I have just been watching a BBC documentary about the
American actor, composer, singer and artist, Tom Waits. Although Waits and I
are of a similar age and generation, he and his music have completely passed me
by.
All of the contributors were men, except Lucinda Williams: real men. Men like Guy Garvey of Elbow
and Terry Gilliam and Iain Rankin. He has a voice like it was soaked in a vat of Bourbon, apparently.
This is the lyric to Drunk on the Moon:
Tight-slacked clad
girls on the graveyard shift
'Neath the cement
stroll
Catch the midnight
drift
Cigar chewing
Charlie
In that newspaper
nest
grifting hot horse
tips
On who's running the
best
[CHORUS]
And I'm blinded by
the neon
Don't try and change
my tune
'Cause I thought I
heard a saxophone
I'm drunk on the
moon
And the moon's a
silver slipper
It's pouring
champagne stars
Broadway's like a
serpent
Pulling shiny
top-down cars
Laramer is teeming
With that undulating
beat
And some Bonneville
is screaming
It's way wilder down
the street
[CHORUS]
Hearts flutter and
race
The moon's on the
wane
Tarts mutter their
dream hopes
The night will
ordain
Come schemers and
dancers
Cherry delight
As a Cleveland-bound
Greyhound
And it cuts through
the night
And I've hawked all
my yesterdays
Don't try and change
my tune
'Cause I thought I
heard a saxophone
I'm drunk on the
moon
I selected that at random but whatever, it is meaningless
to me. I have never lived in that uniquely American world of excess and booze
and lighting another cigarette just as you stamp the other one out; of dossing
in a shabby room above a Las Vegas brothel and sleeping in your clothes; of
starting your day at 4.00am.
But clearly the real men are quite taken with it all.
He is an artist and what can often seem contrived to
ordinary people like me, is in fact a very original and affecting act. The real
Tom Waits is presumably a perfectly ordinary person who takes his daughter to
school, pays his electricity bill on time and does a mean Chilli Con Carne.
God, I hope so ‘cos this wasted American
hobo persona would drive me to distraction in about six minutes if I was
anywhere within twenty-miles of him.
It’s a funny thing art and artists; people, particularly in
the media seem willing to extend great goodwill and licence to these hard-living
thespian artistes. I don’t know if
you have ever read any of the dark stuff on Robert Zimmerman when he is not
playing the part of Bob Dylan but some of it is very dark indeed. But we
forgive because he is such a terrific artist, indeed an icon.
Maybe J M W Turner had his dark side, well he did if the
recent film about him is true but again it doesn’t do to draw attention to his
cruelties.
I think perhaps that all of these guys, Waits, Turner,
Dylan, win our respect at least because they didn’t achieve what they had
without remarkable diligence, hard work and talent. Yes, some luck, some
outright stealing of other’s ideas and being in the right place at the right
time but we find ways of coming to terms with all that . . . and we certainly
are in no position to judge . . . and take what they give us and cherish it.
It is interesting to see what his own inspirations are/were:
Tout Mask Replica is number 3 in his all-time top twenty, which is I don’t know,
doubtful; Beefheart wasn’t popular in 70’s America. He has Exile on Main Street
as his No.4; very strange, it’s hard to see what the influences are.
There seemed to be a slight suggestion in the documentary
that he now has regrets about wrapping his genuine song-writing talents around
this late-night semi-alcoholic loner caricature he has become [or created]. Can’t
find anything anywhere about a drug habit and there was nothing mentioned in
the television piece; cynical me thinks booze and brothels are much more
acceptable to the real men in his audience.
No comments:
Post a Comment