Tom Waits doesn't like doing interviews, but he's certainly no sloach at them either. The men wear lime-green tuxedos and the girls are straight of the top off a cake." The weddings are like processions, motorcades of late Fifties automobiles with huge Kleenex chrysanthemums strung across them. "This street's great, every day there's a wedding or a funeral. We conducted the interview in his battered, maroon Volvo parked out on the strip.
#SONG BAR ROOM ROMEO TV#
The TV couldn't possibly be tuned down so we paid for a couple of beers and left. A lot of the time it's a low gruff whisper, barely audible above the baseball pouring out of the corner. I may have been affected at one time, but there's no doubt that it's now the only voice he has. When Tom walked in he looked just like his photos, just like one of his songs.įor a start he does talk with that voice. Round the corner is the Travellers, a Honduran diner with grey net curtains, a blackened plastic chandelier and a large black and white TV in the corner. Tom Waits and his wife are the only white people on their block, but there's several catholic churches and the best chili in the world. LA's east end is where they keep the 'wet-backs', all the poor illegal Mexican immigrants who've crossed the Rio Grande in order to sit on doorsteps and ride around in old cars that scrape the road. To get from a hotel on Sunset Boulevard to the Travellers rest Cafe you get on the Hollywood Freeway and keep going east. " I like the ocean but I don't feel very compatible with the type of people who are attracted to it." - Tom Waits. When I told her it was Tom Waits she was genuinely disappointed. When I told the girl at the car-hire company that I was there to interview a musician she was genuinely interested. Californians are a breed together, united by the fact that they all wear shorts and all talk suntanned nonsense. Hollywood's just a memory of a sign, a shadow on a hill populated by Californians. It's always hot and the scenery's very pleasant but you can drive for hours without hitting anything more exciting than housing estates, incredibly expensive housing estates. LA is a great big freeway, if you haven't got a car you can't live, if you have there's little worth living for. I think he also said it was "seventy-two-suburbs in search of a city". "A city with all the personality of a paper cup" Raymond Chandler called it.
You may get lost in the airport, but you'll never even locate the city. The threat of next year's Olympics has turned it into a chaos of cement mixers and never-ending diversions. It's a soundtrack to a sad, unmade movie.
#SONG BAR ROOM ROMEO SERIES#
Oriental, disturbing, merry-go-round music with Hammond organ, electric guitar, tom-toms, chimes, bagpipes and a series of dark, tantalising scenarios sketched by a master storyteller. Tom has moved to a new motel, the Edward Hopper painting has become an Orson Welles picture.
After two sides of a TDK I was even more excited about meeting the man. "Swordfishtrombone" is his first solo album for three years, and I sat in an office and listened. Waits, so long on WEA, is now one of Chris Blackwell's boys. Before leaving the island I popped into Island. Waits is the only possible reason to leave the highly developed civilization of Manhattan and head for the soporific wilds of the far west. If you're a fan he's a myth, if you're not he's a nobody. Despite ten years worth of bitingly intelligent, funny, dramatic music despite album after album of the most essentially American has to offer, he's still no more than a goateed curio. Tom Waits is a famously private person the Barrio is in east Los Angeles. When you ring Tom Waits you get an answerphone, a short burst of congas and a voice that drawls sleepily: "This is Tom, I'm at the beach." But there's no beach near his home in Barrio and like as not he's sitting listening to your message, deciding whether to give you a burst of the live performer. Robert Elms travelled to East LA in search of the almost mythical Tom Waits, owner of a bad liver and a broken down Volvo. Thanks to Kevin Molony for donating this scan Key words: Barrio, Swordfishtrombones, Francis Ford Coppola, Harry Partch, Commercial success, Public image, The Systems Thanks to Kevin Molony for donating scansĭate: Travelers Cafe/ Los Angeles. Source: The Face magazine #41, by Robert Elms.
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