In the course of writing the section “More than words”, I've thought frequently about including some of Tom Waits' songs. How could I not? The man is a genius, and almost everything that flows from his pen is pure gold! He has at once some of the most obscure and deep lyrics you could ever come across. Many of his songs seem not to make sense on one level, but if examined deeply and with enough insight they become clear. Sometimes. Others are just A-level weird. But one thing about his songs is that they are always well written: he doesn't commit lyrics to paper that are banal or mundane.
So of course I'd want to showcase some of his writing in that section. The only problem is, which ones? And how would I resist the temptation to feature one of his
every time? Surely there could be only one solution: start a separate section to cover his lyrics. And here it is.
In this section I'll be (of course) discussing the genius of Tom Waits, featuring three songs of his and reproducing both the video and the lyrics, talking extensively about the latter, and trying to give you a real appreciation for the ridiculous amount of talent this man has. We're going to start off with something that is in fact live, and was never on any studio album. Taken from the 1975 album “Nighthawks at the diner”, the album itself is something of an oddity, being recorded as it was in a studio, Record Plant in New York, but the studio having been setup like a bar, and the performance taped live. Although listening to it it sounds impromptu and ad-lib, the whole thing was actually rehearsed before the band got on stage, as it were.
On the album, Waits spends plenty of time in between tracks telling little anecdotes, sometimes to do with the songs, sometimes not, but it's all extremely entertaining, and though the music is fantastic, sometimes the introductions --- or intermissions if you like --- are even moreso. None of the tracks on this album ever surfaced on a studio Waits album, since or after, so this is the only place you get to hear such excellent compositions as “Emotional weather report”, “Nobody” and “Warm beer and cold women”.
The one I want to concentrate on, though, to open this section, is a song many women may take offence at, but it's all meant in fun, so don't be too hard on the guy. You'll understand what I mean when you hear the title: “Better off without a wife.”
Better off without a wife, from “Nighthawks at the diner”, 1975 (Asylum)
The song is a piano based blues/jazz melody wherein Waits extols the virtues of being single. You can go where you want, when you want, no-one's on your case. He talks about his friends, who are all married, and how he doesn't want to be like them. Of course, he only looks at one side of the argument, but it's a great funny little song at its heart, and if you leave any simmering outrage at the door, you'll realise he's only singing about what we all think of from time to time, single, married or divorced.
Here's the lyric.
All my friends are married: every Tom and Dick and Harry:
you must be strong if you're to go it alone.
Here's to the bachelors and the bowery bums
And those who feel that they're the ones
Who are better off without a wife.
[CHORUS]
I like to sleep until the crack of noon:
Midnight howlin' at the moon.
Goin' out when I wanna, comin' home when I please.
I don't have to ask permission if I want to go out fishin':
And I never have to ask for the keys.
Never been no Valentino but I had a girl who lived in Reno
Left me for a trumpet player, but it didn't get me down.
He was wanted for assault though he said it weren't his fault.
You know, the cops they rode him right out of town.
[CHORUS]
Selfish about my privacy; as long as I can be with me
We get along so well I can't believe.
I love to chew the fat with folks and listen to all your dirty jokes.
I'm so thankful for these friends I do receive.
The next one I want to share with you is from his album “Rain dogs”, and it's a track entitled “9th and Hennepin”. I guess it's purely coincidental that “Rain dogs” is his ninth album, but the track itself is written about real-life events, as is much of the imagery on the album. It's quite odd in that it has no real verse or chorus structure, and Waits does not sing it. It's more like drawled poetry behind a very discordant piano, wailing clarinet, double-bass and marimba, and you get the feel of looking out of grime-encrusted, yellow windows out onto rain-washed streets at night. The song is spoken in one continuous verse, though he does take breath a few times to allow the piano to carry the tune.
Waits described the inspiration for the song thus:
“Most of the imagery is from New York. It's just that I was on 9th and Hennepin years ago in the middle of a pimp war, and 9th and Hennepin always stuck in my mind. "There's trouble at 9th and Hennepin." To this day I'm sure there continues to be trouble at 9th and Hennepin. At this donut shop. They were playing "Our Day Will Come" by Dinah Washington when these three 12-year-old pimps came in in chinchilla coats armed with knives and, uh, forks and spoons and ladles and they started throwing them out in the streets. Which was answered by live ammunition over their heads into our booth. And I knew "Our Day Was Here." I remember the names of all the donuts: cherry twist, lime rickey. But mostly I was thinking of the guy going back to Philadelphia from Manhattan on the Metroliner with The New York Times, looking out the window in New York as he pulls out of the station, imagining all the terrible things he doesn't have to be a part of.”
(Transcribed verbatim from Wikipedia article)
9th and Hennepin, from “Rain dogs”, 1985 (Island)
It's typical of the sort of social commentary Waits puts into his songs. But he never seems to do this to be seen as controversial, or to be noticed, or praised for his cleverness. The lyrics seem to be written in a genuine, honest attempt to bring someone's plight to the attention of the masses. You can always imagine Waits staggering along a dark street, raincoat pulled tight across his scrawny chest, a half-empty bottle of whiskey clutched in his bony hand, shouting at and haranguing everyone he meets in a slurred, drunken voice. Like some inebriated prophet of the sidewalk, Waits always seems to not only write for the common man, or woman, but to be right down there among them. As I once said about Nick Cave, he's kind of the patron saint of the dispossessed.
Anyway, here's the lyric, poem, prose, call it what you will. What can't be denied though, is that it is genius, on every level.
Well it's 9th and Hennepin, and all the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes.
And the moon's teethmarks are on the sky like a tarp thrown over all this
And the broken umbrellas like dead birds,
And the steam comes out of the grill like the whole goddamned town is ready to blow.
And the bricks are all scarred with jailhouse tattoos, and everyone is behaving like dogs.
And the horses are coming down Violin Road, and Dutch is dead on his feet.
And the rooms all smell like diesel and you take on the dreams of the ones who have slept here.
And I'm lost in the window; I hide on the stairway, I hang in the curtain and I sleep in your hat.
And no one brings anything small into a bar around here:
They all started out with bad directions.
And the girl behind the counter has a tattooed tear:
“One for every year he's away” she said.
Such a crumbling beauty --- ah there's nothin' wrong with her that a hundred dollars won't fix.
She has that razor sadness that only gets worse with the clang and thunder of the Southern Pacific going by.
And the clock ticks out like a dripping faucet till you're full of rag water and bitters and blue ruin
And you spill out over the side to anyone who'll listen.
And I've seen it all, I've seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train.
Waits also has this uncanny ability to tap into the wanderer, the restless dreamer in all of us, and nowhere is this more perfectly demonstrated than in the tragic tale told in “Burma-Shave”. It's a piano-led song, almost a ballad, about a girl who hooks up with a mysterious stranger who rolls into town one day on his way through. Tired of waiting for something to happen, the girl decides to leave with him and seek out the fabled better life waiting just out of reach. But of course, never one to let fantasy outlive reality, Waits has them involved in a pileup and killed.
Yes, it's a morose song, but very realistic, and sadly probably true of many of the “wild ones” who thought they were indestructible. Waits tells the story of how the name of the song came about thus (this is from memory, so I may not get it right: I think it comes from a radio interview): “When I was growin' up and we'd go out driving with my father we'd keep passing these signs, they'd say things like “Food and gas up ahead --- Burma Shave!” And I thought Burma Shave was a place. Never realised it was just a shaving product till I grew up. I was really upset, thinking “Never gonna live there, Tom!”
Burma-Shave, from “Foreign affairs”, 1977 (Asylum)
The song is really almost a one-man-show. Waits plays the piano, sings the vocal and the only other accompaniment is right at the end, with a plaintive sax break. In many ways an introspective song, it's certainly gritty and full of realism, and yet there's no moral here. Waits doesn't make the point that maybe the girl should have stayed at home instead of going off on what she hoped would be an adventure. Similarly, he doesn't say that she was right to do what she did, even though it cost both her and the boy their lives. In the end, there
is no right or wrong. People are people, they'll do stupid, impulsive things, but if they didn't, then they wouldn't be people.
Waits takes the role of observer, narrator and does not take sides in the story. His voice is not sad as he describes the car crash and the resultant death (or deaths; we assume the boy dies, but only the girl is mentioned as being “pulled from the wreck”. It's also not confirmed she is dead, though it's assumed to be the case) but almost philosophical, a musical shrug that hey, these things happen, and it's tragic, but that's life.
And here's the lyric:
Liquorice tattoo turned a gun metal blue scrawled across the shoulders of a dying town.
The one-eyed jacks across the railroad tracks and the scar on its belly pulled a stranger passing through.
He's a juvenile delinquent: never learned how to behave ---
But the cops would never think to look in Burma-Shave.
The road was like a ribbon and the moon was like a bone:
He didn't seem to be like any guy she'd ever known.
Kinda looked like Farley Granger with his hair slicked back;
She says “I'm a sucker for a fella in a cowboy hat. How far are you going?”
He said “Depends on what you mean.” He says “I'm only stopping here to get some gasoline.”
He says “I guess I'm going thataway, just as long as it's paved:
I guess you'd say I'm on my way to Burma-Shave.”
And with her knees up on the glove compartment she took out her barrettes
And her hair spilled out like rootbeer and she popped her gum, and arched her back.
“Hell, Marysville ain't nothing but a wide spot in the road:
Some nights my heart pounds just like thunder: don't know why it don't explode.
Cause everyone in this stinking town has got one foot in the grave
And I'd rather take my chances out in Burma-Shave.
Presley's what I go by: why don't you change the station?
Count the grain elevators in the rearview mirror.”
She said, “Mister, anywhere you point this thing has got to beat the hell out of the sting
Of going to bed with every dream that dies here every mornin'.
So drill me a hole with a barber pole.
I'm jumping my parole just like a fugitive at night.
Why don't you have another swig?
Pass that car if you're so brave?
I wanna get there before the sun comes up in Burma-Shave.”
The spider web crack and the mustang scream:
Smoke from the tyres and the twisted machine.
Just a nickel's worth of dreams; every wishbone that they saved
Lie swindled from them on the way to Burma-Shave.
The sun hit the derrick and cast a bat wing shadow up against the car door on the shotgun side.
And when they pulled her from the wreck you know she still had on her shades.
They say that dreams are growing wild just this side of Burma-Shave.
If the songs above prove anything, it's that, excellent as Tom Waits' music is, it's his lyrics that truly characterise his songs, give them heart and life. The man is a poet, and puts that poetry to music. But it's not airy-fairy poetry: it's the poetry of the streets, the words of the ordinary man, the view from the gutter. He has a way of framing the most mundane settings and objects in a way few others can, allowing us to see through the eyes of the characters in his songs, feel what they feel, dream what they dream and understand in the way only they can.
He allows us to put on their shoes, and we walk the grimy streets he has painted for them, live their lives and experience what they go through. It can be a scary process, but it's always worthwhile.
It's a rare talent, and almost a lost art, but as long as Waits is around, it won't be lost just yet.