“You say I have no hits – and you say it as if it were something bad.” So Tom Waits took stock of his career when he was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ten years ago. Others may have celebrated greater success with their songs, but their own interpretations rise over time and fashions. A tour of a scrap place full of treasures that only reveal its beauty to the interested viewer – in order to then shine all the more.
Tom Waits: Piano Man
Closing Time (1973)
Who Tom Waits From a later phase, optionally as a drunken on the piano or as a noisy scarecrow, he will be surprised at how it all started: in 1973 he earns his money as a bouncer and dreams of taking up a jazz plate. In the studio, it becomes quite conventional singer/songwriter pop: OL ’55 and Martha tell of past love and failed opportunities. The Eagles and Tim Buckley will covers these songs. Her author would have been forgotten if he would not have turned into a werewolf later. In retrospect, the debut is primarily due to its innocence.
★★★★★
The Heart of a Saturday Night (1974)
After the locking lesson, the bar support is at the door and smokes. A hobo-sinatra in the Wee Small Hours. Going home is rather out of the question. These songs act from going on – into the night (the title track), on the sea (Shiver Me Timbers), into the distance, where you can see: I never saw my homeetown unil i stayed away too long. Musically, Waits never approaches jazz as much as here. Bones Howe – he has already worked with Ella Fitzgerald and Ornette Coleman – pushes and will be accompanied as a producer for almost ten years.
★★★★★
Lovesmanship & cat jammer
Small Change (1976)
A small change – the title underranges. Suddenly, Waits roared that the ENT is horrified. At the same time, the music becomes an indulgence: stringers flatter the drunkard, the mood is almost Christmas. One song puts everyone else in the shade: Tom Trauber’s blues, six and a half heavenly minutes between kitsch and gutter, cat whine and lovesickness. An effective contrast that becomes a trademark.
★★★★★
Blue Valentine (1978)
Waits moves into the Tropicana Motel in West Hollywood and embarrasses himself with the Ramones. While the punks set the world on fire, he howls Leonard Bernstein’s Somewhere to the moon. On the cover of this plate, he looks like a figure from West Side Story. Or like the secretly bleeding bandit, who asks his boys cool for a cigarette before he drives to the cinema to die (Romeo is Bleeding). Blue Valentine is a smoky jazz plate (finally!), The stories of which can record it with those of Bob Dylan and Lou Reed.
★★★★★
Heartattack and Vine (1980)
A transition plate: The new Waits announces itself in downtown and the title piece with dirty electric guitars. The old man grabs deeply into the lighter pot: in ballads like on the Nickel and Ruby’s Arms you want to put yourself in. Jersey Girl would have liked to write Bruce Springsteen. With him, however, the “whores down on the avenue” become “girls” when he covered the song later. This distinguishes the stadium rocker from the street dog.
★★★★★
Wild Years
Swordfishstrombones (1983)
Bones Howe goes, Kathleen Brennan comes. She becomes Waits’ partner and creative partner. This changes everything: Few artists have ever changed as radically as Tom Waits on his seventh plate. Yes, you can still find them, the tender moments, but they look raw. The other pieces are eruptive and percussive, the beat comes from mysterious instruments such as “Metal Aunglongs” or “Bass Boo Bams”. And Waits barks instead of singing, more Captain Beefheart now as Louis Armstrong: It’s a Place i’ve Found, there’s a world going on, underground. His label asylum thankfully rejects. This seemed to be a commercial suicide with an announcement. Today we know: Swordfishstrombones is the second birth of Tom Wait.
★★★★earch
Rain Dogs (1985)
Rain Dogs is created in the New York of the 80s and captures the mood of the Times Square: the Peep shows and porn cinemas, the pimps and prostitutes. For this, Waits gets the support of almost two dozen musicians. Keith Richards is guesting on three songs, but the secret star is called Marc Ribot. His Cuban-looking guitar game gives the new sound the finishing touch. Weill’s Moritarys dance Tarantella with Sea Shantys, country ballads follow on Funeral Jazz. And in the middle the majestic time sits and towering over everything. You can’t call many plates “unique”, but a second like Rain Dogs will be difficult to find.
★★★★ories
Bone Machine (1992)
Waits once described his skepticism over drum computers and artificial sound sources: “I feel more comfortable when I hunt and kill my sounds myself, skin and cook.” On Bone Machine he places his prey in the basement of Prairie Sun Recording Studios because the cement floor there is so nicely. Everything becomes more rustic, earthy. The Earth Died Screaming, Kläfft Waits, and the bones of dancing skeletons clatter in the background. It continues similarly cheerfully: brave can test their resilience on the third stanza from A Little Rain. The fleet I don’t Wanna Grow Up. Tom Waits as a crackling giant baby: adulthood is Pfui! And that of a man who was born at the age of 70.
★★★★earch
Mule Variations (1999)
If you only buy an album from Tom Waits, then this. It does not add anything to the spectrum, but offers the best of all facets: mule variations. The Groove at Big in Japan get the radio rockers from Primus, the Spoken-Word-Track What’s Hey Building? Is a horror film for the ears, although it remains unclear who is the monster in this story: the one who hammers and screws in his house, or his neighbors, who are therefore about to be torched and gripped. Later snot and water flow when Picture in a frame even groan the piano stool and the pedals drunk. And when Take IT with me, death is already pulling at the rock tip while the narrator looks around again. So we do not release Waits: Come on up to the house, he preaches at the end, and your wounds will be healed. Amen!
★★★★ories
Cinema and theater
Waits influences the cinema. Films are named after his songs, he himself stands in front of the camera for directors such as Francis Ford Coppola and Jim Jarmusch. He also writes soundtracks for Night on Earth (1991, ★★) and One from the Heart (1982, ★★★). The latter is particularly important because Waits meets Kathleen Brennan at work. From then on, she is listed as a co-author with almost all songs.
Waits for the theater has produced even more work: Franks Wild Years (1987, ★★★★★★) is seen as the last part of a trilogy, which also includes Swordfishstrombones and Rain Dogs. As an independent collection of great songs, the record has long since survived the play. You cannot say the same by The Black Rider (1993, ★★). The collaboration with Beat-Poet William S. Burroughs and directorial legend Robert Wilson may have been rousing on the stage, the soundtrack offers rather irrelevant accompanying music.
Wilson has worked with Wilson more often: Blood Money (2002, ★★★★) is a furious interpretation by Georg Büchner Woyzeck, Alice (2002, ★★★★★★) A dark interpretation of Alice’s sexual abysses in the Wonderland autor Lewis Carroll.
Beginning and end
A good song also works if you play it on the acoustic guitar. The Early Years Vol. 1 (1991) and vol. 2 (1992, both ★★★★). In addition to unpublished like Blue Skies and I Want You, the pieces of the first two albums in their original forms delight.
At the other end of the scale is the 3-CD compilation Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards (2006, ★★★★★★ about the force of an entire creative life in the back: 30 until then unpublished songs and 26 works for various projects can be found here, including recitations from Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac, Daniel Johnstons King Kong and two covers of the Ramones. Since then, Waits has only released an album. After Orphans everything seemed to be said.