced by his own destiny - although I'm not really qualified to say. But there have been countless biographies on him written by people who knew him well, and it seems he really did believe in the American Dream. I enjoy his impressions of America, certainly more than anything you'd find in Reader's Digest. The roar of the crowd in a bar after work; working for the railroad; living in cheap hotels; jazz.
Was Kerouac instrumental in your falling in love with those things too?
I think so, yeah. He made several recordings of himself doing readings, and his records are really funny. I think he was very bitter when he died, and it isn't so nice to leave with the feeling you've been kicked in the pants. Ultimately, he will have his place.
In reading over some reviews of your work, I came across a critic who attacked your music on the grounds that "it romanticizes failure". Do you think there's any truth to that?
No I don't accept that as a valid criticism. I resent that remark and I'll have his job!
What sorts of things usually trigger a song for you?
Sometimes the title comes first. Here are a few I'm working on right now (pulls a small notepad out of his pocket)... 'Martini Plans', 'The Colour Of Dolls', 'Bad Directions'...
Do you enjoy writing?
Yes I do. I don't enjoy it when I'm not writing.
How do you feel about yourself as a vocalist?
At best I'm a barking dog, but I think my voice is well suited to my material.
Have you taken steps to protect your voice?
Protect it from what? Vandals?
There was talk for a while that you were destroying your voice with the way you were living, and I notice you're no longer smoking.
Yeah, I quit smoking so I've got more wind now, but I've never taken voice lessons or anything like that. Giving up tobacco was tough.
What do you consider your chief strength as an artist?
That's a good set-up for a very flippant remark - I'd say it would be my Get Out Of Jail Free card. I don't have parties and sit down at the piano and play old favourites. I don't enjoy sitting down at the piano in that sense. Lately I'd say my strength is an ability to take something and combine it with something it doesn't belong with, and make sense out of it. I'm trying to find different ways to use an umbrella and get away from just chronicling things.
What do you consider your best work?
I like the story in 'Burma Shave' off Foreign Affairs, 'Tom Traubert's Blues' off the new album. I like 'Dave The Butcher' and 'In The Neighborhood'.
What do you see as being the dominant themes that recur through all your work?
You try not to just chew your cud but, thematically, you do tend to wind up in a particular, comfortable musical geography. I'm trying to break away from that though. I don't want to feel as though I'm knitting something, then unravelling it and knitting it again. And I think I did get beyond that with the new record. Musically, it's pretty different. There are no saxophones on the record and that's a conquest for me.
What was the central idea that took you through the making of the new record?
I wanted it to be a bit exotic, and to be more like a painting than a photograph. I see it as being sort of an odyssey, and I also thought of it as a wreck collection.
Why haven't you ever assembled a band with whom you could consistently work?
I don't know. You're usually worried about money when you have a road band. Studio musicians are reluctant to leave town, because they're making good dough in the studio. It's awkward. I'm gonna try to put a band together in New York(2). I'm going there next week and I'm gonna try to do a show there. An off-Broadway run of my own demented kabuki burlesque. I want to work it out in New York, get all the snags out, and maybe we'll take it on the road. All the people who play on the new record live in L.A., so I'm gonna use different musicians. I don't know what the show will be called, but it'll include some earlier songs, and I'll write new things for it too. I don't know if I'll use sets but there will be some props. I think we're gonna have an oversized cocktail glass with a midget in scuba gear swimming in it(3).
Sounds great!
Just trying it out on you. Thanks. Maybe we'll keep it in the act.
How do you work up the arrangements for your songs?
It's sort of like casting a movie. You select the correct players and the arrangements seem to follow.
How do you see your music evolving? How is the new record different from your first?
Harry Dean Stanton(4) once told me he found a copy of my first album across a railroad track. He was in the middle of nowhere shooting a movie and he found this record melted over the tracks. I kinda like that. Nicer place to end up than in a cut-out bin at a record store. You tend to cram a lot onto your first album. I'd say the new one is a little more adventuresome than ones I've previously made in terms of subject matter, detail and arrangement.
It feels very much like a filmscore to me. In fact, the specific film it reminds me of is The Last Detail.(5)
Oh yeah? I just saw that again recently. "gets his kicks fuckin' over charity. Up your ghi-ghi with a wah-wah brush and break it off". (That's some dialogue from the film.)
How has working in film changed the way you approach making music?
It's given me a better sense of developing pictures, but its effects haven't been all good. Music shouldn't necessarily give you a feeling of some other place or remind you of the beach of your girlfriend. At its best it exists alone and carries all the properties of an independent apparatus.
Do visuals always enhance music for you?
No. I don't think you can arbitrarily nail a piece of music to a discombobulated piece of film, and it's rare when it works. One thing I did learn from working with Francis Coppola, and that whole process with One From the Heart, is that your first idea isn't always right. Francis will wait and wait. He never finishes anything, somebody just takes it away from him, and he continues to make changes up until the very last minute.
Isn't it hard for those around him to work, when the central core is always in a state of flux?
That is a problem, but you just have to be committed to that process, and to him. There are many people who work with Coppola who become disturbed, paranoid and anxiety ridden when they're between films. They need a mission, and in between films they just wait. Film swallows up so much of your life and your life becomes much smaller than the work that you're feeding, and that's why you have to be very careful about the kinds of projects you work on. You have to make sure that what you're feeding is an animal you're gonna want to take care of.
What are the qualities you and Coppola share that make you compatible workmates?
You'd have to ask him that. For me, I just like the way his mind works. He's unlearned a lot of things and he's managed to remain very childlike in terms of his imagination. He also has a considerable amount of leadership quality, and that's rare. He inspires the people around him.
Your persona as a musician is almost like a character out of a movie. Do you expect to have a hard time shaking that stereotype and assuming other characters as an actor? In Rumble Fish, for instance, you play the proprietor of a pool hall.
Yes, which was very easily done. It's true it would be much tougher for me to play an attorney. In Cotton Club (Coppola's next film), I play a backstage manager. It's not a principal role, but it's a chance to work with Francis again and I feel comfortable with that.
What are your ambitions for yourself as an actor?
I don't really have any training in it and there's a great deal involved in being able to become completely lost in a character. I have spent a fair amount of time in the film world and you can learn a lot from watching, but you can't learn everything.
Do you feel comfortable in front of a movie camera?
Not always. In some ways it's like playing music onstage, but it's still like somebody's holding a flashlight on your face in the dark. You can feel the place where the light is. Onstage, doing music, my eyes can roll back in my head and I can get lost somewhere, but you can't do that when you're making a movie.
What are your favorite movies?
La Strada, 8 1/2, that Kurosawa film Ikiru(6).
Is video as important to music as everyone's claiming it is?
It's unbelievable how many people watch them. It's not just people with tight pants. I don't see them too often, but I don't think they're the saviour in any way, and a lot of them are real cheap. It's arcade shit. It looks real good right then but it doesn't hold up when you get it home.
Do you keep up with musical trends?
I try to keep up on some stuff. What do you mean? Like what's going on in the music business?
No, not the economics of it. Have you heard any rap music for instance?
Is that the big thing now? That free associating thing? Ultimately the only thing America can claim as a native musical form is black. Miles Davis can play two chords for an hour and keep you interested. Yeah, I've heard some rap music and I think anything that mirrors the dreams and frustrations of the black community is always urgent, important and valuable. But I generally don't keep up on pop trends. Pop music is money and business sleeping in the same bed together. You see these trends come down the pike and you know you've seen 'em before and that they won't be around too long. You keep getting newly elected officials in pop music, but there are no new offices.
Is it a goal of yours to have a hit single?
I don't know that you should wish for things you don't understand, for reasons that you question. A hit single means that you make a lot of money and a lot of people will know who you are, and I don't know that's so attractive. I don't see the importance of having your face on a lunchbox in Connecticut. I don't see how that fits into the grand scheme of things as far as being something to strive for. And it rears its ugly head. It makes you a geek, and you don't want to destroy the very thing that makes it possible for you to do what you do. A lot of people are looking for affection and acceptance in the form of this anonymous group of people thinking they're wonderful. People they don't even know. You don't want to choose your friends arbitrarily.
Why did you leave Elektra Records?
Record companies are sort of like large department stores. I was at Elektra for over ten years and while I was there I spent a considerable amount of time on the road and blowing my own horn. They liked dropping my name in terms of me being a 'prestige' artist, but when it came down to it, they didn't invest a whole lot in me in terms of faith. Their identity was always more aligned with that California rock thing.
What was the last record you bought?
This thing with Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli(7). Beautiful stuff on there like 'Nature Boy'. I like the kind of notes they play, notes like skipping a stone across water. Just go with those notes, they take you away.
What's your favorite beverage?
I enjoy a nice vintage port around February. On a day to day basis I'd say a good stout malt liquor, a dark beer, or a pale ale, just in terms of quenching my thirst.
Does the public demand too much of popular musicians?
It seems that in many ways they're expected to be saintly beings. I don't know if they're expected to be saint like, but people do expect you to wear the same jacket all the time and they're upset, nervous, and disappointed when you attempt growth at their expense. 'The Devil's Dictionary'(8) defines fame as "being conspicuously miserable". A lot of the problems connected with fame are perpetuated by the performers more than the public, because many performers use the press as if it's a priest. They tell journalists very private details of their lives and you have to be careful about that because it can be dangerous and damaging. It's a little cheap too, considering that you should probably reserve a lot of that for your close personal friends and relatives.
Is fame fraught with anxiety for you?
No, because I'm not famous to the degree that it becomes a physical problem. There's a certain luxury in anonymity. It's like notice me, notice me, leave me alone. You want to be accepted, but you don't want to be bothered with it. You don't want people around your neck slowing you down, but you also don't want to stand in line at the post office for an hour. There was a period of time when I was living at the Tropicana, that I made my address public(9) and it became difficult. But it was my own damn fault and I think I orchestrated and arranged a lot of it just to be able to conduct, but now I'm different.
Most of your music has grown out of a lifestyle I assume you're no longer living. You're married now and last week your wife gave birth to your first child (a daughter, named Kelly). Do you expect these changes to have a profound impact on your music"?
Yes and no. My writing has never chronicled my days verbatim. If that was the way I wrote I'd probably have to be rather busy in order for it to be entertaining. At the same time, there is a certain clarity that you get from having a very safe booth that you don't have when you're behind the register. Now that I have a wife and family I no longer feel as if I'm out in the world having to make new friends every day.
Do you believe in luck?
Yeah, there is luck, but the best luck you make yourself. I think I've been lucky. I make these things out of air and I don't have to use a hammer and nails, or work 12 hours in a rotten kitchen and get yelled at.
What is your dream?
I think my dream is a feeling more than it's an actual piece of geography. Some of my dreams have come true. Going on the road and playing nightclubs was an enormous dream for me. I can remember working in a restaurant and hearing music come out of the jukebox and wondering how to get from where I was, in my apron and paper hat, through all the convoluted stuff that takes you to where you're coming out of the jukebox. I'm still not played on jukeboxes though, which is OK. If I heard myself come out of a jukebox somewhere my face would probably turn red.
If you could arm your daughter with one piece of wisdom to help her make her way through life, what would it be?
That you can dream your way out of things and into things(10). And I don't mean being in a lousy place and pretending you're someplace else. I think you can dream yourself out of one place and into another place that's better for you. To dream hard enough. I hope I can teach them to do that.
Edited version as reprinted in "Book Of Changes: A Collection Of Interviews by Kristine McKenna" (Fantagraphics Books, 2001) as published on Fantagraphics
Tom Waits was born December 9, 1949, in a family of three children. His parents both taught school, they divorced when he was 12, and he had what he describes as 'a standard Southern California childhood.' When he was 23 years old he was discovered by a talent scout while performing at a club in L.A., and he was signed to Elektra Records. Since then he's released 12 critically acclaimed albums, collaborated on an opera with Robert Wilson, and appeared in several films, including five directed by his friend, Francis Ford Coppola. It was through Coppola that Waits met Kathleen Brennan, who he married in 1981. They have two children and live in Northern California.
I interviewed Waits in September, 1983, on the occasion of the release of Swordfishtrombones, a record that marked a dramatic shift in Waits' music. It was with Swordfishtrombones that Waits' early style, which was born of the Tin Pan Alley tradition that gave us Cole Porter and Johnny Mercer, blossomed into an exotic stew of complex rhythms, and a new approach to singing rooted in Delta blues. He still writes the occasional tune in his early style, and this is a blessing, because nobody sings about small American moments with as much wistful beauty as Waits does.
The following conversation took place at Wayne's Cafeteria, a greasy diner located in downtown L.A., which has since been demolished. Waits is an incredibly entertaining man to talk to, and if his music ever dries up, a career in comedy awaits him.
You once commented, 'people will write about you in a way that what they're essentially doing is constructing your personality based in rumor.' Has the press shackled you with a persona of their invention?
A certain amount of it is fiction. It's like when you tell somebody something which they tell somebody else, who tells somebody else, and by the time it gets back to you, you had three black eyes and a busted collarbone. So yeah, in terms of the folk process, a certain amount of information gets embellished. Pieces of 'my image' are right, and others aren't, but it doesn't bother me.
Much of your music is permeated with a melancholy sense of the past, and a yearning for some intangible thing that seems to have been lost. Is memory a source of comfort for people, or is it more apt to be a source of pain?
My memory isn't a source of pain. Parts of it are like a pawnshop, other parts are like an aquarium, and other parts are like a closet. I think there's a place where your memory becomes distorted like a funhouse mirror, and that's the part I'm most interested in.
Do experiences tend to be idealized by the memory?
Some things, yes. It makes other things worse than they really were.
What's your earliest memory?
I have a very early memory of getting up in the middle of the night and standing at my doorway by the hall in our house, and having to stand there and wait until a train went by. After the train passed I could cross the hall into my parents' room. There wasn't a train yard near that particular house, but there were trains in all the other places I grew up. My grandmother lived by an orange grove in La Verne, California, and I remember sleeping at her house and hearing the Southern Pacific go by. My father's family had moved from Texas to La Verne, and he worked in the orange groves there. I also have a memory of wild gourds that grew by the railroad tracks, and putting pennies on the tracks. Harry Dean Stanton once told me he found a copy of my first album across a railroad track. He was in the middle of nowhere shooting a movie, and he found this record melted over the tracks. I kinda' like that. Nicer place to end up than in a cut-out bin at a record store.
What sort of music were you exposed top when you were growing up?
The earliest music I remember was mariachi, ranchera, romantica - Mexican music. My father used to tune that in on the car radio. He didn't listen to jitterbug or anything like that.
You once told an interviewer, 'there's a common loneliness that sprawls from coast to coast here. It's very tragic and it's very American.' Can you elaborate?
At the time I made that remark I was on the road a lot, so I think that loneliness was something I had in my billfold. I do think, however, that there is a particular loneliness that's peculiar to the American people. A friend of mine named Paul Hampton and I once collaborated on a thing called 'Why is the Dream Always So Much Sweeter Than the Taste?,' which is about this subject.
Could that loneliness have to do with the sheer size of America, and the fact that there are often great distances between people and places?
I think that's exhilarating, especially when you set out in the morning in a late model Ford, and you're leaving California and driving to New York. It's thrilling to know that the country is big enough that you can aim your car in one direction and not have to turn the wheel for seven days. I think there's a great feeling of flight there.
Are the cliches about Los Angeles true?
It depends on where you live and what your experience here is. People come here to escape, because L.A. is where everything's supposed to be all right. As soon as we get to California, honey, I'll have a flowered shirt and we'll have a little place at the beach. Sometimes that dream pans out for people, too. You can make a lot of money here and nobody will ask how you made it - if you were a slumlord, sold drugs, or smuggled illegal aliens into the country.
Does the Los Angeles that Nathaniel West wrote about still exist?
He had a very dark, surreal view of L.A., and yes, there are parts of his Hollywood that still remain.
You've often expressed your admiration for Jack Kerouac; what was it about him and his work that appealed to you?
He had a great stool at the bar and nobody sat there except Jack. But you know, he was writing his own obituary from the moment he began, and I think he was tragically seduced by his own destiny. I'm not really qualified to say, of course, but there have been countless biographies on him written by people who knew him well, and it seems he really did believe in the American Dream.
I enjoy his impressions of America -- the roar of the crowd in a bar after work, living in cheap hotels, working for the railroad, jazz. He was instrumental in my falling in love with those things, too. He made several recordings of himself doing readings, and his records are really funny. I think he was very bitter when he died, and it isn't so nice to leave with the feeling you've been kicked in the pants. Ultimately, he will have his place.
I recently came across the writings of a critic who faulted your work on the grounds that it 'romanticizes failure'; do you think there's any truth to that?
No I don't accept that as a valid criticism. I resent that remark and I'll have his job!
What sorts of things usually trigger a song for you?
Sometimes the title comes first. Here are a few I'm working on right now [pulling a small notepad out of his pocket]; 'Martini Plans,' 'The Color of Dolls,' 'Bad Directions.'
How do you feel about yourself as a vocalist?
At best I'm a barking dog, but I think my voice is well-suited to my material.
Have you taken steps to protect your voice?
Protect it from what? Vandals?
There was talk for a while that you were destroying your voice with the way you were living, and I notice you're no longer smoking.
Yeah, I quit smoking so I've got more wind now, but I've never taken voice lessons or anything like that. Giving up tobacco was tough.
What do you consider to be your chief strength as an artist?
That's a good set-up for a very flippant remark. I'd say it would be my Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. I don't have parties and sit down at the piano and play old favorites, and I don't enjoy sitting down at the piano in that sense. Lately I'd say my strength might be an ability to take something and combine it with something it doesn't belong with and make sense out of it. I'm trying to find different ways to use an umbrella, and trying to get away from just chronicling things.
What are the dominant themes that recur in your work?
You try not to just chew your cud but thematically you do tend to wind up in a particular, comfortable musical geography. I'm trying to break away from that though. I don't want to feel as though I'm knitting something then unraveling it and knitting it again. And I think I did get beyond that with Swordfishtrombone. Musically it's pretty different. There are no saxophones on the record and that's a conquest for me. I wanted the record to be a bit exotic and to be more like a painting than a photograph. I see it as being sort of an odyssey, and as a wreck collection.
How has working in film changed the way you approach making music?
It's given me a better sense of developing pictures, but its' effects haven't been all good. Music shouldn't necessarily give you a feeling of some other place or remind you of the beach or your girlfriend. At its best it exists alone and carries all the properties of an independent apparatus. Visuals don't enhance music for me either, and it's rare that you can arbitrarily nail a piece of music to a discombobulated piece of film and have it work. One thing I did learn from Francis Coppola in working on One From the Heart is that your first idea isn't always right. Francis will wait and wait and he never finishes anything. He continues to make changes up to the last minute when somebody finally takes the thing away from him. I like the way Francis' mind works. He's unlearned a lot of things and managed to remain very childlike in terms of his imagination. He also has a considerable amount of leadership quality and that's rare. He inspires the people around him.
What are your favorite movies?
La Strada, 8 1/2, and Ikiru.
Do you keep up with musical trends? For instance, is rap music of interest to you?
Ultimately, the only thing America can claim as a native musical form is black. Miles Davis can play two chords for an hour and keep you interested. Of course I've heard rap music, and I think anything that mirrors the dreams and frustrations of the black community is always urgent, important and valuable. Generally, though, I don't keep up on pop trends. Pop music is money and business sleeping in the same bed together. You see these trends come down the pike and you know you've seen 'em before and that they won't be around for long. You keep getting newly elected officials in pop music but there are no new offices.
What was the last record you bought?
This thing with Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli. Beautiful stuff on there like 'Nature Boy.' I like the kind of notes they play, notes like skipping a stone across water. Just go with those notes and they'll take you away.
What's your favorite beverage?
I enjoy a nice vintage port around February. On a day to day basis I'd say a good stout malt liquor, a dark beer, or a pale ale, just in terms of quenching my thirst.
Does the public demand too much of popular musicians? It seems they're simultaneously canonized and scrutinized to an excessive degree.
I don't know if they're canonized, but people do expect you to wear the same jacket all the time, and they're upset, nervous, and disappointed when you attempt growth at their expense. 'The Devil's Dictionary' defines fame as 'being conspicuously miserable.' A lot of the problems connected with fame are perpetuated by the performers more than the public, because many performers use the press as if it's a priest. They tell journalists private details of their lives and that's something you have to be careful about because it can be damaging. It's a little cheap too, considering that you should probably reserve those parts of yourself for your close personal friends and relatives.
Is fame a source of anxiety for you?
No, because I'm not famous to the degree that it becomes a physical problem. There's a certain luxury in anonymity. It's like notice me, notice me, leave me alone. You want to be accepted, but you don't want to be bothered with it. You don't want people around your neck slowing you down, but you also don't want to stand in line at the post office for an hour. There was a period of time when I was living at the Tropicana Motel in the '70s, that I made my address public and it became difficult, but it was my own damn fault and I think I enjoyed the chaos at the time. I orchestrated and arranged a lot of it just to be able to conduct, but now I'm different.
The recorded music of the first ten years of your career grew out of a lifestyle that ended when you married and became a father. How did that change effect your writing?
My writing has never chronicled my days verbatim. If that was the way I wrote I'd have to be rather busy in order for it to be entertaining. At the same time, there is a certain clarity that you get from having a very safe booth that you don't have when you're behind the register. Now that I have a wife and family I no longer feel as if I'm out in the world having to make new friends every day.
Do you believe in luck?
Yes, and I've been lucky. I make these things out of air and I don't have to use a hammer and nails, or work 12 hours in a rotten kitchen and get yelled at.
What is your dream?
My dream is a feeling more than it's an actual piece of geography. Some of my dreams have come true. Going on the road and playing nightclubs was an enormous dream for me. I can remember working in a restaurant and hearing music come out of the jukebox and wondering how to get from where I was, in my apron and paper hat, through all the convoluted stuff that takes you to where you're coming out of the jukebox. Of course, I'm still not played on jukeboxes but that's
O.K. If I heard myself come out of a jukebox somewhere my face would probably turn red.
What's the most valuable thing you could teach your children?
That you can dream your way out of things and into things. And I don't mean being in a lousy place and pretending you're someplace else. I think you can dream yourself out of one place and into another place that's better for you. To dream hard enough. I hope I can teach them to do that.
Notes:
(1) Why is the Dream Always So Much Sweeter Than the Taste?: this project would never be realized. It is generally assumed the script was later used for Waits's play "Frank's Wild Years". A small part at least was used for Coppola's "One From The Heart" (Used Car Lot scene):
- Also mentioned in "Wry & Danish To Go" MelodyMaker magazine, by Brian Case. Copenhagen. May 5, 1979. "The Neon Dreams Of Tom Waits" New Musical Express (UK), by John Hamblett. London. May 12, 1979; "Tom Waits: Hollywood Confidential", BAM magazine (US). Travelers' Cafe/ Echo Park. February 26, 1982; "A Simple Love Story", City Limits magazine (UK), by Peter Guttridge. London. July 1-7, 1983.
(2) Put a band together in New York: this would have to be the band for the 1985 album "Raindogs" (Greg Cohen, Michael Blair, Stephen Hodges, Larry Taylor, Marc Ribot, Ralph Carney, Chris Spedding and others). Further reading: Performances
(3) An oversized cocktail glass with a midget in scuba gear swimming in it: Waits dryly referring to the scene from "One From The Heart" with Nastassia Kinski in the oversized cocktail glass.
(4) Harry Dean Stanton: actor born July 14, 1926. Appeared in One From The Heart (1982, as "Moe") and Cadillac Tramps (2000). Harry Dean Stanton fronts a band called "The Harry Dean Stanton Band" which regularly performs in the Los Angeles area. He sings and plays guitar.
(5) The Last Detail: Waits probably quoting Jack Nicholson? Movie released 1974, directed by Hal Ashby. Starring Jack Nicholson (on the threshold of stardom), along with Randy Quaid. Synopsis: Nicholson plays "Bad Ass" Buddusky, who along with Mullhall, or "Mule", played by an obscure actor, named Otis Young, are assigned to take Meadows, a pathetic young recruit Quaid), to the military brig in New Hampshire. But the journey turns out to be more leisurely than expected, with several side trips and extracurricular activities thrown in for good measure. As they travel, the three exchange confidences and become friends. Buddusky and Mule give Meadows a decade worth of experience crammed into five days - they get into a fight, get drunk and pay Meadows way to an old-fashioned whorehouse, where he picks a prostitute, played by Carol Kane, to guide him through his first sexual experience. By the time they have reached their destination, everyone has been changed permanently by the experience. The Last Detail depicts the seedier, more realistic side of Navy life. No dramatic shots of jets being catapulted from a carrier or of Submarines diving fast here, no, this is the bleak dark side.
(6) La Strada, 8 1/2, that Kurosawa film Ikiru:
- La Strada (The Road): 1954. Plot outline: Gelsomina is sold for a few coins by her very poor mother to Zampano, a fairground wrestler. She follows him on the road ("la strada") and helps him during his shows. Zampano illtreats her. She meets "The Fool", a funambulist. She feels like going with him, but he puts confusion in her mind by pointing out that perhaps Zampano is in fact in love with her. Dir. Frederico Fellini. Writ. Fellini, Tullio Penelli, Ennio Flaiano Cine. Otello Martelli Music Nino Rota. Star. Giulietta Masina (Gelsomina), Anthony Quinn (Zampano), Richard Baseheart (The Fool), Aldo Silvani, Marcello Revere, Liva Venturini.
- 8 1/2: 1963 dir. Frederico Fellini. Writ. Fellini, Tullio Penelli. Plot Outline: Guido is a film director, trying to relax after his last big hit. He can't get a moments peace, however, with the people who have worked with him in the past constantly looking for more work. He wrestles with his conscience, but is unable to come up with a new idea. While thinking, he starts to recall major happenings in his life, and all the women he has loved and left. An autobiographical film of Fellini, about the trials and tribulations of film making. Star. Marcello Mastroianni (Guido Anselmi), Claudia Cardinale (Claudia).
- Ikiru: 1952 dir. Akira Kurosawa. Writing credits Shinobu Hashimoto Akira Kurosawa. Plot Outline: Kanji Watanabe is a longtime bureaucrat in a city office who, along with the rest of the office, spends his entire working life doing nothing. He learns he is dying of cancer and wants to find some meaning in his life. He finds himself unable to talk with his family, and spends a night on the town with a novelist, but that leaves him unfulfilled. He next spends time with a young woman from his office, but finally decides he can make a difference through his job... After Watanabe's death, co-workers at his funeral discuss his behavior over the last several months and debate why he suddenly became assertive in his job to promote a city park, and resolve to be more like Watanabe.
(7) This thing with Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli: "Django Reinhardt/Stephane Grapelli compositions" Django volume 3, Inner city. Release date unknown.
(8) The Devil's Dictionary: American satiric writer Ambrose Bierce wrote a large number of short stories and articles for several San Francisco magazines. Search The devil's Dictionary at Alycone Systems site or the Internet Wiretap version. FAMOUS, adj. Conspicuously miserable. Done to a turn on the iron, behold Him who to be famous aspired. Content? Well, his grill has a plating of gold, And his twistings are greatly admired. Hassan Brubuddy
(9) I made my address public: it could be the first vinyl release had a complete address, but Waits is probably referring to the address as mentioned in the liner notes for "Step Right Up" from the album Small Change: : "For the lyrics to "Step Right Up" send by prepaid mail a photo of yourself, two dead creeping charlies, and a self addressed stamped envelope to the Tropicana Motor Hotel, Hollywood, California o/o Young Tom Waits. please allow 30 days for delivery." The infamous now defunct Tropicana Motel on Santa Monica Boulevard (West Hollywood) where Waits lived from 1976 to 1979. Further reading: Tropicana Motel.
(10) That you can dream your way out of things and into things: this would turn out to be the central theme for Wait's upcoming play "Frank's Wild Years" from 1986.