Title: Waits: The Beats Go On Source: MelodyMaker. June 21, 1975 by Jeff Burger. Thanks to Ken Langford for donating scans Date: New York/ USA. June 21, 1975 Keywords: success, spoken word, Miles Davis Magazine front cover: MelodyMaker. June 21, 1975

Accompanying picture

Asylum promo picture. Date: ca. 1974/ 1975. Credits: Michael Ochs archives

Waits: The Beats Go On

NEW YORK: Looking like he might have just hopped a freight train into town, Tom Waits settles into a booth at a cheap, noisy luncheonette.

After stretching his legs across a bench intended for two people, he orders a beer, lights an Old Gold and motions his companion into silence.

Over the sound of clanking glasses and silverware, the instrumental music on the speaker system is barely audible; but Tom quickly identifies the tune and fills in its lyric: "Soon it's gonna rain/ I can feel it/ Soon it's gonna rain/ I can tell/ Soon it's gonna rain..."⁽¹⁾

Tom leans back and takes a sip from the beer delivered during his impromptu performance. "This place is really the pits," he says, smacking his lips and glancing contentedly around the dimly-lit restaurant, "but I like it."

Tom calls his two albums, "Closing Time" and "The Heart Of Saturday Night," his "diplomas," explaining that "having a record out gets your foot in the door. You can't play these f--- clubs without an album or two or three. And even then, you're faced with a tremendous amount of competition."

Though, as he himself puts is, Tom Waits "ain't no household name," he is doing quite well. His darktoned ballads, which conjure up a Beat poet's nighttime world of hookers, sailors, waitresses and truckers, have been covered by Ian Matthews, Lee Hazlewood, Tim Buckley and most notably, the Eagles⁽²⁾ (who included his "Ol' 55" in their best-selling album "On The Border").

As an on-the-rise performer, Tom has encountered his share of instant friends and hangers-on; they apparently suit him no better than do large concerts or record company offices.

"You get a few breaks," he says, guzzling what remains of his Budweiser," and suddenly, everybody's asking you questions and people are shooting you full of self-confidence.

"But songwriting is a very solo effort. You just come to grips with your own creative imagination and work at it and it's yours. You know what you're proud of in what you do. You know where you are; you know how far you've come."

He landed his first job in 1965, when he was 15. For four years, he cooked, washed dishes and serviced toilets in a National City, California, pizza house. Then, all of a sudden, he began to switch jobs almost as frequently as he changed his clothes.

"I worked in a jewellery store," he recalls. "Oh, I was a firefighter for a while, and drove an ice cream truck. Delivery man, bartender, doorman at several clubs. You know, just hanging around, trying to pay the rent."

While playing his version of "What's My Line?", Tom began to write songs on an old Gibson acoustic and to toy with the idea of pursuing a musical career. He performed at small nightspots in the San Diego area and then at L.A.'s Troubadour.⁽³⁾

On Monday evenings when that club opened its stage to all-comers, Tom would take the 150-mile bus ride up from San Diego; after standing in line for several hours, he would be called onstage in time to do only a few numbers before catching a bus that would deliver him back home as the sun was coming up.

One night in 1972, Frank Zappa/ Tim Buckley manager Herb Cohen heard Tom perform at the Troubadour. Impressed, Cohen added the singer to his client roster and helped him get a contract with Asylum. A little more than two years later, Tom no longer has to hassle with long bus rides or audition nights. With much of his time claimed by back-to back engagements, he can afford to fly from gig to gig. If his music at all reflects the changes in his lifestyle, it indicates a desire to ignore them. In his songs, Tom remains pre-occupied with the way of life he experienced while working late nights at Napoleone's Pizza House⁽⁴⁾ and roughing it on the job-go-round.

He also evidences a continuing fascination with the ephemeral ecstasies previously explored by such writers as Jack Kerouac, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Ray Charles and Mose Allison.

Like the Beat poets whose readings were accompanied by unobstrusive jazz, Tom utilises a simple, jazz-flavoured instrumentation. On his albums, he plays a soft piano and is backed by a small, bass-dominated ensemble. On stage, he performs solo, incorporating a minimum of music and sometimes, none at all.

"I'm doing spoken word now," he explains over a second beer at the lucheonette. "I'm considered a songwriter so it's something I gotta watch. But I'm getting tired of hearing myself sing and I like talking bits. I don't call them poetry, 'cause there's too many poets I admire; but they're in an oral tradition. I call 'em 'metropolitan doubletalk'."

Tom pulls a sheet of paper from his pocket, announcing, "this is called 'Easy Street'," then drops the paper and recites from memory.

Recitation over, Tom lights an Old Gold and leans back in a satisfied pose. In front of him on the Formica table top are an empty beer mug, a full ashtray and a few sheets of paper containing his handwritten poems. Tom surveys the scene for a second and says that he has to be going.

Off to ride the freights, read poetry with Ginsberg in some all-night jazz club or get drunk with Kerouac? But Tom has never ridden the freights; he doesn't know Ginsberg; and Kerouac, of course, is dead.

Tom's world is not the one he lives in, but the one he reads about and imagines and describes in his songs and poetry. And his friends are not the publicists, writers, bookers and club managers who now surround him, but the Jack Kerouacs, Allen Ginsbergs and Lenny Bruces who people his mind's landscape.

Tom's recollection of an article by Nat Hentoff seems to sum up the singer's temporal displacement. "Hentoff was talking about the old days," Tom explains, as he reaches in his pocket for change to leave the waiter. "He said he ran into Miles Davis on the street; he hadn't seen him in several years and he was wondering how Davis would react to him 'cause they had been close before. He said they embraced and everything and Davis said, "We're from another time, Nat, and we need our old friends',"

Tom leaves the restaurant booth, pulls on his coat and looks up reflectively. "We need our old friends," he repeats. "It was just real touching, I thought."

Notes:

⁽¹⁾ Soon it's gonna rain: Harvey Schmidt's "Soon It's Going To Rain" composed for the musical "The Fantasticks", 1960. Recorded by Barbra Streisand, 1963: "Hear how the wind begins to whisper. See how the leaves go streaming by. Smell how the velvet rain is falling, Out where the fields are warm and dry. Now is the time to run inside and stay. Now is the time to find a hideaway Where we can stay. Soon it's gonna rain. I can see it. Soon it's gonna rain. I can tell. Soon it's gonna rain. What are we gonna do? Soon it's gonna rain. I can feel it. Soon it's gonna rain. I can tell. Soon it's gonna rain. What'll we do with you? We'll find four limbs of a tree. We'll build four walls and a floor. We'll bind it over with leaves, And run inside to stay. Then we'll let it rain. We'll not fell it. Then we'll let it rain, Rain pell-mell. And we'll not complain If it never stops at all. We'll live and love Within our own four walls. We'll find four limbs of a tree. We'll build four walls and a floor. We'll bind it over with leaves, And run inside to stay. Soon it's gonna rain. Come run inside to stay! Soon it's gonna rain. For soon it's gonna rain. I can see it. I can feel it. Run inside and... Then we'll let it rain. We'll not feel it. Then we'll let it rain. Ran pell-mell. And we'll not complain - Happy ending... If it never stops at all. Then we'll let it rain. Why complain? We'll live and love within our walls. Happily we'll live and love, No cares at all. Happily we'll live and love Within our castle walls."

⁽²⁾ Covered by Ian Matthews, Lee Hazlewood, Tim Buckley and most notably, the Eagles: further reading: Discography -> Covers

⁽³⁾ L.A.'s Troubadour: further reading: The Troubadour

⁽⁴⁾ Napoleone's Pizza House: further reading: Napoleone Pizza House