While I wait impatiently for a new Waits album (come on, Tom! It’s going on for three years now! Stop teasing us!) I thought I’d fill the gap by returning to the section where I examine the genius of the man through his lyrics. I’ve said before that Waits makes his characters come alive in the music, but they’re never, or seldom ever, heroes. Almost exclusively male, they’re the downtrodden, the deadbeat and the drunk, the disaffected and the disenfranchised, and lots of other things beginning with “d”. They wander, stagger or limp through the cityscapes he paints for them, sitting on a damp park bench at night in some forgotten corner, sucking cheap supermarket whiskey from a bottle wrapped in brown paper, staring out the grimy windows of a nineteenth-floor apartment dreaming of freedom while trying to ignore the squalling of their three children and the incessant nagging of their wives, or staging a badly-planned and doomed bank heist.
They hardly ever win, there are no happy endings for them and few if any have ever seen, much less lived in, a house with a picket fence. They mostly believe in God, not because they want to, or have faith, but just because most of the time they’re too depressed or drunk to care. They only go into churches when it’s raining and they need somewhere to wait out the night --- but usually get thrown out by priests who have had enough of their using the church as a sanctuary --- really! Was that how God intended his house to be used? --- and if they see a woman on the street they may mumble and tip their battered hat, but that’s about as far as interaction with the opposite sex goes for them. They have no time for love. Love is for those who have houses, jobs, families, money. Love is not a part of their world.
And yet, from time to time we will get glimpses of a somewhat settled life for some of these characters. The dude in “Shore leave”, who hates being apart from his baby. The woman selling the “Soldier’s things”. And this one.
Frank’s wild years, from “Swordfishtrombones”, 1983 (Island)
Coincidence perhaps that this selection begins exactly as the previous one did, with a track from his first album for Island, having left Asylum Records, with whom he shared seven years, and the first he produced himself. The interesting thing about this track is that it would form the title and theme for his ninth album, which would also use the name for a play Waits would write, and on which the album would be based. But that was all four years in the future, and it’s on this album that we first meet Frank.
He’s a settled guy, married but with no kids, living in the suburbs and hating it. He has a unique way of dealing with this: he burns down his house. Now, I am not in any way --- nor I believe was Waits --- advocating you burn down your house and drive off, but taken as a microcosm of Middle American society and the pressures of living up to being a resident of Suburbia, it’s darkly hilarious. Espcially the last line. Waits talks about his wife’s dog, some sort of chihuahua that is blind. At the end he grins “Never could stand that dog!”
The thing about this song is that you really don’t see it coming. Waits talks about Frank’s life ---
”They were so happy” --- how he’s doing well ---
”He sold used office furniture down San Fernando Road” --- though he does give us a little clue in the opening line, when he talks about Frank driving a nail through his wife’s forehead, but we’re meant I think to believe that’s metaphorical. The tone of the song remains exactly the same as Frank hits his crisis and burns down the house: Waits speaks the entire song in the same drab, bored voice someone would use who was reading uninteresting information from a cue card. You almost miss the transition. One minute he’s talking about a supposedly happily-married and well-adjusted man, the next he’s describing an arsonist who has obviously snapped.
It's not made clear in the song whether or not Frank’s wife and dog are in the house when it burns, but I tend to think they are. Acting completely normally, Frank watches the house burn ---
”All Halloween orange and chimney red” --- then heads off for his new life, putting on a top forty station as he disappears down the Hollywood Freeway.
”Frank settled down in the Valley, and he hung his wild years on a nail that he drove through his
wife's forehead.
He sold used office furniture out there on San Fernando Road and assumed a $30,000 loan at 15 1/4 % and put a down payment on a little two bedroom place.
His wife was a spent piece of used jet trash; made good Bloody Marys, kept her mouth shut most of the time, had a little Chihuahua named Carlos that had some kind of skin disease and was totally blind.
They had a thoroughly modern kitchen; self-cleaning oven (the whole bit)
Frank drove a little sedan.
They were so happy.
One night Frank was on his way home from work, stopped at the liquor store,
picked up a couple of Mickey's Big Mouth’s.
Drank 'em in the car on his way to the Shell station; got a gallon of gas in a can.
Drove home, doused everything in the house: torched it.
Parked across the street laughing, watching it burn, all Halloween orange and chimney red.
And Frank put on a top forty station, got on the Hollywood Freeway and headed North.
Never could stand that dog.”
Childen’s story, from “Orphans: brawlers, bawlers and bastards”, 2006 (ANTI-)
Based on German playwright Georg Buchner’s play “Woyzeck”, about which I admit I know nothing, this is a tiny little song, not even two minutes long, and again it’s one on which Waits speaks the vocal rather than sings. It’s meant to be a lullaby, but remember this is Waits, so expect it to be dark and not have a happy ending. You can also just about picture him perched on the edge of his grandson, godson or friend’s child’s bed, turning away and trying to dispel the smoke from his cigar while also attempting to get his whiskey cough under control as he relates this “charming little tale” about a boy’s adventures in space.
To be honest, as I say I have no idea what “Woyzeck” is about, but a quick Wiki search tells me it’s about the “dehumanising effects of doctors”. What exactly that has to do with this nightmarish fairy tale is anyone’s guess, but it’s a story not exactly guaranteed to ensure sweet dreams for children that’s for sure. Recommend you do not tell it to your kids, unless you want them to be sleeping in with you tonight again!
A note on the album (one day I must review this): it’s a three-disc, three-hour compilation of some rare and unfinished and unused songs Waits wrote over the years, as he says himself:
“ A lot of songs that fell behind the stove while making dinner, about 60 tunes that we collected. Some are from films, some from compilations. Some is stuff that didn't fit on a record, things I recorded in the garage with kids. Oddball things, orphaned tunes”
”Once upon a time there was a poor child, with no father and no mother,
And everything was dead
And no one was left in the whole world;
Everything was dead.
And the child went on a search, day and night;
And since nobody was left on the Earth,
He wanted to go up into the Heavens
And the Moon was looking at him so friendly.
And when he finally got to the Moon,
the Moon was a piece of rotten wood.
And then he went to the Sun.
And when he got there, the Sun was a wilted sunflower.
And when he got to the stars, they were little golden flies.
Stuck up there, like the shrike sticks 'em on a blackthorn.
And when he wanted to go back, down to Earth,
the earth was an overturned piss pot.
And he was all alone, and he sat down and he cried.
And he is there till this day,
All alone.
Okay, there's your story!
Night-night!”
The piano has been drinking, from “Small change”, 1976 (Asylum)
To be able to play the piano is a real feat: I know, I’ve tried. And failed. But to be able to play the piano badly, deliberately? Well, that takes real talent. If you’ve never heard this song before you need to click the video above to see what I mean. Waits plays the piano as if he, and it, are drunk --- hitting bum notes, making the wrong key change, and so on --- which perfectly complements the lyric. That talks about a man who is so drunk he won’t admit he is, and blames it on everything else: the guy who says “why is this room spinning?” and doesn’t realise that it’s only for him that it moves. It’s hilarious, sad in its way, but total genius as ever.
He references things we all think when we’re drunk --- well, I don’t drink but I know the sort of thing:
You can’t find your waitress with a geiger counter/ And she hates you and your friends/ And you just can’t get served without her” and those times when
”The spotlight looks like a prison break”. Everything is anthropomorphised, as he tells us the carpet needs a haircut, the telephone is out of cigarettes and his necktie is asleep. And of course at the end the plaintive cry
”The piano has been drinking … not me.” Pure, 100 percent, 24 carat genius.
”The piano has been drinking;
My necktie is asleep.
And the combo went back to New York,
The jukebox has to take a leak.
And the carpet needs a haircut,
And the spotlight looks like a prison break.
'Cause the telephone's out of cigarettes
And the balcony is on the make.
And the piano has been drinking.
The piano has been drinking.
And the menus are all freezing;
And the light man's blind in one eye
And he can't see out of the other.
And the piano-tuner's got a hearing aid
And he showed up with his mother.
And the piano has been drinking.
The piano has been drinking.
'Cause the bouncer is a sumo wrestler:
Cream puff Casper Milquetoast.
And the owner is a mental midget
With the I.Q. of a fencepost.
'Cause the piano has been drinking.
The piano has been drinking.
And you can't find your waitress
With a geiger counter
And she hates you and your friends
And you just can't get served without her.
And the box-office is drooling
And the bar stools are on fire.
And the newspapers were fooling
And the ash-trays have retired
'Cause the piano has been drinking.
The piano has been drinking.
The piano has been drinking.
Not me, not me, not me, not me, not me.”