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Tom Waits meets me at the reception desk of The Tropicana Motor Lodge in Hollywood. The man from Newsweek is just leaving, Rolling Stone is sending a photographer over in an hour. Despite a hectic schedule, Waits gives me quality time and manages to create a relatively unhurried atmosphere. He is well acquainted with small presses and used to read his poems at Beyond Baroque in Venice in the days before he signed management and recording contracts. Now, he is an important song writer and a brilliant performer who cares not only about language but about its delivery as well.
Waits gets his mail at The Tropicana but he lives in a small frame house behind the motel complex. Today, he wears the same black triangular Salvation Army suit coat that graced his frame on The Dinah Shore Show. Tom's living room is reminiscent of the stacked and tumbling metaphors of his lyrics. We sit amidst crates of books, piles of records, overflowing ash trays, empty bottles; the house is, in fact, more of an un-inventoried storeroom than a living space.
Tom is on the road nine months a year with his trio (sax, bass fiddle and a percussionist who doubles on the vibroharp), his crew (light and soundman, road manager, driver), his props (including an eight foot tall styrofoam lamp post) and, most_recently added, a stripper (see the cover of Small Change). Tom plays guitar, piano and delivers his lyrics and his humor in a raspy smokey voice with what approaches the power of the late Louis Armstrong. Artists such as the Eagles and Bette Midler have recorded his songs.
At the time of this interview, Small Change had just been released by Asylum Records. Since then, Tom has toured Japan, Europe and the United States and has composed and recorded Foreign-Affairs, also on the Asylum label.
- Rick Smith
RS: Well, who's going to win the pennant this year?
TW: Um, Mel Famey.
RS: Who's Mel Famey?
TW: Remember Mel Famey? Very famous old pitcher, a real heavy juicer. He was with the Braves, Milwaukee Braves. Yeah, it was a big game, the pennant. They only used to put him in if it was a real clutch situation, you know. He was like a wild card. He was usually benched, belched, well-oiled and plastered and, you know, was more part of the furniture than a real instrumental important member of the team. He was always good for a one liner and shit, kept around like a mascot. His hat was always clipped to the side like this and they put him in. It was a real clinch. Three-two pitch, bases loaded, tie score. So Mel Famey crawled to the mound, threw up, took a pull off a 16-ouncer, shoved it in his back pocket, grabbed the rosin, spit on the ball, walked the mother fucking run in. Games over. He didn't give a fuck. He was leaving the mound, you know, and somebody from the opposing side pointed and said, "What's that?" "Oh, that's Mel Famey." They said, "yeah, but what's that in his back pocket?" "Oh, that's the beer that made Mel Famey walk us."
RS: Awk.
TW: That's a very old story. I thought you would've seen me comin'.
RS: I didn't see you comin'. You had me all the way.
TW: Oh, I just bought a Martin guitar.
RS: You don't play a lot of guitar in your act. I noticed you didn't play it at The Golden Bear.
TW: A couple of things now and then, you know. I've been writing it out of the program.
RS: Why?
TW: I got a trio now, real glad to have them. I didn't want to have a trio at first - I didn't think I could afford it. I didn't want to get strung out behind it, have to depend on it, you know, like I can't do it unless I have my ensemble. But, it looks like I'm going to be able to support them.
RS: You're playing more piano in your act, but you don't have one here to practice on, do you?
TW: Yeah, it's in the kitchen. It's the only place it'll go. I had to tear the shit out of my kitchen to get it in there. I had to cut my draining board in half and my neighbor came over with a crowbar and sledgehammer and we tore out the broom closet there to make room for it, and it slid right in.
RS: Since you're on the road so much, when do you have time to work on your instruments or your material?
TW: In hotels. That's about the only place. I don't get any real formal time off. This is really unusual. I got three or four days off here, I have to wait till I can stay in one place for about two weeks. That's usually enough time. I wrote Small Change in about two weeks.
RS: What is your day like when you're putting something together; do you put yourself on a tight work schedule?
TW: It's just a lot of discipline. You have to get into sore sort of a routine; it's getting more difficult all the time. The last album (Small Change) worked out good. I had two weeks in London playing at a Jazz club called Ronnie Scott's. We stayed at a hotel there an we did two shows a night for two weeks. At least we had time in one town, you know. All my days were off until nine o'clock so I wrote during the day. It's hard to get to a town where you have access to a piano.
RS: But you had one in London?
TW: Yeah, I rented one. I rented a room with a piano.
RS: When I work, I have to be comfortable with my space. But you can write in hotel rooms, on the board walk, in train stations, all over the place.
TW: I'm realy adaptive. Everybody needs their own creative climate; yours would be different than mine. I usually need a lot of tension. I usually write best when I have to find the time. Either I don't have the time of I don't want to and have to force myself. Usually I just keep it all up inside for awhile and then spit it all out.
RS: Do you keep a journal or any regular writing routine.
TW: No.
RS: So you might go weeks without writing at all.
TW: Yeah. Except maybe I'll write an application or leave my name and address with somebody, always good to stay in practise, you know, keep a lot of ink pens on you. I read menus, sports page, billboards, stuff like that.
RS: When we first saw you at the Troubadour last summer (1976), it appeared you were influenced by Lord Buckley and by Bukowski, and also by Louie Armstrong. Those three people crossed my mind.
TW: Yeah, they cross my mind, too.
RS: Who are in the roots of your music?
TW: A lot of them, I guess, but in the area of music, the songwriters that I admire are Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, Gordon Jenkins, Johnny Mercer, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Mose Allison, Count Basie, Shearing, The Bird, Prez...
RS: Is that Prez Prado?
TW: Oh, no. There's a guy named "Symphony Sid", an old D.J. in New York, and he had a tune that became his theme song which is called, "Jumpin With My Boy Sid in the City" and it goes, "Everything's getting real crazy over..." (Waits sings a couple of bars). Prez and Charlie Parker wrote that.
I have a lot of incongruous musical influences like, I like Clarence "Frogman" Henry, "Screamin" Jay Hawkins, Rudy Ray Moore...
RS: I'm not familiar with Rudy Ray Moore.
TW: He's a black smut poet, kinda like Redd Fox, same kind of tradition. And, I listen to Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Rev. Gary Davis, Mississippi John Hurt, Memphis Minnie, Maybelle Carter, Tampa Red, Huey 'Piano' Smith, George "Cryin' in the Street" Perkins, Charles 'Hungry' Williams, Alan Toussant, Martin Mull..
RS: Martin Mull?
TW: Yeah, a current, you know, cat; a comic songwriter. And I like Hoagy Carmichael.
RS: - I was lucky enough to hear him do "Hong Kong Blues".
TW: Hoagy Carmichael?
RS: Yeah.
TW: Where at?
RS: In New York at a "Dutch Treat Club" lunch concert at the Park Lane Hotel. He did "Hong Kong Blues", the flipside of "Stardust".
TW: You know, there is an Irving Berlin song called, "My Walkin Cane". I can't go nowhere without my cane and all that shit (breaks into scat). A real obscure thing.
RS: The old boys had to get down sometime...Can you talk a little bit about how you think poetry can find a wider audience than it has now.
TW: Well, there's a stigma attached to poetry and poets outside of the inner sanctum literary community that you'll find in every major city. It's hard to get rid of that once you go outside that group of people. It seems that in a lot of cases poetry is written by poets for poets so when that's your frame of reference and you have an idea of what your readership will be, a lot of times you will get overly academic or "inside"; plus, it's all a page, just a page - it's not usually something that's spoken. What sets Bukowski apart is that he is also a performer. They call him the poor man's Lenny Bruce which may be a little presumptuous, but he is a personality and an entertainer, too. Dylan Thomas was also an entertainer and nowadays it seems that it's the only way that you can make it, you know.
RS: To get into a performance situation.
TW: Absolutely. Not necessarily backed up by music. There is a fundamental difference between song lyrics and what is referred to traditionally as poetry. I mean you take a lot of pop songs today and frisk 'em, you end up with a lot of really insipid shit. That don't mean that it ain't good, because a lyric is not designed to be taken out of the context of the song itself. But, if you are concerned about vocabulary and about different ways of saying the same thing, I think there's a lot of room in a popular song for, you know, almost an "Intelligence". When you are writing a story or a poem, what happens is you create the form. Whereas, in a song there's a traditional format which can be altered as well. But I think a lot of songwriters let the rhyme lead their idea. Whereas, the idea should take priority over everything.
Opinions are just like assholes and everybody's got one.
RS: You seem not to be bound by rhyme and structure.
TW: Not always. I guess if you have a good idea, it lives through it, survives the form, forces the shape. I mean, that's how you pioneer things. That's how new ideas get established and pushed out.
RS: It seems to me that on the last two albums (Night Hawks and Small Change), there's a significant transition from the first two in that the music is more of a supplement to the words. In the first two (Closing time and the Heart of Saturday Night), the music and words are...
TW: more homogenized than Nighthawks and part of Small Change.
RS: The last two albums seem very rich. They seem to have more of a poetic focus.
TW: It's the word, I think, that gets me. I don't like to use it. I think it's kicked around too much. Like the word "jazz", all that "jazz". What's the difference between poetry and a lyric? I guess there is a difference. There are two kinds of poetry, good poetry and bad poetry. Everybody has their own preordained idea of what it is and some people, when they hear a saxaphone, well, that's Jazz; they hear an acoustic guitar, well, that's Folk; they hear a steel guitar, that's Country Western; when they hear three trumpets, that's a Salvation Army Band. So, I like to throw that word out the door and call myself a story teller.
RS: And you come from a line of story tellers?
TW: My grandfather's name was "Wealthy" Howard Johnson. Poor son of a bitch drove a bread truck all of his life. They should have named him Howard 'gimme a quarter' Johnson. Then he might have been able to make something out of himself. My grandfather on my father's side was Jesse Frank Waits, named after Jesse and Frank James. He grew up in Texas and my dad came to L.A. when it just was not hip to have a name like Jesse 'cause this meant that you were some dirt farmer or some cow-pie dumb shit. You know, he wanted to be Ivy League. He wanted to have wing-tips, white socks, pleated pants, a car. So he dropped the 'Jesse' and just used the initial 'J'. He still lives in downtown L.A. I'm Scotch-Irish - not a very good mixture. The English hate the Irish, the Irish hate the Scots, and the Scots hate the English.
RS: Does your dad come to hear you play?
TW: Yeah, he kinda follows what I'm doing.
RS: What about your mother?
TW: She doesn't want to see me until I start wearing American Airline shirts with a fuckin' prop collar and start hanging out with Wayne Newton. That would be her idea of Success... 'On the Wane' Newton.
RS: Did they support your drive to write and perform?
TW: They thought that it was just an idle threat.
RS: When did you start playing piano?
TW: Five years ago, six years ago.
RS: But you've been writing longer?
TW: Uh, huh. Playing piano is kinda like a vacation. I just pick out melodies on the keyboard.
RS: Some of your melodies are lovely and kind of romantic. I'm thinking of "Tom Traubert's Blues".
TW: I wrote that song real fast. You know, I am trying to lose some of my romance attitude. I guess I'm not trying so much as it just seems to be leaving.
RS: In your work, or in your personal life?
TW: It stops being something you do after a while and becomes what you are. It's all pastuerized. It's hard to draw a line between them. It's like saying, "Was that a siren or was that a saxaphone? I'm not really sure. It must have been a siren, couldn't have been a saxaphone I Well, it may have been a siren but you could say that it was a saxaphone." And that's real romantic. But, if it was really a siren and you say it was a siren, well there's nothing romantic about a siren. Unless it's the one that goes off at five o'clock when work is done. I just don't want to be overly romantic. You know, I'd rather hear someone say to me that the drug store was closed and they couldn't get no rubbers than tell me the soulful paths of Scientology have drawn me to the wrong number of your rising sign. The first is actually more 'romantic' to me. Well, at least it's more American.
RS: Down in Huntington Beach you said that Time magazine interviewed you and everything went wrong. What went wrong?
TW: It went wrong, but it was good. If the guy had been operating with a furnished apartment, I think he probably would have been able to realize... I mean, if he hadn't been such a mouth-breather...Essentially when you do something like that, you have synthetically created a situation in order to write about it. Once you get past it, it's cool. If you were just a regular writer you have to go out and look for it. But this was already set up. Whatever happens, happens. If I was writing about it I would have figured there was a lot of meat to carve there. He didn't even write it up. Time magazine has a tendency to distill everything. They endorse people and they make you palatable for a general public. You know, it doesn't have any hair on it. By the time it gets into Time magazine, everything is airbrushed. But, most of the interviews are fine. I just ain't around when they're being written up so a lot happens between the interview and the time it goes to press.
RS: What do you think about these references to you as a cult figure and your being juxtaposed to Patti Smith?
TW: Patti Hearst? No, I really don't know much about Patti Smith. As far as categorizing somebody, you go into a record store and I'm in the "Miscellaneous" bin. There's not a bin for Cult Figures, so I'm either a "Miscellaneous" or a "W,X,Y,Z."
RS: Have you published much writing independently or is most of your work on recordings?
TW: All records. Except for one thing in Michael C. Ford's Sunset Palms Hotel. And I had a story published in Crawdaddy magazine and that's it.
RS: Oh, you published a story?
TW: Yeah, it's "Putnam County," which I also recorded.
RS: Oh, yeah, that's on Nighthawks. It's a beautiful piece. I didn't realize that it was originally in story form.
TW: No, I wrote it out. They just printed it.
RS: "Putnam County" reminds me a little bit of The Last Picture Show. That kind of poignant American Plains Tragedy... But you are city-fied, too. (Phone rings)
TW: Well, how about McMertree, you say, The Last Picture Show:
RS: Have you always lived in L.A.? Did you learn to do that here?
TW: Lived in a lot of different places around the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area -- and in New Jersey call collect... I've lived in San Diego, San Ysidro, Potrero, National City and all around in there for awhile and, you know, all 'round L.A. Basically I stayed indigenous to Southern California.
RS: Did you study poetry in school at all?
TW: No. I didn't like school and I didn't like poetry, and I didn't like athletics and I didn't like science, arithmetic... I'm a living breathing example of success without college.
RS: And you didn't like getting up at 7:00 o'clock to go to class?
TW: No, I didn't 'cause I was getting off work at four in the morning.
RS: What were you doing?
TW: Working in a restaurant. Got a job when I was fourteen.
RS: The midnight shift... You do write about the moon a lot.
TW: Yeah, I guess I do. The last line I have on the moon is that
RS: Yeah. Last year we got more and we were hoping for more this year. We might put out a very tiny issue. But, it's a literary review and you probably are ordinarily interviewed by news magazines or pop magazines, right?
TW: Usually local papers. You know, throw papers.
RS: Do you have anything you'd particularly like to express in a magazine like ours?
TW: (after some thought) Today's heroes are tomorrows service station attendants
RS: You're going to Japan next month. It must be nice to get around the world doing your music.
TW: Oh, it's so continental (affected) I simply adore travel. Monte Carlo is so nice this time of year. 'Course, we'll be there in Hastings, Well, Betty and I... why wait until you're too old to enjoy it. So, 'course, now our oldest is looking forward to a very promising career in air conditioning and refrigeration. So, we finally figured, well, let's go with the recreational vehicle. Let's wait and get the black and white T.V. and I said, "Look, Betty, we'll get out there on that open road and, well, travel along." Sometimes I don't even think about it, you know. First it seemed like, Jesus Christ, you know, but now it seems perfectly normal to be leaving in a couple of days, you know.
RS: You going to St. Louis this weekend or New York?
TW: Yeah, one of them places, you know. It starts with an 'S'. I've been playing a wide variety of different kinds of places. Nightclubs, student unions, cafeterias, old movie theatres. We end up in a lot of gymnasiums though. I don't get it. They'll put live entertainment in a gymnasium, but when was the last time you went to a night club to see the Houston Oilers? Give me a break, you know. I mean, some of my best friends are gymnasiums, but I wouldn't let one marry my daughter.
DISCOGRAPHY
CLOSING TIME (Asylum SD 5061), 1973
THE HEART OF SATURDAY NIGHT (Asylum 7E-1015), 1974
NIGHTHAWKS AT THE DINER (Asylum 7E-2008), 1975
SMALL CHANGE (Asylum 7E-1078), 1976
FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Asylum 7E-1117), 1977