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Thursday, June 30, 2005
16 SHELLS FROM A THIRTY-OUGHT-SIX
Tom Waits
Swordfishtrombones
Island: 1983
[Buy It]
SINGAPORE
Tom Waits
Rain Dogs
Island: 1985
[Buy It]
EYEBALL KID
Tom Waits
Mule Variations
Epitaph : 1999
[Buy It]
DON'T GO INTO THAT BARN
Tom Waits
Real Gone
Epitaph : 2004
[Buy It]
Waitsian Wisdom
"Never trust a man in a blue trench coat /
Never drive a car when you're dead."
-Tom Waits, "Telephone Call from Istanbul"
The following quotes are excerpts from Innocent When You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader (drawing particularly heavily upon a penetrating 1987 Musician Magazine interview entitled "Tom Waits is Flying Upside Down (On Purpose)"), a collection of Waits interviews and articles edited by Mac Montandon, brand new from Thunder's Mouth Press.
Waits on drugs: "People who can't face drugs turn to reality."
On his voice: "You want to be able to make turns and fly upside down - but not by mistake. You want it to be a conscious decision, and to do it well. You don't want somebody to say, 'Well, he went for the bank there and lost control and he went right into the mountain and thirty-seven people died.' You want 'em to say, 'Well, he decided to take his hands off the controls and sacrifice the entire plane and its passengers. And I must say it was a spectacular flight. The explosion set off sparks that could be seen all the way to Oxnard. Remarkable.'"
On Americans: "We want to hear bad news from a pretty mouth."
On Keith Richards (who played some guitar on Rain Dogs): "An animal. He's part of the earth. I was expecting a big entourage like a Fellini movie, you know - people that don't speak English, a lot of fur. And they just tumbled out of a limo. He comes in laughing, shoes all tore up. He stands at ten after seven if you can imagine that. Arms at five o'clock, legs at two o'clock, with no apparatus, nothing suspended. He's all below the waist."
On Perrier: "The French pulled one over on us. They wash their feet in it and sell it to us for ninety-nine cents a bottle."
On the porcine muse: "With music, I mean, some people believe you're cutting off a piece of something that's alive. It's like the guy who had a prize pig with all these bandages all over it. And his neighbor asks, 'What happened to the pig?' The first guy says, "I use it for bacon. I can't kill such a beautiful pig, I just take a slice off him now and then.' So, you don't want to kill the pig."
On fear: "I'm afraid I'm gonna be walking along some day in Los Angeles and drop into a manhole, and down there's gonna be, like, five hundred unemployed bossa nova musicians and they're gonna 'Girl from Ipanema' me to death. Hasn't happened to me yet. I tried to take out some Ipanema insurance, but they won't cover you."
On celebrity culture: It's like birdwatching. 'The oriole is back at the birdbath, no crows this year.' What does that mean? We watch it like weather. We actually think the media is like cloud formations ... Fashion operates in that world. The top designers for the biggest companies go down into bad neighborhoods to find out how people are rolling their pants."
More on Keith Richards: "He's like a tree frog, an orangutan. When he plays he looks like he's been dangled from a wire that comes up through the back of his neck, and he can lean at a forty-five-degree angle and not fall over. You think he has special shoes. But maybe it's the music that's keeping him up."
On talking to the press: "To me it's a bit like talking to a cop."
On fear abroad: "Actually the only thing I'm afraid of over here in London is ... I'm afraid when the moon is high and my hotel room is dark, that I'm gonna start sprouting cameras round my neck, and my trench coat is gonna turn into a flowered shirt, my black slacks are gonna turn into Bermuda shorts. I'm gonna grow some white socks and wing tips that look like old Pontiacs. Then, right next to me is going to sprout a wife, and she's going to be growing larger and larger till she's overweight and she's got bovine perspiration on her upper lip area, and a see-yourself shine on her forehead, and her feet hurt, she's trying to find a travel brochure and a cigarette, and she wants to sit down, and ... that hasn't happened yet. Been pretty lucky."
On being a professional musician: "It's like throwing yourself out of a window. If you don't make any progress, it's kind of embarassing."
On Jack Nicholson: "He's a badass. He lives in the ether, he walks like a spider. Got great taste. He knows about everything from beauty parlors to train guards. He'll kick your ass, he's a giant. He's got himself a place on the board of directors historically, and he does it with his feet. You see him and you know it's not like watching a wild horse. He knows what he's doing. He's like a centaur."
On things he associates with Barry Manilow: "Expensive furniture and clothes you don't feel good in."
On first things: "You know where they say in Genesis that man was made from clay? Now they're saying that clay, genetically, contains all the information of every life form. It's all in the clay. You hit it with a hammer, a light comes from it. They've done experiments with Egyptian pottery made on a wheel thousands of years ago - they play the plates backwarks and receive a recording, a very primitive recording of what took place in the room. Your ghosts. So, I'll buy that."
On the Replacements: "I like their stance. They're question marks. I saw them at the Variety Arts Center downtown; I liked their show. I particularly like the insect ritual going on at the foot of the stage. There was this guy trying to climb up, and they kept throwing him back, like a carp. No, you can't get in the boat! It was like something out of Mondo Cane."
On career and family: "It's like having two dogs that hate each other and you have to take them for a walk every night."
Closing advice: "Watch out for falling rocks and eighteen-wheel vehicles. Watch out for the clap. Watch out for sixteen-year-old girls wearing bell bottoms who are running away from home and have a lot of Blue Oyster Cult albums under their arm. Be careful of that ... If you got to the Tropicana Hotel, watch out for Chuck E. Weiss, 'cause he'll sell you a rat's asshole for a wedding ring. Watch out for Martin Mull. He'll punch-line you to death."
posted by Brian
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