Tom Waits unleashes his fury on Heartattack And Vine

Tom Waits : Jersey Girl

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In September of 1980 Tom Waits released the US#96 Heartattack And Vine, an album full of vitriol for Hollywood bashed out in about a month. It's a transitional album for Waits, as Spin's Alternative Guide's Bill Wyman put it, "out of his jazz-cat's rut and (into) something closer to rock'n'roll." On the title track Waits unleashes his fury, yelling over the backing track like a madman. 

And mad he was.

Waits has just moved to New York when Francis Ford Coppola hired him to write the soundtrack to One From The Heart on the Zoetrope lot. But Coppola's second guessing and indecision took its toll on Waits. He used Heartattack and Vine as an outlet for his frustration

The album is also home to "Jersey Girl", later covered by Bruce Springsteen. Waits had met a Jersey Girl , Kathleen Brennan, at a New Year's party in Los Angeles just days before his move to New York. Little did he know she worked for Zoetrope as a story analyst. So four months later, as Waits recalls:

Somebody told her to go down and knock on my door and she did and I opened the door and there she was and that was it. That was it for me. Love at first sight. Love at second sight.

Rolling Stone's Stephen Holden wrote of the album:

In a time when hipness is often equated with selfishness, Waits’ woozy, far-out optimism has never seemed fresher. While he can be faulted on many counts — the godawful condition of his voice, his perverse love for dime-store kitsch imagery — the purity of his intentions is never in question: Tom Waits finds more beauty in the gutter than most people would find in the Garden of Eden. If his lack of objectivity has kept him from developing into a major artist, Waits’ indivisibility from his self-created persona makes him a unique and lovable minor talent.

Minor talent? Waits would become one of the major artists of the 80's. His 1985 album Rain Dogs is one I have always treasured. But Waits would never have made Rain Dogs if he hadn't taken that ride across the river to the Jersey side. 

 

The Duchess of Coolsville

Rickie Lee Jones : Young Blood

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It was a character but it was real too. The persona that you're creating is made up of you --but it's the best you think you are, the coolest you think you are.

-RLJ to Mojo

On March 2, 1979 Warner Bros. Records released Rickie Lee Jones's self-titled debut album. The platinum selling album would soar to #3 on the Billboard 200 album chart thanks to "Chuck E.'s in Love", a US #4 hit as well as a top 20 hit in the U.K., and an appearance on Saturday Night Live. With her trademark beret, Jones was an instant star, a far cry from the 18 year old who left home on her birthday and had arrived in Los Angeles, waitressed, slept under the Hollywood sign and performed beat influenced songs and poetry at small clubs. There she befriended Tom Waits and Chuck E Weiss. In the Rolling Stone article "The Runaway Rickie Lee Jones", they are portrayed as a trio of bohemians crashing Hollywood parties and writing songs in messy motel rooms:

”The first time I saw Rickie Lee she reminded me of Jayne Mansfield,” says sidekick and sometime beau Tom Waits with a lustful growl. (Jones is the mysterious blond on the back cover of Waits’ 1978 Blue Valentine LP.) ”I thought she was extremely attractive, which is to say that my first reactions were rather primitive — primeval, even. Her style onstage was appealing and arousing, sorta like that of a sexy white spade."

Warner Brothers signed Jones on the strength of a four song demo she originally cut for A and M Records and on word that Lowell George was recording her "Easy Money" for his upcoming album Thanks I'll Eat It Here. The label teamed her up with producer Russ Titelman, who also worked on George Harrison's 1979 album.

The result is an intimate, genre-spanning album with an all star line up of guest artists from Dr John to Steve Gadd to Randy Newman and Michael McDonald on backing vocals. The triumph is Rickie's though, arriving on the scene as a full formed artist. She would win the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, which unfortunately is more a curse than a blessing.

Critics liked what they heard. Robert Christgau gave the album a B-, writing:

It isn't just the skeptic in me who suspects that, despite the critical brouhaha, this young singer-songwriter's attractions are more sexual than musical or literary. It's also the male -- "Stick It into Coolsville," eh? But the critic knows that there are only three or four of her other songs -- including "Coolsville" -- that I'd enjoy hearing again.

"If you see the video you can tell I was high"-RLJ

I met Rickie Lee Jones in 2000 when she lived outside Olympia, Washington and interviewed her for a local television show in Seattle. Of "Chuck E,'s in Love" she said "I can't escape from it because it's me. If I could have done anything I would have sung it another way. It just was the way I was."

Rickie Lee Jones would make more album. The follow-up, Pirates, is one of those albums that is gaining popularity among critics. A personal favorite is It's Like This, featuring covers like "The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys".

Hikin' Up Their Chinos

Tom Waits : Romeo Is Bleeding

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“I’m really getting a little tired of being referred to as Wino Man. It was okay for a while, but I’d like to be a little more three-dimensional.” -Tom Waits

In  September of 1978, Tom Waits released Blue Valentine, his fifth studio album and best since The Heart of Saturday Night. This is the last of the jazzy hep cat albums before Waits launches into the 1980's with a new, brasher rock n roll racket.

From Don Shewey , writing for Rolling Stone:

Tom Waits tells the same stories all the time — the small-time gangster who gets blown away by the big boys, the tough whore who sleeps with a torn-up teddy bear under her pillow, the barely employed sucker who spends his spare time and puny paycheck at the local saloon — but he makes each one sound different. That’s why he’s a great storyteller...

...Would that Waits’ music were that resourceful. His melodies tend toward standard bluesy riffs and endless piano vamps, while his singing is sometimes reduced to a mere gurgle of phlegm in the back of his throat. Yet the deterioration of his voice and the lugubriousness of his tunes aren’t anything new. True, they make the album hard to listen to, but sometimes you can tune out the voice and you can always stick with the lyric sheet.

From Robert Christgau a nod to the opening track, "Somewhere ( from West Side Story)".

Waits keeps getting weirder and good for him. As sheer sendup, his "Somewhere" beats Sid Vicious's "My Way" his way. But I'm not always sure he understands his gift--these lyrics should be funnier. And "Romeo Is Bleeding," easily my favorite among his Chandleroid sagas of tragedy outside the law, is more effective on the jacket than when he underlines its emotional resonance in song. That's not weird at all.

Gave the Finger to the Moon

Tom Waits : Medley: Jack And Neal/California, Here I Come

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In September of 1977, Tom Waits released Foreign Affairs. I've always thought that was Rickie Lee Jones on the cover, but it's Marsheila Cockrell, who worked at the box office of The Troubadour in Los Angeles. (Didn't Rickie tell me that was her in an interview?)

The first three tracks of the album might have you wondering if Waits, singing in the style of  Louis Armstrong,  is trying to make the sequel to Frank Sinatra's moody classic, In The Wee Small Hours. There is even a gin-soaked barfly duet with Bette Midler on "I Never Talk to Strangers".

Then comes track four: "Medley: Jack And Neal/California, Here I Come"  where Waits reestablishes his link to his true spiritual brothers, The Beats, with lyrics most Sinatra fans wouldn't sit still for:

Just then Florence Nightingale dropped her drawers
And stuck her fat ass half way out of the window
With a Wilson Pickett tune and shouted 
Get a load of this and gave the finger to the moon

There are better Waits albums but die-hard fans will find much to enjoy here.

40 Year Itch : Now the Dogs are Barking

Tom Waits : Tom Traubert's Blues

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With songs like "The Piano Has Been Drinking ( Not Me)" and "Bad Liver and Broken Heart", Small Change chronicles a gruffer-voiced Tom Waits exploring the drunken life on skid row. That's something he literally did, according to producer Bones Howe who recalls a phone conversation he had with Waits about the lead off track "Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen":

"He said the most wonderful things about writing that song. He went down and hung around on skid row in Los Angeles because he wanted to get stimulated for writing this material. He called me up and said, '  I went down to skid row...I bought a pint of rye. In a brown paper bag -- hunkered down, drank the pint of rye, went home, threw up, and wrote 'Tom Traubert's Blues'. Every guy down there...everyone I spoke to (said) a woman put him there'."

Recorded in five days, Small Change was the first Tom Waits album to chart, peaking at #89. In my mind, this is the best Tom Waits album up until Rain Dogs.

Well, gee. I'd say there's probably more songs off that record that I continued to play on the road, and that endured. Some songs you may write and record but you never sing them again. Others you sing em every night and try and figure out what they mean. "Tom Traubert's Blues" was certainly one of those songs I continued to sing, and in fact, close my show with.

40 Year Itch : Bucket Full of Sin

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   In October of 1974, Tom Waits followed up his critically praised debut, Closing Time, with a brilliant follow-up that inhabits the rainy, late night world of desperado truck drivers, neon lit bars and drive-ins, and rambling beat poets smoking on stage. 

  The Heart of Saturday Night just may be the best album of the early Waits era, before he gave up singing to scat and growl. In his liner notes, Waits lists among his influences Randy Newman, Frank Sinatra and Jack Kerouac.

   That Tom Waits person is captured on a PBS series "Soundstage" shot in 1975. A Tom Waits concert is one part comedy monologue, one part eat poetry jam and one part concert.  Everyone needs to attend at least one of his shows.



  For many artists, the years spent struggling are an obstacle, preventing them from becoming who they are and saying what they want to say. Tom Waits was always paying attention. To the characters that staggered through the Heritage nightclub where he worked the door. To the men and women  he he met in the United States Coast Guard. And to every downcast loser he met on the road. He found the poetry in their lives and is still sharing it with the rest of us.



  What sets Heart apart from Closing Time are the jazz inflected rambling poetry, highlighted by "Diamonds On My Windshield":

  Oceanside ends the ride
  With Sam Clemente cummin up.
  And Sunday desperadoes slip by
  And cruise with a dry buck
  Orange drive-in the neon billin' 
  Theater's fillin' to the brim 
  Slave Girls and Hot Spur
  Bucket Full of Sin 

40 Year Itch: Smoking Cigarettes, Striving For Purity

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A Hauntingly lovely new album of introspective songs and folk/jazz music which captures the essence of a moment, or a thought or a love

    Asylum Records ad

Tom Waits was already doing the rambling beatnik bar stool poet thing when, at the age of 24,  he recorded his debut album, Closing Time, with former Lovin Spoonful Jerry Yester producing. He'd grown up in San Diego as a fan of the Beatniks and Charles Bukowski. He worked as a doorman, in pizza joints and restaurants. By the time he was opening up for acts at the LA Troubadour, he'd developed a cult following that would only grow with each passing decade.

The album's best known song is "Ol '55", covered by the Eagles on their 1974 album On The Border. It's all about a shining moment: driving home from a triumphant one night stand as the sun comes up. These days Waits sings with it a deep, smoky, whiskey fueled, pre-cancerous roar. 

    Even back in 1973, Waits knew how to get the most out of a lyric. But he had yet to find "his voice". And the most exotic instrument on Closing Time is a stand up bass. ( No pump organ. No Bowed Saw. No accordions or marimbas.)

Asylum sent Waits out on tour as an opening act for label mate Tom Rush and then Charlie Rich and then had him getting bombed with fruit from Frank Zappa fans. Critics like Robert Christgau compared Waits to Randy Newman but with "honest sentimentality which he undercuts just enough to be credible". For Rolling Stone Stephen Holden wrote "Waits is master of the pictorial vignette that crystallizes the emotions of a specific common experience in a uniquely moving way. "




   Although the album sounds like it was meant to be played in the early morning hours, Waits and his band could only get studio time in the morning. While Yester was going for a folk sound. Waits wanted something more jazzy. You can hear when Waits gets his way ( especially on "Midnight Lullaby")

No matter where you get on the Tom Waits train ( for me it was Rain Dogs in 1985), Closing Time, released in March of 1973,  is worth the second or third stop on the line.

Rickie Lee Jones Interview

In the more than 30 years since "Chuck E.'s In Love" made her a household name and earned her a Grammy Award for Best New Artist, Rickie Lee Jones has continued to follow her own beat. Her recording career--like her astonishing voice-has hit all kinds of highs and lows.

Rickie: I'd like to hear me on the radio again someday. I don't know what radio that would be.

 She spent most of her teenage years in Western Washington. In 1969 15 year old Rickie had already run away from home several times when her family moved to Lacey, a small town outside Olympia.

It was mostly farms and some trailer parks. Some massage parlors. There was nothing to do there. There was one restaurant. The Rib Eye. Everybody went there after school, smoked cigarettes and ate fish sandwiches and the rest of the time we drove around and smoked cigarettes.

Rickie got kicked out of three high schools for talking back to teachers.
She wrote songs and found refuge in records.
I brought some CDs from my house.
She passed over Joni Mitchell's Blue with no comment.
Then she picked up Neil Young's second album.

This was the one. This was so beautiful. I loved this record.

Even the title of Young's album--Everybody Knows This is Nowhere--seemed to apply to Rickie's life at the time.

I think I started out imitating Neil Young, you know. I sang "I seen the needle and the damage--" kinda high up there and my mother would go "Oh that must be a Neil Young song right?"
 Cuz you could always tell when I was trying to sing like Neil Young.
And it took quite a few years to quit trying to sing like Neil Young to tell the truth.

She sang like Neil and dressed like Neil, buying Pendleton shirts made in Oregon. Then, at a Salvation Army store in Olympia, she found a Coleman Hawkins album called Today and Now.

Wow! What a wonderful thing to accidentally find. And for me he's so melodic....coming out of pop music it was a really gentle way to be introduced to jazz.


But the records weren't enough to keep Rickie Lee Jones in her one track town.

I left on my 18th birthday. The day I turned 18.


Legend has it she met Tom Waits and they slept under the Hollywood sign. She sang in L-A clubs. After five years she got her break and recorded the debut album featuring "Chuck E.'s in Love".
A song she'd rather not talk about.

Rickie: I can't escape from it because it's me.
If I could have done anything I would have sung it another way.
It just was the way I was.

 The albums that followed reveal an artist consistently exploring new sounds. Some have sold well. Some have not. At a time when many artist will use their private lives to publicize albums, Rickie has taken a higher road.



I don't want to sell it to you and I won't do it. I'll show up so you know I'm here. And I'm really tired of people going "Are you still making records?" because yes, I'm still making records.
I didn't sell it then and I'm not going to sell it now.
I wish it could come to people through osmosis so this (interview) is my contribution to osmosis.




I still think that if you make a beautiful piece of music they might not all run to it in the first six months but they will find it and that's what you came to do


While you can't hear her songs on the radio as much these days, you can often hear Rickie's influence. Jewel for one.





Sometimes it feels like I'm getting ripped off.
Sometimes I feel flattered. And sometimes I don't.
Jewel doesn't bother me at all because she's a little kid and you can really go "Wow. She just really really..that's the specific time and place --ME. And then it became her and now she's doing it the way she sees it.

Sheryl Crow doesn't get off so easy.




Sheryl Crow, you know I feel a little ripped off by Sheryl Crow. Sheryl Crow's older and should have known better. She's like a professional singer who decided to do other people. Jewel was just really really influenced.

A year after our 2000 interview Rickie decided to move back to LA. On her website she let it be known her house was on the market.

I love being here in LA, in
the warm sunshine and the cars and the people. Tacoma just
was too darned cold.
We are trying to sell our house up there in Olympia. It's on
the waterfront, three acres, extraordinary beauty and it's
cheap! The Nisqually Delta, where we have lived for so many
years, is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.
I hope someone buys it soon and is happy there. I am ready to
let it go.


Rickie Lee Jones will be joining Bob Dylan's Israel concert, which will be held at the Ramat Gan Stadium on June 20.