Jay S. Jacobs - Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits

WILD YEARS
THE MUSIC AND MYTH OF TOM WAITS

THE MUSIC AND MYTH
OF TOM WAITS

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ECW Press, 2000, 2006

Published by ECW Press
2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E IE2
416.694.3348 /

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Jacobs, Jay S., 1962

Wild years: the music and myth of Tom Waits / Jay S. Jacobs Rev. and updated ed.
Includes bibliographic references, discography and index.

ISBN 978-1-55022-716-I

1. Waits, Tom, 1949- . 2. Singers United States Biography.
3. Actors United States Biography. I. Title.

ML420.W145J17 2005 782.42164092 C2005-907235-0

Front cover photo: Jay Blakesberg
Back cover photo: Ebet Roberts / Redferns
Copy editors: Mary Williams and Crissy Boylan
Cover design: Guylaine Rgimbald SOLO DESIGN
Typesetting: Yolande Martel
Second printing: Transcontinental

This book is set in Minion and Univers

PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA

I would like to thank all those people who played either small or large parts in the creation of this book. It would have been impossible without them.

To Leslie Diamond and Debbie Jacobs, thanks for always being there with advice, help, and the occasional kick in the backside when I needed it.

To Robert Lecker, Holly Potter, Emma McKay, Mary Williams, and the people of ECW Press, thank you for this wonderful opportunity and for having so much faith in me.

To Gary Tausch, thank you so much for your tireless assistance with my research, for sharing your encyclopedic knowledge with me, and for giving me access to your vast library. You were truly indispensable.

To Craig Morrison, I am very grateful for all of your editorial advice and suggestions. You have played a vital role in making this book what it is.

To Bones Howe, Jerry Yester, David Geffen, Mike Melvoin, Francis Ford Coppola, and everyone else who so generously shared their feelings about, and memories of, Tom Waits (both on and off the record), thank you. Also, to Barney Hoskyns, David Zimmer, Mark Rowland, and the good people at Rolling Stone and kcrw radio, thank you for allowing me to draw on your work.

To Lou Hirshorn, Mark and Marie Healy, Bob, Roni, and Colleen McGowan, Drew Bergman, Sam Bergman, John Ruback, Damian Childress, Phil Green, Ron Sklar, Mary Aloe, George Wagner, Ken and Terry Sharp, Lucille Falk, Frances Zucker, Wayne Diamond, Alan and Sandra Feroe, Dave Feroe, Kathy Feroe, Christina Feroe, Sheila Graham, Ron Merx, and so many others, thank you for taking me away from the computer for the occasional stiff drink (or whatever) and listening to me bitch on and on about things without telling me to shut up. Its appreciated more than you know.

Lastly and most importantly to Tom Waits, thank you for being such an inspiration, both as an artist and a man, for so many years. I know that your next fifty years will be as fascinating as your last fifty have been.

Diligent efforts have been made to contact copyright holders; please excuse any inadvertent errors or omissions, but if anyone has been unintentionally omitted, the publisher would be pleased to receive notification and to make acknowledgments in future printings.

Excerpts from The Resurrection of Tom Waits, by David Fricke from Rolling Stone, June 24, 1999, by Straight Arrow Publishers Company, L.P. 1999. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Excerpts from Tom Waits for His Next Album, by Mikal Gilmore from Rolling Stone, September 7, 1978, by Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. 1978. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Excerpts from Tom Waits Talks to Barney Hoskyns, Tom Waits the mojo Interview, and The Marlowe of the Ivories, by Barney Hoskyns reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpts from Side Man, by George Kanzler, used by permission of the Newark (nj) Star Ledger . Excerpts from kcrw-fm interviews with Dierdre ODonohue, Chris Douridas, and Tom Schnobbel, reprinted by permission of kcrw-fm, Los Angeles. Excerpt from email sent by Don Roy King to Blue Valentines, the Italian Tom Waits fan club, reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpts from Smelling Like a Brewery, Looking Like a Tramp, by David McGee from Rolling Stone, January 27, 1977, by Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. 1977. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Excerpts from Tom Waits: A Drifter Finds a Home, by Elliott Murphy from Rolling Stone, January 30, 1986, by Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. 1986. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Excerpts from 20 Questions: Tom Waits, Playboy magazine (March 1988). Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Excerpts from Tom Waits on One from the Heart, by Steve Pond from Rolling Stone, April 1, 1982, by Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. 1982. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Quote from Party 2000: Tom Waits, by Tom Waits, from Rolling Stone, December 30, 1999January 6, 2000, by Straight Arrow Publishers Company, L.P. 1999. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Excerpts from Tom Waits Is Flying Upside Down (On Purpose) and Tom Waits Wild Year, by Mark Rowland, used by permission of the author. Quote from Rolling Stone Raves! What Your Rock & Roll Favorites Favor, compiled by Anthony Bozza and edited by Shawn Dahl and published by Rolling Stone Press, 1983, 1995. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Excerpts from Tom Waits and His Act, by David Sheff from Rolling Stone, October 6, 1988, by Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. 1988. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Excerpts from Tom Waits, All-Night Rambler, by Rich Wiseman from Rolling Stone, January 30, 1975, by Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. 1975. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Excerpts from Tom Waits Arrested in L.A., by Delores Ziebarth from Rolling Stone, July 14, 1977, by Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. 1977. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. Excerpts from Tom Waits Hollywood Confidential, by Dave Zimmer, reprinted by permission of the author.

A seedy skid-row bar. A defective neon beer sign sputters and a television drones on, unwatched. A tired bartender with a hard face mops the bar top with a towel. A cocktail waitress, aged before her time, sits alone, occasionally casting glances at the joints only patron. He motions once in a while for a refill and continues to gaze at the battered, varnished wood of the bar and the little bubbles in his glass.

Such scenarios come to most peoples minds when they think of Tom Waits. A 2:00 a.m. world where the disenfranchised struggle to forget lifes little indignities. Here, love is a fleeting ideal. Dreams never come true, but they are relentlessly manufactured, a comfort, a way to get through the night.

Tom Waits is the poet laureate of homesick sailors, down-on-their-luck traveling salesmen, dance-hall girls anyone seeking refuge from lifes disappointments at the bottom of a glass. Waitss vision is an American Gothic of three-time losers, lost souls, and carnival folk. Driving this vision is the artists understanding of such people. He refuses to look down on them. Some of his critics have said that he has sentimentalized them, but this is rarely true. Waits habitually respects his subjects because of not despite their faults and weaknesses. To him there has always been a shabby nobility about surviving in a hard, cold world. And sometimes the bravest thing a person can do is stay the course and hold on to his dreams and ideals.