User:Black flamingo11/Tom Waits
Ladles and Generalmen... Welcome to the Moonset Boulevard Jazz Lounge. What's going down, Brown? Give me the scoop, Betty Boop. Whadd'ya drink, Jar Jar Binks? My name's Old Man Frost and I'm a here to tell you a little story; a story about a real hip-cat that went by the name of Tom Waits. Hey Joey, play the nice people some bass while I talk. That's right kid, take that bassline for a walk. Now... Who is this Tom Waits cat anyhow? Well, you know what they say about piano players. I'd repeat it now but, you know, there are ladies present. Also I forgot exactly how it went. But come in out the cold and I'll tell you all about him, God knows it's colder than a prostitute's knees in the rain out there.
The thing about Tom was his distinctive voice. Some say it sounded like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car. Others say he sounded like Satan with laryngitis, singing on a broken karaoke machine in a pirate bar. Me? I always thought he sounded like that which he was; an old drunk who couldn't sing very well. That don't sound as fancy as the other comparisons, but maybe that's why I ain't a music critic.
Early Life[edit | edit source]
Tom was born in a seedy Los Angeles pizza joint on Christmas morning. The waitress who delivered him wore rhinestone glasses with the little pearl thing clipped on her sweater. She laid him down in a leather booth seat, marked with a crude heart which told all who sat there that PB loved JC, and served black coffee to the mullato priest who was sitting there. No one knows what happened to Tom's real parents; some say his mommy ran away before he was born, and whoever his daddy was - well - it was likely that it wasn't his real daddy anyways. Little Tom he just lay there clouded in second-hand smoke, and he cried. The baby's cries were raw, phlegm-ridden, and suspiciously deep for an infant of but a few hours. Folks say that from day one Old Tom coughed and spluttered like an asthmatic trying to make it up a steep incline on a windy day. We all knew even then that this boy was born to be a jazzman, and the only thing that could have stopped him was an early death from liver-poisoning, which by some miracle the lad evaded.
Well around about the age of twenty our boy Tom started playing the piany. Or you know, maybe the piany started playing him, depends how you look at it. In either case, the way that boy played made everyone in the strip joint sit up and take notice. It was the kind of music that conjured up images of that guy you nearly married, or that waitress you've been fixing on with the five kids who always undercharges you for key lime pie. He soon took to playing nightclubs all over the metropolitan area; the kinds of places where you don't have to pay for your drinks, so long as you don't mind being beaten within an inch of your life by the doormen on the way out.
He also started talking in rhyme, which tended to amuse those around him. Tom was causing quite a storm, people swarmed to see him perform at Norm's. His girls got more attractive as the gigs went on, though some of them had been married so many times they had rice-marks all over their faces, yeah you know the kind. Around this time he started paying for stuff in Dollar bills.
The Asylum Years[edit | edit source]
Tom took his show on tour and cut a few 7 inches with Asylum... he released some records too if you know what I mean. He quickly developed a unique approach to songwriting; specialising in rambling lyrical monologues about the urban dispossessed - often backed by soft jazz and punctuated by long spoken interludes. He couldn't sing worth a damn, but he would chill you and thrill you and only ask for 5% of the cover charge. And people loved it man, they lapped it up like the dogs who hang out behind the butcher's store, which becomes a boudoir after 10.
But Tom, man, he had his foibles just like the rest of us. Hell, he had more vices than a mechanic's workshop. To say he enjoyed a drink would be like saying that a man enjoys breathing air. He used to stay up so late the all-night garage would be closed when he got there. "The piano's been drinking, not me," he used to say. "I'm as sober as a Mormon in a cold shower." You could tell he was drunk though from the way he got tripped up in the wind, flailing like a Buick in a hurricane. Tom always wanted to exorcise his demons, but he never did; I guess he was worried about his angels leaving too.
Little money came Tom's way at first, just the odd faded dime from people who'd mistaken him for a beggar, but folks were taking notice of his songs. He soon found his ditties being played on the wireless, though it took him a few days and a handful of painkillers to realise it wasn't his voice singing 'em. First it was just the cover versions, all by guys who didn't even know the meaning of the word Hepatitis C. It'd be safe to say that Rod Stewart never had to shave in the gutter, and I doubt Scarlett Johansson ever slept top-and-tail in a phonebooth with a Chinese rent boy either. But Tom didn't care for money or fame. So long as he got to play his piano, smoke a gin-soaked cigarette and fornicate in a cheap motel every once and a while, he was content as an Irishman during Happy Hour.
Francis Ford Coppola[edit | edit source]
Francis was a tortured intellectual with a pool player's frame and a 12-months-at-sea beard on his face. He looked like a longshoreman in a beret; or a warlock who'd been to art school. He and Tom may have seemed a strange coupling, but much like Jack and lemonade they went surprisingly well together. Tom could only act as well as he could sing, but that didn't seem to matter to Francis; then again Francis struggled making pictures as good as The Godfather Part II himself, in fact he only managed it once. No one is sure exactly what he saw in Tom that made him cast the kid in so many movies. Could be he found himself a kindred spirit, more likely it was something to do with the rising cost of actors.
Filmography[edit | edit source]
| Film | Role |
|---|---|
| Paradise Alley | Mumbling pianist #2 |
| Wolfen | Drunken Bar Owner (uncredited) |
| Rumble Fish | Crazy Guy |
| The Fisher King | Disabled Veteran (uncredited) |
| Bram Stoker's Dracula | Possessed Maniac |
| Mystery Men | Croaky Voiced Drunk |
| The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus | Tom Waits |
This old Sagittarius also penned the mostly-original soundtrack to Francis' musical One from the Heart. It's one of those movies nobody's heard of, but they sometimes play it on old black and white sets in taxi ranks in the middle of the night. If you ever want to see it they have a VHS copy in Pomona City Library; the thin brunette who sits at the checkout uses it as a paperweight.
The Island Years[edit | edit source]
Hey boys, stop playing for a second - I said stop playing. There, that's better. Now the reason we're killing the music here is to draw your attention to a point I'd like to make. I wanna pull on your coat about something here. You see, at this point in his career Tom took a sharp change in direction. He quit with the schmaltzy piano ballads, he quit with the upright bass that went a-boop-boop-bam, he even quit drinking margaritas for breakfast. And like a virgin sailor Tom set out on a great voyage of discovery; experimenting with a diverse range of genres and cocktails.
In 1980, during the height of a Pimp War in NYC, Tom signed to Island Records. The contract was drawn up in blood and signed in saliva, then it was set on fire and the ashes were scattered in the Delaware City Sewer. He began stalking the musical graveyards for long forgotten styles, unearthing a seedy host of bizarre pre-rock characteristics, such as Vaudeville, folk of foreign origins, and what can only be described as Pirate Music. Over the last decadent decade Tom's voice had deteriorated further, becoming a husk of its former self - and let's face it, it was pretty husky to begin with. When he staggered up on stage with a battered accordion and sang, people thought someone outside was trying to start a diesel engine with a chainsaw.
In the next 20 years Tom went from being champion of the jazz lounge to critical darling. He collaborated with artists as famous and troubled as Keith Richards, and took a mistress of Puerto-Rican stock (I heard she had a wooden leg). His piano sat in the corner gathering dust, while Tom cheated on it with marimbas, bassoons and bongos. He wasn't really a percussionist though, he just liked to hit things.
Personal Life[edit | edit source]
Now Tom was a lonely guy, Hell I know how that feels. You know I call myself up on the phone sometimes, ask myself out to dinner. Oh you do that too, Sir? Well that's... that's some comfort. Yeah I take myself to some classy joint - Pizza King or something like that - hey I ain't cheap you know! After dinner I drop myself off at the front porch, there's an awkward silence, and before you know it I've dragged myself upstairs and taken advantage of myself. Man, I should know better. But we get along so well, you know?
As far as I know Tom was pretty much the same. His soul was as battered as the old trilby he always wore. Then he met Kathleen... Kathleen was a trapeze artist and part-time truck driver with the face of an Egyptian princess and the liver of Louisiana spinster. They met on New Year's Eve at a bent cop's party in Hollywood and it was love at first sight... Love at second sight too. Tom scrimped and saved all year and by 1980 he could finally afford to give her a ring that once belonged to his Grandmother.
Conclusion[edit | edit source]
Anyways, that's enough chit-chat, time for a song. I could go on all night if they left the microphone on. And you know what they say; it's hard to dance when there's no music. Here's one by Old Tom Waits, it's called A Dozen Dead Roses for a Stripper in Detroit. Hope you like it.
