Music Banter - View Single Post - The Playlist of Life --- Trollheart's resurrected Journal

Trollheart · 02-01-2015, 02:34 PM

”Probably see someone you know on Heartattack and Vine" croaks Waits in the title track, and perhaps you can. Maybe they're one of those ”Pedal pushers suckin' on a soda pop" or the woman being left sleeping as her lover steals away in “Ruby's arms”, or maybe even the guy who warns “If I can find a book of matches/ I'm gonna burn this hotel down” in “Mr. Siegal". For this album Waits created another cast of characters, all stumbling through their lives and trying to do the best they can, while grabbing what little happiness or shelter they could on the way. It was two years later, and four years into the Waits golden era, when he came up with this gem, which would lead to his songs being covered by a real icon and also to a protracted legal battle over the use of one of them. It was also the year he would part company with his longtime record label.

Heartattack and Vine --- 1980 (Asylum)

One thing --- one of the many things --- I love about this album is the cover. From the start, Waits has always been on the album sleeve. Sometimes looking a little the worse for wear, but here he's in a hell of a state. On one of the monologues on Nighthawks at the Diner, Waits growls that someone once commented “Christ Waits, you look so raggedy!” And here he does. He actually looks like he has been pulled through the proverbial bush backwards. Even though he's wearing a tuxedo, it looks as if someone dressed him when he was asleep or drunk or both, and he woke up, took one look at his reflection and said “What the hell am I doing in this monkey suit?”

But the picture aside, the sleeve is very clever as I have already mentioned when I featured this, way back when, as one of the “Secret life of the album cover” slots. It's presented like a newspaper, with the titles of some of the songs showing as the headlines, and underneath each are snippets of the lyrics to those songs, written like clippings with a reference to the city in which the song is set. Really innovative, and you can spend some time reading the cover and getting a whole lot more out of it than you would have expected. But that's the cover. What about the music on the disc inside?

We open on the title track, and somehow there's a kind of honking guitar, which takes the first two bars of the song in before the vocal begins. Waits sings in a somewhat scratchier, and slightly higher register voice than he has up to now, though this album would see him try out several new vocal techniques and show just how versatile that sandpaper larynx was. He continues the kind of travelogue lyric he displayed on some of the songs on Nighthawks as he takes a trip down Hollywood and Vine, renamed for the song, and points out the various characters --- ”See that little Jersey girl with the see-through top?” and ”Doctor, lawyer, beggarman, thief” --- yes, all of human life is again on display in all its fragility and vulnerability.

The song mostly continues on the same chords, apart from the bridge, where it changes very slightly --- well, it could be a chorus: hard to say with Waits, as he seldom sticks to any musical rules and often makes his own up. It's a hard-rockin' tune though, probably the most in-your-face we've heard since, well, ever. It's almost a total change of style, from the breezy devil-may-care attitude of “Romeo is bleeding” or the maniacal killing spree in “Wrong side of the road”. You can just see him with his hands in his pockets, (at this stage he was getting his drinking under control, so let's assume his character has managed to kick the bottle too) strolling down the street, stopping under a lamppost to adjust his hat and light up a cigarette, grin at some girl across the road and saunter on.

This is, to my knowledge (I'd have to check back but I think I'm right) the first time Waits has mentioned or brought God into his songs (other than exclamations like “Christ!” of course), and when he does it's not as a bible-thumper --- you'd never have expected that anyway --- but with a sly wink and a dry joke at his expense. ”Don't you know there ain't no devil?” he grins. ”That's just God when he's drunk!” Love that line. This is the song that led to that lawsuit I spoke of in the introduction. Levi's used a cover of this by “Screamin'” Jay Hawkins, who had given them permission to, but Waits was not so sanguine about the idea. Someone who does not like his music being used to sell products, Waits took a case against Levis and won. Since then you won't find his music in any advertisements.

Some great trumpet in this too, adds to the sort of raw feel of it as Waits snarls ”This stuff'll probably kill ya/ Let's do another line.” It's followed by an instrumental which could have come off The heart of Saturday night, as “In shades” envisions him in a club where nobody is really listening to him, and he's playing background music against which people have their conversations and drink their drinks. There's some great Hammond organ from Ronnie Barron and some fine, laidback guitar too. I like the idea he's gone for, where you hear, in between the bars, people talking and glasses clinking, and when the song ends there's the barest smattering of applause. Clever too, how they applaud when the song hits a false ending. Very jazzy, and it leads into the first of four ballads, which I think may be the most he's had on any one album to this point.

“Saving all my love for you” is driven by Bob Alcivar's beautiful orchestral work again, the man having become something of a permanent fixture on Waits albums since he wrote the music for “Potter's Field” on Foreign affairs. Pealing churchbells pull the tune in then are absorbed very cleverly into the actual melody as Waits's piano takes over. He sings of an early morning when "No-one in this town/ Is makin' any noise/ But the dogs, and the milkmen and me.” It's back to his familiar rough drawl as he admits ”I'd come home/ But I'm afraid that you won't/ Take me back.” The song also contains one of my alltime favourite Waits lines (this album has three, one of which I've already mentioned) when he sings ”I'll probably get arrested/ When I'm in my grave.” Did a line ever encompass a man's reputation so perfectly before?

It's a beautiful ballad, relatively short, and then the tempo picks up a little on the organ-driven “Downtown” which kicks its heels along with a sort of sullen pleasure, dragging its feet and shaking its head. Some good boogie guitar joins the organ and the whole thing has a swagger about it, then the next one is one of perhaps his most famous, having been covered by Springsteen. With a simple acoustic guitar and bass, “Jersey girl” is an uncomplicated song of young love, as Waits declares ”Nothing else matters in/ This whole wide world/ When you're in love/ With a Jersey girl.” Some lovely orchestral strings swelling up through the chorus here too. Wonderful song.

And from a heartfelt love song we're on the other side of the coin as Waits sneers ”Baby I'll stay with you/ Till the money runs out” launching into the song with lowdown dirty delight as he sings ”Bye bye baby/ Baby bye bye!” Again the organ plays a prominent part in this mid-paced rocker, though so too does the bass from Larry Taylor. If anyone knows what “on the nickel” means, please let me know. I think it refers to social welfare? Anyway, it's the title of the next track, another beautiful ballad, which just shows how Waits can swing from cynical user to concerned observer, as with the backing of Alcivar's lush strings again he opens with another nursery rhyme snippet --- ”Stick and stones/ Will break my bones” --- and sings a lullaby to his child. Piano threads through the song, as does more folk rhymes --- ”Better bring a bucket/ There's a hole in the pail/ If you don't get my letters/ You'll know that I'm in jail.”

Even with this tender ballad under his belt, the best is yet to come in the closer. Waits drops his register even lower for the second part of the song, which gives it a rougher, rawer feel, then he switches from high to low as the song progresses. More nursery rhymes corrupted as he sings ”Ring around the roses/ Sleeping in the rain”. Then he warns ”The world just keep on getting bigger/ Once you get out on your own.” It's hard to choose a standout, as so many of the songs could qualify, but “Mr. Siegal” does contain another of my favourite lines, when he growls "How do the angels get to sleep/ When the devil leaves/ The porchlight on?” It's another bluesy, rocky tune with a scratchy vocal from Waits, scratchy guitar and warbling organ, moving the song along in a mid-paced swaying rhythm. With the references to casinos and the title presumably nodding to the famous gangster who built Las Vegas, it seems to be a song about a guy losing his shirt and trying to make it out of the city. Waits even tips his battered hat to The King when he sings ”One for the money/ Two for the show/ Three to get ready/ Now go man go!”

He has in fact saved the best for last. One more heartsqueezing ballad before we're out, and it's one of his best. “Ruby's arms” is the story of a man leaving his sleeping lover and stealing away in the early hours of the morning. As if he's spent himself with the rest of the album, Waits's voice is low and soft here (or perhaps he doesn't want to wake Ruby) and almost breaking with emotion as he tries to tear himself from her --- ”The only thing I'm taking is/ The scarf off of your clothesline” --- his piano and the orchestra combining beautifully to end the album on the very gentlest of closers, and prove once again that Waits can turn his hand to anything: he can make you cry, laugh, shock and scare you, open your eyes to a pitiless, unforgiving world or draw you into a secret, safe place where you can hide for a while. A true artist who has never compromised his art, and hopefully never will.

TRACKLISTING

1. Heartattack and Vine
2. In shades
3. Saving all my love for you
4. Downtown
5. Jersey girl
6. Till the money runs out
7. On the nickel
8. Mr. Siegal
9. Ruby's arms

Like “Foreign Affairs”, this album has a mere nine tracks, though just about every one is gold. The previous album had ten, but from this on in Waits's albums would be much longer, culminating in the triple box set “Orphans: Bawlers, Brawlers and Bastards” which would feature no less than fifty-six new tracks. That's not till 2006 though, and there are eleven more albums to go before we reach that, the next one being his first full movie soundtrack and a collaboration with a Country music superstar and legend.

02-01-2015, 02:34 PM	#2655 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,971	”Probably see someone you know on Heartattack and Vine" croaks Waits in the title track, and perhaps you can. Maybe they're one of those ”Pedal pushers suckin' on a soda pop" or the woman being left sleeping as her lover steals away in “Ruby's arms”, or maybe even the guy who warns “If I can find a book of matches/ I'm gonna burn this hotel down” in “Mr. Siegal". For this album Waits created another cast of characters, all stumbling through their lives and trying to do the best they can, while grabbing what little happiness or shelter they could on the way. It was two years later, and four years into the Waits golden era, when he came up with this gem, which would lead to his songs being covered by a real icon and also to a protracted legal battle over the use of one of them. It was also the year he would part company with his longtime record label. Heartattack and Vine --- 1980 (Asylum) One thing --- one of the many things --- I love about this album is the cover. From the start, Waits has always been on the album sleeve. Sometimes looking a little the worse for wear, but here he's in a hell of a state. On one of the monologues on Nighthawks at the Diner, Waits growls that someone once commented “Christ Waits, you look so raggedy!” And here he does. He actually looks like he has been pulled through the proverbial bush backwards. Even though he's wearing a tuxedo, it looks as if someone dressed him when he was asleep or drunk or both, and he woke up, took one look at his reflection and said “What the hell am I doing in this monkey suit?” But the picture aside, the sleeve is very clever as I have already mentioned when I featured this, way back when, as one of the “Secret life of the album cover” slots. It's presented like a newspaper, with the titles of some of the songs showing as the headlines, and underneath each are snippets of the lyrics to those songs, written like clippings with a reference to the city in which the song is set. Really innovative, and you can spend some time reading the cover and getting a whole lot more out of it than you would have expected. But that's the cover. What about the music on the disc inside? We open on the title track, and somehow there's a kind of honking guitar, which takes the first two bars of the song in before the vocal begins. Waits sings in a somewhat scratchier, and slightly higher register voice than he has up to now, though this album would see him try out several new vocal techniques and show just how versatile that sandpaper larynx was. He continues the kind of travelogue lyric he displayed on some of the songs on Nighthawks as he takes a trip down Hollywood and Vine, renamed for the song, and points out the various characters --- ”See that little Jersey girl with the see-through top?” and ”Doctor, lawyer, beggarman, thief” --- yes, all of human life is again on display in all its fragility and vulnerability. The song mostly continues on the same chords, apart from the bridge, where it changes very slightly --- well, it could be a chorus: hard to say with Waits, as he seldom sticks to any musical rules and often makes his own up. It's a hard-rockin' tune though, probably the most in-your-face we've heard since, well, ever. It's almost a total change of style, from the breezy devil-may-care attitude of “Romeo is bleeding” or the maniacal killing spree in “Wrong side of the road”. You can just see him with his hands in his pockets, (at this stage he was getting his drinking under control, so let's assume his character has managed to kick the bottle too) strolling down the street, stopping under a lamppost to adjust his hat and light up a cigarette, grin at some girl across the road and saunter on. This is, to my knowledge (I'd have to check back but I think I'm right) the first time Waits has mentioned or brought God into his songs (other than exclamations like “Christ!” of course), and when he does it's not as a bible-thumper --- you'd never have expected that anyway --- but with a sly wink and a dry joke at his expense. ”Don't you know there ain't no devil?” he grins. ”That's just God when he's drunk!” Love that line. This is the song that led to that lawsuit I spoke of in the introduction. Levi's used a cover of this by “Screamin'” Jay Hawkins, who had given them permission to, but Waits was not so sanguine about the idea. Someone who does not like his music being used to sell products, Waits took a case against Levis and won. Since then you won't find his music in any advertisements. Some great trumpet in this too, adds to the sort of raw feel of it as Waits snarls ”This stuff'll probably kill ya/ Let's do another line.” It's followed by an instrumental which could have come off The heart of Saturday night, as “In shades” envisions him in a club where nobody is really listening to him, and he's playing background music against which people have their conversations and drink their drinks. There's some great Hammond organ from Ronnie Barron and some fine, laidback guitar too. I like the idea he's gone for, where you hear, in between the bars, people talking and glasses clinking, and when the song ends there's the barest smattering of applause. Clever too, how they applaud when the song hits a false ending. Very jazzy, and it leads into the first of four ballads, which I think may be the most he's had on any one album to this point. “Saving all my love for you” is driven by Bob Alcivar's beautiful orchestral work again, the man having become something of a permanent fixture on Waits albums since he wrote the music for “Potter's Field” on Foreign affairs. Pealing churchbells pull the tune in then are absorbed very cleverly into the actual melody as Waits's piano takes over. He sings of an early morning when "No-one in this town/ Is makin' any noise/ But the dogs, and the milkmen and me.” It's back to his familiar rough drawl as he admits ”I'd come home/ But I'm afraid that you won't/ Take me back.” The song also contains one of my alltime favourite Waits lines (this album has three, one of which I've already mentioned) when he sings ”I'll probably get arrested/ When I'm in my grave.” Did a line ever encompass a man's reputation so perfectly before? It's a beautiful ballad, relatively short, and then the tempo picks up a little on the organ-driven “Downtown” which kicks its heels along with a sort of sullen pleasure, dragging its feet and shaking its head. Some good boogie guitar joins the organ and the whole thing has a swagger about it, then the next one is one of perhaps his most famous, having been covered by Springsteen. With a simple acoustic guitar and bass, “Jersey girl” is an uncomplicated song of young love, as Waits declares ”Nothing else matters in/ This whole wide world/ When you're in love/ With a Jersey girl.” Some lovely orchestral strings swelling up through the chorus here too. Wonderful song. And from a heartfelt love song we're on the other side of the coin as Waits sneers ”Baby I'll stay with you/ Till the money runs out” launching into the song with lowdown dirty delight as he sings ”Bye bye baby/ Baby bye bye!” Again the organ plays a prominent part in this mid-paced rocker, though so too does the bass from Larry Taylor. If anyone knows what “on the nickel” means, please let me know. I think it refers to social welfare? Anyway, it's the title of the next track, another beautiful ballad, which just shows how Waits can swing from cynical user to concerned observer, as with the backing of Alcivar's lush strings again he opens with another nursery rhyme snippet --- ”Stick and stones/ Will break my bones” --- and sings a lullaby to his child. Piano threads through the song, as does more folk rhymes --- ”Better bring a bucket/ There's a hole in the pail/ If you don't get my letters/ You'll know that I'm in jail.” Even with this tender ballad under his belt, the best is yet to come in the closer. Waits drops his register even lower for the second part of the song, which gives it a rougher, rawer feel, then he switches from high to low as the song progresses. More nursery rhymes corrupted as he sings ”Ring around the roses/ Sleeping in the rain”. Then he warns ”The world just keep on getting bigger/ Once you get out on your own.” It's hard to choose a standout, as so many of the songs could qualify, but “Mr. Siegal” does contain another of my favourite lines, when he growls "How do the angels get to sleep/ When the devil leaves/ The porchlight on?” It's another bluesy, rocky tune with a scratchy vocal from Waits, scratchy guitar and warbling organ, moving the song along in a mid-paced swaying rhythm. With the references to casinos and the title presumably nodding to the famous gangster who built Las Vegas, it seems to be a song about a guy losing his shirt and trying to make it out of the city. Waits even tips his battered hat to The King when he sings ”One for the money/ Two for the show/ Three to get ready/ Now go man go!” He has in fact saved the best for last. One more heartsqueezing ballad before we're out, and it's one of his best. “Ruby's arms” is the story of a man leaving his sleeping lover and stealing away in the early hours of the morning. As if he's spent himself with the rest of the album, Waits's voice is low and soft here (or perhaps he doesn't want to wake Ruby) and almost breaking with emotion as he tries to tear himself from her --- ”The only thing I'm taking is/ The scarf off of your clothesline” --- his piano and the orchestra combining beautifully to end the album on the very gentlest of closers, and prove once again that Waits can turn his hand to anything: he can make you cry, laugh, shock and scare you, open your eyes to a pitiless, unforgiving world or draw you into a secret, safe place where you can hide for a while. A true artist who has never compromised his art, and hopefully never will. TRACKLISTING 1. Heartattack and Vine 2. In shades 3. Saving all my love for you 4. Downtown 5. Jersey girl 6. Till the money runs out 7. On the nickel 8. Mr. Siegal 9. Ruby's arms Like “Foreign Affairs”, this album has a mere nine tracks, though just about every one is gold. The previous album had ten, but from this on in Waits's albums would be much longer, culminating in the triple box set “Orphans: Bawlers, Brawlers and Bastards” which would feature no less than fifty-six new tracks. That's not till 2006 though, and there are eleven more albums to go before we reach that, the next one being his first full movie soundtrack and a collaboration with a Country music superstar and legend. __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018