David Smay - Tom Waits Swordfishtrombones

Swordfishtrombones

Praise for the series:

It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher in the Rye or Middlemarch. The series, which now comprises 29 titles with more in the works, is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebrationThe New York Times Book Review

Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just arent enoughRolling Stone

One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planetBookslut

These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these. We are huge nerdsVice

A brilliant serieseach one a work of real loveNME (UK)

Passionate, obsessive, and smartNylon

Religious tracts for the rock n roll faithfulBoldtype

[A] consistently excellent seriesUncut (UK)

We arent naive enough to think that were your only source for reading about music (but if we had our way watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, youd do well to check out Continuums 33 1/3 series of books.Pitchfork

For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our website at www.continuumbooks.com and 33third.blogspot.com

Also available in this series:

Dusty in Memphis by Warren Zanes

Forever Changes by Andrew Hultkrans

Harvest by Sam Inglis

The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller

Meat Is Murder by Joe Pernice

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by John Cavanagh

Abba Gold by Elisabeth Vincentelli

Electric Ladyland by John Perry

Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott

Sign O the Times by Michaelangelo Matos

The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard

Let It Be by Steve Matteo

Live at the Apollo by Douglas Wolk

Aqualung by Allan Moore

OK Computer by Dai Griffiths

Let It Be by Colin Meloy

Led Zeppelin IV by Erik Davis

Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno

Exile on Main Street by Bill Janovitz

Grace by Daphne Brooks

Murmur by J. Niimi

Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli

Ramones by Nicholas Rombes

Endtroducing by Eliot Wilder

Kick Out the Jams by Don McLeese

Low by Hugo Wilcken

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper

Music from Big Pink by John Niven

Pauls Boutique by Dan LeRoy

Doolittle by Ben Sisario

Theres a Riot Goin On by Miles Marshall Lewis

Stone Roses by Alex Green

Bee Thousand by Marc Woodworth

The Who Sell Out by John Dougan

Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti

Loveless by Mike McGonigal

The Notorious Byrd Brothers by Ric Menck

Court and Spark by Sean Nelson

69 Love Songs by LD Beghtol

Songs in the Key of Life by Zeth Lundy

Use Your Illusion I and II by Eric Weisbard

Daydream Nation by Matthew Stearns

Trout Mask Replica by Kevin Courrier

Double Nickels on the Dime by Michael T. Fournier

Peoples Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm by Shawn Taylor

Aja by Don Breithaupt

Rid of Me by Kate Schatz

Achtung Baby by Stephen Catanzarite

If Youre Feeling Sinister by Scott Plagenhoef

Lets Talk About Love by Carl Wilson

Forthcoming in this series:

Pretty Hate Machine by Daphne Carr

Horses by Philip Shaw
and many more

David Smay

2011

Continuum International Publishing Group
80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York NY 10038
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX

www.continuumbooks.com

2008 by David Smay

Cover photoillustration and interior photos
by Michael A. Russ, copyright 1983

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers or their agents.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smay, David.
Swordfishtrombones / David Smay.
p. cm. (33 1/3)
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN-13: 978-1-4411-1678-9
1. Waits, Tom, 1949- Swordfishtrombones. I. Title. II. Series.

ML420.W13S63 2007
781.64092--dc22

2007042634

Printed and bound in the United States of America

For my wife Jacqueline and my children Emmett and Matilda

Im not on a first name basis with Tom Waits, nor his wife Kathleen Brennan, so I apologize for using their first names in the text of the book. Frankly, I adopted the convention because I hate the look of a possessive at the end of a name that ends in s and I didnt feel like writing about Waitss work when I could write about Toms albums. Once I took that step, it just seemed rude to refer to Kathleen as Brennan. Ultimately, it also served the tone of the book, which wasnt reportorial or academic anyway. Im sorry if it irks; its not intended to claim an intimacy to which Im not entitled. It just made the writing work for me to say Toms. Except for the times when it worked better to use Waitss.

The 33 1/3 Continuum press series has a strong design template and the size and design of the font is not negotiable. Tom Waits fans will be unsurprised to find that he resists templates and the word swordfishtrombones did not fit on the cover. After much discussion, the editor, designer and I came to the solution you see on the cover. If the title of means anything, it means something about the joining of disparate elements into an unlikely whole. So it seemed important that we not break the title along its constituent words or syllablesSword/fish/trom/bones. The solution we arrived at was fractured and asymmetrical, and that seemed apt.

Very briefly let me preemptively address a few things that might bother your inner copyeditor.

The title of the album is Swordfishtrombones, which is plural. The title of the song is Swordfishtrombone, which is singular.

The title of the song is Franks Wild Years but the title of the album is Franks Wild Yearswithout the apostrophe. The play is also titled Franks Wild Years.

The title of the song 16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought Six varies occasionally in how it is written out, but I have opted for the version on the back of the album cover.

Finally, I drew extensively from the Tom Waits Library (previously the Tom Waits Supplement) while writing this book. It is not only the best Tom Waits resource online, but the most comprehensive, best designed, best organized single-artist site a writer could ever have. All of the information I gleaned about the theatrical production of