Interviews: Tom Waits

Before I reformed my wicked ways, I plied the dark alleys of the fourth estate. Touring through my back pages, I intend to report here on some of those bits and pieces.

This one is more or less how it appeared in RockBill. Bob O’Brian accompanied me to the interview because he knew stuff and also because sometimes in life you need Bob O’Brian on your wing. To this day, Waits is one of the most interesting, compelling, challenging, and rewarding artists. I’m grateful to have had this small exchange with him.

The Navy Still AWaits

Dr. Thomas Alan Waits, Esquire

Nope. We’re not in some Parisian pissotiére. Not stool side in any town’s downtown bar. Not even sloped on a guardrail off the Interstate in a place where “everything’s so flat you can dream everything up.” We’re on a bruise-colored couch in New York. Tom Waits is not smoking a cigarette, but he’s thinking of it. His voice tends to roll under the furniture so he puts the tape recorder right next to his trumpeter’s lips like he’s going to blow a solo.

     If you’re paying attention, you know Waits wrote “Jersey Girl” and “Downtown Train,” and his classic urban-suburban landscapes of bottomless desire on the albums Heartattack and Vine, Small Change, Swordfishtrombones, and a whole lot more. You know him from his acting in Down By Law, Rumble Fish, and other movies. You also know him from the soundtrack of Francis Ford Coppola’s underrated classic, One From The Heart.

         Waits plays a mean tape recorder, his voice sounding like early morning coffee grinds in the bottom of a cracked cup. He riffs on his songs, calling some of them “a score for a mutant dwarf community,” or “music for retarded monkeys on Benzedrine.” When he talks about composing movie soundtracks, he smirks. “It’s like sewing a button on a sports coat and you can’t contact the guy who’s working on the sleeves and the guy who’s doing the lining hasn’t been hired yet or he just quit. It’s like throwing a rock and waiting two years for it to go through the window.”

     Think of these questions like the backbeat to the demented calliope billowing through the carousel of Waits’ mind.

        How were you raised?

       I don’t think I’m raised, yet. I always found that curious. “You’re raised.” What do you do then? Go back down? There’s no place else to go.

       What do you listen to?

        Certain music affects you like you want your head on that body. For a long time, I liked hearing anything with an upright bass and a tenor saxophone.

What’s the current music in your head?

I’d like to have a band that could sound like an automobile accident and also rhumba.

How does the music come out of you?

       You have to dismantle yourself and scatter it all around and then put a blindfold on and put it back together.

        Why do you like bagpipes so much?

         I love the sound. It’s like strangling a goose.

         What other instruments would you like to play?

         I’ve grown very fond of the bass marimba lately.

         What was your first instrument?

        I played the trumpet when I was a kid because it was easy to carry, like carrying your lunch. A piano, you have to go to it. You never hear anybody say, “Pass that piano, buddy.”

        What kind of kid were you?

        Real repressed. I wanted to skip growing up and rush all the way to 40.

         Who were your early heroes?

         You ever hear of Tozzio Navarali? He’s a famous Italian race care driver, before Granatelli. Jonathan Winters talked about him. Now that guy, Winters, he’s certifiable. That must be a good way to be, to live in your head.

         Were you writing when you were a kid?

       It takes a long time for the input to be shoved through your apparatus and germinate and come out as something of your own devising.

         How do you write?

       With a butterfly net. All these things pass through you all the time. Every once in a while, you got to reach up, grab it, and swallow.

         Do you write on the road?

         I like to go to Rangoon or Hong Kong, come home, and then write. Get something on you and come home.

         Were you always a rambling man?

       I wanted to join the Navy when I was a kid. You know, the Navy’s not just a job, it’s $39 a month, or was back then. When I turned 18, I got tattoos and thought that was it.

         Would you join up now?

         I think the Navy is no longer a career opportunity for me, but it’s nice to know it’s there.

         What else would you do besides what you do?

         I’d like to be a great tap dancer.

         Could you be happy alone in a room?

         As long as I had a wet bar, some clam dip, a black and white TV, and the yellow pages, I’d be alright.