"I usually have a hard time talking about things directly, you know?" --Tom Waits, not just
whistling
"Dixie"
I.
Morning. A truck-stop
diner
along Highway 101 near Santa Rosa, California, north of
San Francisco.
A horseshoe counter, tables, booths. Plain but clean. The
focal point
of the room is a large painting of an 18-wheeler on a
country road, a
painting that somehow speaks not of modern power but of
classical
repose: the Peterbilt as stag. The customers are mostly in
their 40s,
50s and 60s, dressed for hard work or unfashionable
comfort, the men
almost invariably bearded.
In a booth by a window sit
two
patrons: One of them, Most Obviously Not From Around Here,
is me. The
other is Tom Waits, a musician and occasional actor. (His
next film, Mystery Men,
a superhero comedy, is
due out this summer.) Formerly of Los Angeles, he has
lived in the area
several years with his wife (and co-writer and -producer),
Kathleen
Brennan, and their three children, and has taken on
something of the
local coloration. He wears unprefaded denims and big
boots, and the
only remaining emblem of his erstwhile
cloth-cap-and-pointed-shoes
flophouse-jazzbo neoboho fingersnappin' self is the Dizzy
G. soul patch
parked subtly beneath his lower lip. The towering
monolith, or towering
inferno, that was famously his hair has collapsed into
something more
like a brushfire.
Born on the eighth
anniversary
of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Waits will celebrate 50
years on Earth
three weeks before the end of the century. But like some
other people
who do not punch clocks, unless it's to stop them from
ringing, he
seems to exist outside of conventional time, and --
judging at least by
the person on his records, which range from his folkish
1973 debut, Closing
Time, to the bop prosody of Small Change and Foreign Affairs, to
the
taxonomically confounding vaudeville of Swordfishtrombones
and Rain Dogs
and the stone-age blues
of Bone Machine
-- even to
have lived backward, from premature middle age into
middle-aged youth,
from (apparent) sophistication to (deceptive) simplicity.
His first new
album in six years, Mule
Variations,
which
incorporates,
refines and extends these previous researches into
something at once fresh and familiar, is set for release
April 27. And
it was in this very diner that he sealed his new
surprising-yet-not-really-when-you-think-about-it deal
with Epitaph
Records, the Los Angeles-based independent best known for
the punk pop
of Pennywise and Rancid, and founded by Brett Gurewitz,
formerly of Bad
Religion. Though he can claim Jackson Browne as a onetime
labelmate and
has been covered by the Eagles and Rod Stewart, Waits is
by persuasion
an outsider. "I think they're all great," he'll say later
of Epitaph's
young, enthusiastic and musically inclined staff. "I came
from the
whole period where record guys, it's like meeting guys
from DuPont --
they start looking at you like they want to lift up a part
of you and
look underneath, you feel like they're smelling meat."
On the table are a tape
recorder, its red recording light on, two cups of coffee,
a hat and a
pair of reading glasses. Waits rummages in his pockets,
producing
various sheets and scraps of scribbled-upon paper that he
spreads
before him. He picks up his glasses to study the
documents, then lays
them down again. His voice when he speaks has the friendly
rustle of
dry leaves.
Tom [leaning forward
confidentially]:
The Washington Monument sinks six inches each year. Six
inches.
Me: You brought notes? Tom: You don't think I'd
come
unprepared, do you? I'll tell you what's good here:
specials. If you're
hungry go for the specials. It's like your grandma. They
got borscht
here. They got turkey loaf. This place hasn't really been
discovered
yet. [Indicates the
truck painting.]
That's
the
table I usually try to get. Just to be near the painting.
It's kind of like the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa has no
eyebrows -- you
ever notice that?
Me: Maybe that's the secret of that painting, more than the smile. Tom: The shaved eyebrows.
That's what I go for . . . When I was a kid, I had a
friend whose dad
was a truck driver. His name was Gale Storm. We had moved
to National
City, and his dad was coming through town, and he picked
me up and he
took me back up to L.A., to Whittier, to stay for a
weekend. And I rode
in the truck all the way up there. I was just like, "I'm
gonna -- I
don't know what I'm gonna do, but I'm changed."
Me: How did you end up in this neighborhood? Tom: It just seemed a good
place to go -- north. You live in L.A., you go south,
there's more L.A.
We bought a house here
several
years ago right along the railroad tracks. And it was one
of those
things, they show you the house and you sit on the porch,
and as you
sit down on the porch there's a train going by, right? And
the engineer
waves to you. And then a cardinal comes and sits down
right near your
shoulder, and you hear the train whistle blowing, and the
sun is going
down, you have a nice glass of red wine. You think, "This
is it." You
buy the place, and the next day they say, "That was the
last time that
train ran. No cardinals have ever been seen around here.
It must have
been some freak thing." Then you quit drinking, and you're
stuck with a
house on a busy road, and the traffic noise is deafening.
That was my
introduction to the area. Now I live out. Way out.
Me: You must be well-established here by now. Tom: I'm not well-established at all -- but I'm here. Me: You ever go down to San Francisco? Tom: I go down sometimes
-- in
for a weekend of excitement. Watch women's wrestling, or
mud wrestling.
Midget female mud wrestling. It's big there -- it's huge.
It's bigger
than the opera -- in fact, they call it "The Little
Opera."
Me: And have you been playing music in the time between records? Tom: The standard answer? I've been in traffic school. Me: You know, you can get through that in a day. Tom: They wanted to make
an
example out of me. I didn't have a good lawyer, and I just
said, "Look,
I'll do the time."
Me: Traffic school is hard. Tom: It is hard. People don't really give it the weight it deserves. Me: To get something out of it. Tom: Exactly. More than
just a
diploma. I feel better as a person. I graduated vaya cum
laude . . .
Actually, I've been breaking in other people's shoes. Just
on the side.
Just to stay busy. You get 'em new, you're unhappy with
them -- I wear
'em four or five weeks and mail 'em back to you. No
obligation
necessary.
But just 'cause you're not
fishin' doesn't mean there aren't fish out there. You can
go out there
when you want, when you're ready to do it . . . We've got
a piano
called a Fisher. And that's what we use to catch the big
ones.
Me: Could you stop playing music and still be happy? Tom: I thought about that.
I
don't know. I'd probably end up gluing bottlecaps onto a
piece of
plywood. I don't know how long I'm going to last. Until I
get sick of
it. Sick of myself.
I get a lot of weird mail.
I
get letters from guys that say, "My wife and I ran a hotel
for many
years, and we've sold it. The folks that took it over are
a nice
couple, and if you're ever in town, you should go visit
them. Tell them
that you spoke to us." And I don't know those people.
They've already
told me some people that they know that I should go and
talk to and
tell 'em that I know these people that I don't know. And
then they tell
me about the fact that he had bypass surgery and he has
two blood
clots, and his wife had a 14-pound hairball removed from
her and then
they mounted it, you know, on a . . . globe.
You know there's a device
that
they invented during World War II that could print 4,000
words on a
surface the size of a piece of rice?
Me: I did not. Tom: That's what I'm here
for.
Here's something else: Now, I hope you never have to use
this, but if
you're ever pursued by a crocodile, run in a zigzag
fashion. They have
little or no ability to make sudden changes in direction.
But they're
fast, they're very fast. In fact, there are probably more
people that
are killed by crocodiles than there are by . . . anything.
More than
heart disease. And I hear they're headed west.
Waitress [returning]: You're not going to eat? Not yet? Tom: Still nothing. Waitress: Nothing from nothing is nothing. You want more coffee? [He nods. She refills the cups and moves on.] Tom: You can sit here as
long
as you want. [A pause,
as he consults
his notes.] A mole can dig a tunnel 300 feet long
in one night.
A grasshopper can jump over obstacles 500 times its
height. You know
what creature has the largest brain in relation to the
size of its
body? The ant. An ostrich's eyeball is larger than its
brain. You put
those two things together and . . . I don't know what that
means. I'm
not going anywhere with that.
Me: Where do you pick this stuff up? Tom: Just livin' . . . The
Ringling Brothers at one point were exhibiting Einstein's
eyes,
Napoleon's penis and Galileo's finger bones, all on the
same bill.
Different tents. 'Course I missed that. You ever hear of
Johnny Eck? He
was a Ringling act. The Man Born Without a Body. Johnny
Eck had his own
orchestra and was an excellent pianist and he'd stand on
his hands and
wear a tuxedo.
I used to take the bus to
the
Troubadour and stand out front at 9 o'clock in the morning
on a Monday
and wait all day to get up and do 15 minutes onstage . . .
'Cause you
know, you never had confidence, you have absolutely no
self-esteem, but
you have this mad wish to do something public at the same
time. You're
sitting all day next to a guy with a silver trumpet who's
on acid,
you're sharing cigarettes and drinking Tabs. And then like
a whole
Mexican family with nine kids comes in in matching vests
and pants and
studs and hats, from ages 19 down to 4, and they get up
and do
"Guadalajara," "Eres Tu?" -- remember that? Break your
heart, just
break your heart . . . I saw Miles Davis there. Professor
Irwin Corey.
They swing a spotlight around right by the cigarette
machine to pick
you up:
And nowwww, ladies and gentlemen, the Troubadour is proud to present . . . And they'd say your name,
and
they'd walk you up to the stage in the spotlight. I used
to watch other
acts do that, and I'd be in the audience with my coffee,
and I said,
"That's it. That's it for me."
You know this group called That Mean Old Man Next Door? They've got a record called Tijuana Moon. Me: I like the name. Tom: I just made it up. Me: Did you? Tom: Could be the other way. Could be a group called Tijuana Moon. Me: Could be. It's confusing sometimes. Tom: You ever try to get a
sandwich made for you in England? It'll just make you
crazy. "Put a
little more sauce on that." And it's your sandwich, you're
gonna pay
for it and you're gonna eat it. But they look at you like
[snooty voice],
"I won't do it."
"Put a little more lettuce on that for me." "I can't do
it." "And don't
cut the crust." "I have to cut it off." I used to get in
arguments. I
used to end up going over the counter. I'd say, "Gimme
that bread,
goddamn it. Let me have that thing. I'll show you how to
make a goddamn
sandwich." I was young. I was rude. But there was
something real and
sincere about my reaction.
[The waitress approaches with a coffee pot.] You got a decaf? I got to calm down. II.
Driving me back to my
hotel in
the big black Silverado he calls (today, at least) Old
Reliable, Waits
detours to a flower-bedecked makeshift roadside shrine
dedicated to the
memory of 12-year-old Georgia Lee Moses, the subject of
"Georgia Lee,"
a lilting Irishy lullaby on Mule
Variations.
"It's a good spot," he
says as
we pull over to a grassy plot of trees and brush by a
freeway onramp.
"She'd run away from home, been missing for like a week. I
guess this
is where they found the body." He takes a plastic
point-and-click
camera from his pocket and shoots a picture. "Not to make
it a racial
matter, but it was one of those things where, you know,
she's a black
kid, and when it comes to missing children and unsolved
crimes, a lot
of it has to do with timing, or publicity . . . and there
was this
whole Polly Klaas Foundation up here, while Georgia Lee
did not get any
real attention. And I wanted to write a song about it. At
one point I
wasn't going to put it on the record, there were too many
songs. But my
daughter said, 'Gee, that would reallybe sad -- she gets
killed and not
remembered and somebody writes a song about it and doesn't
put it on
the record.' I didn't want to be a part of that."
Waits recorded 25 tracks
for
the 16-song Mule
Variations,
which takes its title from the fact that "Get Behind the
Mule," a
low-slung gospel blues more or less about persistence, had
been
attempted in several styles; but the mule is an apt enough
totem for
the record, stubbornly itself and not as pretty as a
horse. Like Bob
Dylan's Time Out of
Mind,
it's a mature work that trades away a young man's flash
effects for an
older one's plain speaking -- a step forward that can
sound like a step
back -- and like that record, it alternates between mutant
blues and
bravely sentimental ballads. ("It's got a lot of ballads,"
he says,
"which I was nervous about at first," but which makes the
album more
immediately accessible than the elemental Bone Machine or the
troll-cabaret The Black
Rider.) While he has not
abandoned his familiar lyrical complement of drifters,
town-edge
dwellers and sideshow freaks (like the "not conventionally
handsome"
"Eyeball Kid," whom the singer gives his own birth date),
his subject
here overwhelmingly is Home. (He will say no more about it
than "You
write about what you go through.") Waits -- who moved
several times as
a child, and conceived a fondness as an adult (in what
might be termed
his Bukowski phase) for flophouses and fleabag hostelries,
living
notoriously for a spell in West Hollywood's Tropicana
Motel -- was
formerly a poet of transients, and of transience; Mule Variations, a
family man's
album, is by contrast founded primarily upon household
images:
"Evelyn's kitchen," "Beulah's porch." "Never let the weeds
get
higher/than the garden," he advises in "Get Behind the
Mule," while at
the "House Where Nobody Lives," "the weeds had grown
up/just as high as
the drawers," and the unsavory neighbor of "What's He
Building?" "has
no dog and he has no friends and his lawn is dying." "I
hope my pony
knows the way home," sings the weary traveler of "Pony."
"Picture in a
Frame" provides a swell little metaphor for commitment and
the
civilizing influence of small gestures. "Filipino Box
Spring Hog"
concerns a barbecue. And in the breathtakingly intimate
"Take It With
Me," perhaps the most beautiful and most beautifully sung
song in his
canon, domestic pleasure inspires a vision of transcendent
permanence:
Children
are
playing
at the end of the day Strangers are singing on our lawn It's got to be more than flesh and bone All that you've loved is all you own . . . I'm gonna take it with me when I go "Come On Up to the House,"
the
raucous hymn that follows, appropriately caps the album
with a general
offer of refuge.
What makes Tom Waits most
valuable, and continually attractive to succeeding
generations of
listeners looking for something ... nonstandard, is --
apart from his
heart and his humor -- his restlessness, his perfect
willingness to
destroy the lab for the sake of the experiment. (He's the
kid you knew
who made models just to blow them up.) Except for Closing Time, a
singer-songwriter
album in an age of singer-songwriters, he's gone his own
way, often too
far from the pack even to be called out of step, but he's
been
influential around the significant fringes. (Beck,
Sparklehorse, Nick
Cave, Giant Sand and Los Lobos all owe him something.)
Most important,
he has never -- as pop stars so often do in their middle
years --
equated quality with either technique or technology; if
anything, he's
a bit of a Luddite, standing for the "junkyard choir," the
real room
sound, the unplannable accident. He'd far sooner hit
something with a
stick than plug something in. There is an element of
cultural bravery
in all this, even if unintended, and Waits has become a
kind of hero to
the pop discontent. His appearance last month at the South
By Southwest
music conference in Austin was the weekend's hot ticket.
Because it gets relatively
little airplay -- being too strange for the stations that
play his
chronological contemporaries and altogether unrelated to
the business
of modern rock radio -- Waits' music is spread most often,
like a
seditionary pamphlet, from friend to friend, lover to
lover, parent to
child, teacher to student -- a conspiracy of Tom. On the
Internet one
finds testaments from fans who first heard him . . .
. . . in the fifth or sixth grade [when] my science teacher listened toBone Machine every day before we students arrived . . . from my ex-boyfriend, and I am certain that it was the best thing he gave me at all . . . from a Swedish girl driving thru Omaha with my cousin . . . in my AP History class . . . in Trondheim, Norway, as an exchange student . . . in my dad's record collection . . . via a girl I fell in love with during my early years as a poor starving acting student in a small Miami art college -- she was a dancer who ultimately stepped on my heart and squashed it into the cheap beige carpet that covered the floor in my dorm room. Thank god for her, anyway . . . They are every last one of
them
hoping he will come to their town, now that he has a
record to promote.
But Waits, who has scant patience for touring ("I like to
come home
before I get angry"), will likely make only a few
appearances in a
handful of "major markets."
"You don't feel the need
to get
up in front of a crowd and play, obviously?" I ask as we
drive along a
frontage road.
Tom: Not unless I can wear
a
leotard and a bathing cap and some fishing boots. That's
what I'm
looking for, some new channel, so you don't feel like
you're doing a
medley of your hits -- not that I've had hits. I'm just
saying that
after a while you sit down at the piano and start feeling
like a lounge
act. Everybody wants to hear this song or that song . . .
This used to
be all fruit stands, eucalyptus trees, used-car lots.
There's an old
Buick right there. Is that a Buick or an Olds? See the one
I'm talking
about? The four-door?
Me: It's the only one you could be talking about. Tom: It's an Olds . . .
fifteen
hundred dollars -- Jee-sus. My first car cost me $50. It
was a '55
Buick Special.
Me: Did it run? Tom: Oh God yes. Swing low, sweet chariot. It was just a ... boat. Me: Do you have other cars than this? Tom: I got an old Caddy. I
got
a '72 white Suburban that no one in the family will ride
in. My
vehicles have always been humiliating for the kids. This
one, it's like
a motel, and they even complain about this. I say, "You're
nuts. You
could live in this car."
Me: A family of five. Tom: Comfort. Roadability.
Reliability -- hence the name "Old Reliable." Smoked
windows. For
anonymity. 'Cause there's times when you just want to
sneak in, do your
business and sneak out.
III.
Later that same day. An
old
roadhouse Italian restaurant 40 minutes out into the
countryside, amid
the green hills and spotted cows. "It's got the largest
Elvis Presley
decanter collection in the West," Waits had said. "That's
something you
gotta see. And they also have this tilted floor, and
glasses fly out of
your hand. I was gonna suggest perhaps later this
afternoon meeting me
there to see if we could get a glass to fly out of our
hands. It's very
chic. Big line around the block. Guy wears a uniform at
the door.
Little band. Very chichi. I don't even know if you can get
in the way
you're dressed . . . I never go anywhere without a tuxedo.
At least the
upper half of a tuxedo. Might be able to get away with
your own pants,
if you stay seated. In fact, you might want to bring a
chair that
you're already in, and just sort of scoot towards the
door."
No one is at the door, in
a
uniform or in line. The interior is strictly red checks
and paneled
walls. There's no band, but there is an old upright piano,
an enormous
rack of antlers, a collection of dusty paintings,
including one of John
Wayne, "the patron saint," says Waits, "of all Italian
restaurants."
And in wall-mounted glass cases, dozens of decanters of
varying shapes
and sizes -- nary an Elvis, however.
Me: Do you feel isolated out here? Tom: I guess I used to,
but I
don't really anymore. I think what happens is that when
people move to
the sticks, they still want all their products and
services, and they
get out here and then gradually the place they thought was
bucolic and
serene starts looking like all the places that they left,
because they
brought with them all the things that made the place they
used to live
in look so . . . crappy. And they have to keep moving
further away, but
they're really bringing it all with them.
When I went back to Los
Angeles
after having not been there for a while, I was surprised
at how many
words you see when you're driving. It's shocking. Every
square inch of
space that you can see from your windshield there are
words. Hundreds
and hundreds of words. In places you never would imagine.
And I found
myself unable to drive safely. Even after seven years of
traffic
school, I was having problems with focus and attention. I
was going to
lose my diploma.
There was an earthquake in
1812
in the Midwest that changed the direction of the
Mississippi River. Did
you know that? Church bells rang as far away as
Philadelphia.
Me: From the earthquake? Tom: I don't mean it was Sunday. Me: Is this how you spend your time? Tom: I can't finish a
book, you
know, but I snack on information. The origin of
pumpernickel bread, for
example. Napoleon's horse ate the best bread. All the
soldiers were
livid. What they really wanted was to eat as well as
Napoleon's horse
ate. And he ate pumpernickel. His horse's name was
Nikolai. Nikolai . .
. pumpernickel.
Me: I think of that as a German word, and yet it's apparently from the French. Tom: And yet. And yet. It's just one of those things that . . . gives you a reason to live. Me: Keeps you mystified. Tom: Like this place. [Portentously:] Notice
the plastic
pitcher. The plastic tumbler. It was at one time glass.
You know how
the nicer restaurants have a piece of glass? They finally
just said....
Me: Flew off the table too many times. Tom: The overhead was just amazing. [A waiter approaches.] Waiter [noticing the tape recorder]: You're not going to tape me, are you? Tom: No. We're going to listen to music. But only we can hear it. We're dogs. Waiter: Well, crank it up. Tom: It is cranked up. What do you mean, crank it up? [A puzzled pause. After which Waits orders lasagna.] Waiter: And some soup? Tom: I'll have some soup. In preparation for my lasagna. [The waiter withdraws.] Me: You're really putting on the feedbag this evening. Tom: It's a matter of
being
polite. If you don't eat, they'll get you later. "Well,
why'd you come
in here? To laugh at us? To laugh at our decanters? Our
crooked floor?"
Me: When you were living
in
Hollywood 20 years ago, did you ever imagine you'd wind up
a country
squire?
Tom: Then, no. Now,
neither.
You do get addicted to noise living in the city. There's a
great deal
you have to recover from if you leave. When I first came
out to a small
town, there's a guy with a dustpan and a whiskbroom, a
policeman, in
the middle of the street, sweeping up glass. And then I
ordered a
coffee in a little café -- the waitress says [sweetly],
"Hi, how are you?" "I don't think that's any of your
business, how I
am. I'm just drinking my coffee." Took me a while.
Me: You had the shell on. The protective coating. Tom: It's a little drop of Retsin. That outer candy shell that seals in the freshness. Me: Do you feel countrified yet? Tom: I don't know. I hope
I'm
becoming more eccentric. More room, you know. More room in
the brain.
Me: Did you feel limited by Hollywood or New York? Tom: Well, gee, after a
while,
it just gets . . . change is good. I can go there if I
want. They
didn't get rid of it.
Me: No, they did. It's gone. Tom: I was afraid that
might
happen if I left. But I have film; I have a lot of it on
film . . .
Western Avenue, you know, is the longest street in the
world. I hear it
runs down to Ensenada.
Me: Tierra del Fuego. Tom: La Paz. You get on
Western
and you just keep driving and it's pretty unbelievable. A
lot of
hair-care places. I think there's probably more hair-care
places on
Western than there are in Hollywood. You think of
Hollywood as obsessed
with its hair, but folks who live way out on Western are
just as
interested in hair care and hair-care products.
[The waiter brings soup.]Tom: What was that big high-speed chase that came through here in the '30s -- remember that? Waiter: Gosh, I forgot about that. Tom: There was a bank robbery in the city, and it was like a ... Waiter: You're talking about the '30s or the '70s? Tom: The '30s. There was a
shootout at the creamery -- you know the creamery? Big
shootout. Three
guys dead. The car was on fire, the whole place.
Waiter: I missed out on that one. Tom: I thought maybe you'd
heard something recently about it. It's all in the Library
of Congress.
Waiter: That's the first time I heard it. [The waiter withdraws.] Tom: They don't like to
talk
about it here -- afraid they're gonna lose business. I
think they stole
like half a million dollars. On back roads from Petaluma.
Like a Bogart
movie. There was a dairy right behind here, and that's
where they had
this big shootout . . . And afterwards they all came here.
And they all
made up.
Me: They sat down together. Tom: You gotta eat. You
have to
stop a minute and just . . . eat. My stepfather's mom
dated Al Capone.
Me: Really? Tom: Went out on a few dates. Me: Nothing serious. Tom: I don't know. Me: Could have turned into something. Tom: Could have developed.
Who
knows? How much of what really happened do you tell? The
reason that
history is so distorted is 'cause most people aren't
talking. Most
people really don't want you to know the truth.
[The waiter returns with lasagna.] Waiter: Tom, you ready for that lasagna? Tom: Um, yeah . . . I was
going
to ask you about the Elvis decanters. Was there an
abundance of Elvis
decanters here for a while? Or did I just create that, out
of a desire
to see more of them?
Waiter: Well, that may
have
been. The bartender at one time, who was married to
Dolores, who's
bartending now, he was an impersonator of Elvis. Maybe you
saw him.
Tom: No, I could have sworn I saw .... Waiter: I think there's a couple in the bar. Tom: There's got to be. Waiter: He may have taken them when he left. Tom: There it is, you see. Waiter: The '30s, though. Tom: The '30s. A
high-speed
chase. Big bank job. A shootout. All along the Shoreline
Highway. Ended
up at the creamery. Three guys dead. And afterwards they
came over
here. It's in the library.
Now I've got to ask a
question.
Those stories about the glassware. I'm surprised you
brought a glass.
You set a glass down on a table here. There are certain
places here
where a glass will fly off the table and hit the wall?
Waiter: I've heard that. [Pointing] Over there. Tom: Is that why there's
no
glassware on that particular table? First thing I noticed
-- that you'd
gone with the plastic cups. A safety feature. What else
has happened
over there?
Waiter: Pictures. Tom: Pictures have fallen? Waiter: Fallen off the wall. That one . . . Tom: I just saw it move. Waiter [concerned]: Do you want your check now? Tom: No. I came for that. [The waiter withdraws.] Tom: You notice on trash
day
how somebody's going through the trash, you stick your
head out the
window and say, "What the hell you doing in there?" And
then they leave
and you start going through your own trash? You start
re-evaluating the
quality of your own trash, wondering if you made some
terrible mistake,
if you've thrown out something that is now going to be
essential to
your life.
Kathleen and I came up
with
this idea of doing music that's surrural -- it's surreal
and it's
rural, it's surrural. [sings]
Everybody's doin' it
doin' it doin' it.
Surrural. She'll start kind of talking in tongues, and I
take it all
down. She goes places . . . I can't get to those places.
Too, I don't
know . . . pragmatic. She's the egret of the family. I'm
the mule. I
write mostly from the world, the news, and what I really
see from the
counter, or hear. She's more impressionistic. She dreams
like
Hieronymus Bosch. She's been a lot of things. She drove a
truck for a
while. Had her own pilot's license. Worked as a soda jerk.
Ran a big
hotel in Miami. She was going to be a nun. When I met her,
she was at
the corner of nun or ruin. So together it's You wash, I'll
dry. It
works.
She's exposing me to all
kinds
of things I'd never listen to. It's kind of like trying on
hats. "Is
that me?" You have to kind of let it all down and not
worry about
what's hip and what's cool. I guess I'd been trying to
find some music
that's my own music -- it's like home cooking, you know?
Of course if
I'm making something just for me, I'm not very picky, I
might just pour
some sugar in my ear, suck on a piece of dirt in my mouth,
light my
hair on fire. I'm fine with that.
What I did for a long time
was
put my head on other people's bodies. You look for your
own niche. How
have all these things synthesized in you? You take your
Elmer Bernstein
and you take your 7 inches of throbbing pink Jesus and you
put it
together and you try to make some sense out of it. Melt
it, crush it,
saw it, solder it. I've always had diverse influences, and
I never know
how to reconcile them. There was a point where I wasn't
sure whether I
was a lounge act or . . .
Me: A main-room act. Tom: Yeah. "Am I too hip
for
the room?" I don't know. "I'm not hip enough for
the room." Or am I
just, like, you know, a garage sale? It's an ongoing
dilemma. Where are
you, what are you? In popular music, the key word is
"popular," and
popular usually connotes something very temporary -- once
popular, then
they call you once-popular.
Me: Ninety-five percent of everything is temporary. Tom: I'm okay with that .
. .
But it's nice to think that when you're making your music
and you bring
it out, someone's going to pick it up. And who knows when
or where? I
listen to stuff that's 50 years old or older than that and
bring it
into myself. And so you are in a way having communion and
fellowship
with folks you have yet to meet, who will someday
hopefully bring your
record home and -- you know, they're running a little
lingerie shop
down on Magnolia -- and put it on, and bring it together
with the
sounds that they hear in their own head. It's nice to be
part of the
dismemberment of linear time.
The meal is finished, the check paid. On the way out, half a dozen decanters representing Elvis Presley in the several stages of his fine, fine, superfine career are discovered in the bar. Outside, a red Corvette is parked. Waits hands me his camera, and I take his picture posing proprietarily by the car. For a second, he looks about 17. Then he climbs into his hulking black Silverado and drives away, into the cow-covered hills, back to the family, as night falls on the countryside. © Robert Lloyd 1999
and 2011
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