Wild Years (7 page)

While this did, in fact, occur from time to time, if it happened as often as the mythmakers claimed, Waits wouldn't have had a good night's sleep through the late seventies. In a 1980 interview included in the press kit for his album
Heartattack and Vine,
Waits conceded that it had been a dumb idea to advertise his location. He added that lots of people with “clinical problems” had phoned, and he had no idea what he was supposed to have said to them.
¹³

Tom's rent at the Tropicana was nine dollars a night. He has said that in the nine years he lived there he was never provided with clean sheets or towels, but he never complained because he didn't want to make waves.
¹⁴

He brought in a piano, stuck it in the back room, and the Tropicana became a funky little homestead for him. That homestead soon became as spectacularly cluttered as the one at Silver Lake had been. Sheet music and beer cans and empty food containers and clothes and nudie mags and wine bottles and cigarette packages and records were all drawn into the vortex.

Acquiring a new cachet as the living quarters of Tom Waits, the Tropicana filled up with struggling musicians. A pre–Fleetwood Mac Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham holed up at the Tropicana when they came to Hollywood and got their first recording contract; their debut album,
Buckingham-Nicks,
was released in 1973. Punk and New Wave acts like The Dickies, The Dead Boys, The Ramones, and Blondie all stayed at the Tropicana when they were in town. Tom Petty's Heartbreakers lived there, too, though Petty himself chose a little dive in East Hollywood called the Hollywood Premiere — which he describes as even less “luxurious” than the Tropicana.
¹⁵
Somehow, the Tropicana had become the preferred address of the rock scene, and Tom Waits was the establishment's unshaven figurehead.

By the time Waits's debut album was delivered to Asylum, Geffen knew that he had something special on his hands. “I always thought that [Tom] would become an important artist,” says Geffen, “because his songs were so great — although his records tended to become slightly more esoteric, one after the other. There was never, I think, an album with quite the collection of commercial songs that were on his first album.”

Closing Time
quickly started generating a buzz within the recording industry. Part of that buzz involved a linking of Waits with another singer/songwriter whose debut album had also just come out. The two new artists found themselves being heralded as nothing less than the future of rock and roll. In retrospect, it's hard to imagine how such profoundly different musicians could have been lumped together in such a way: Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen?
Closing Time
and
Greetings from Asbury Park
NJ
? Then everyone started trying to figure out which of the two would be the next rock superstar. Waits dismisses the whole thing. “They always try to create scenes — just making connections so that they can create a circuitry. It all has to do with demographics and who likes what. If you like that, you'll like this. If you like hair dryers, you'll like water heaters. Then you try to distinguish yourself in some way, which is essential — you find your little niche. When you make your first record, you think that's all I'm gonna do is make a record. Then you make a record and you realize now I'm one of a hundred thousand people who have records out. Okay, now what? Maybe I oughta shave my head.”
¹⁶

Closing Time
's producer didn't buy into the hype, either. Yester was convinced that they'd created a great album — “I knew that for an absolute fact” — and that's all that mattered. He didn't have to be told by the cultural pundits that Tom Waits was here to stay: “I knew it the first time that I met him and he was in my living room, playing the stuff. You'd have to be a dummy to miss it. All I had to do was keep out of the way. That was the whole point of the thing. That's what I try and do with an artist. With Tom and Tim Buckley — it was the same kind of case. The talent is so big that it's really easy to keep out of the way. I just feel very fortunate that I was there. I [only] feel that way about a couple of albums. [
Closing Time
is] definitely one, and
Goodbye & Hello
by Tim Buckley.”

Neither
Closing Time
nor
Greetings from Asbury Park
enjoyed immediate commercial success, but both turned out to be sleepers, selling steadily for years. Springsteen, of course, did evolve into the icon the media had predicted he would become, in the process filling stadiums worldwide, selling millions of albums, and spawning countless imitations. Waits has always been quite comfortable with the way things worked out: “I saw Bruce in Philadelphia when I was about twenty-five, and he killed me — just killed me. I don't know, no one sits down to write a hit record. I got to a point where I became more eccentric — my songs and my worldview . . . Everybody's on their own road, and I don't know where it's going.”
¹⁷

It's evident, however, that commercial success is no barometer of influence. The list of artists who cite Waits as an inspiration is long and impressive. To name a few, there are grunge leader Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, hip-hop folkie Beck, Les Claypool and the alternative pop-rock funk-metal band Primus, Paul Westerberg of the pioneering Minneapolis band The Replacements, and punk-Irish traditionalists Shane McGowan and The Pogues. Also identifying Waits as one of the best singer/songwriters around are rock experimentalists Sparklehorse, country singer/songwriter and producer Rodney Crowell, alternative chanteuse P. J. Harvey, rapper Everlast of House of Pain, and even actor/singer Mandy Patinkin.

Multiplatinum Canadian singer/songwriter Sarah McLachlan, founder of the all-woman Lilith Fair tour, says that
Closing Time
touched her deeply when she was growing up, and it still has a hold on her imagination. “I don't get an opportunity to listen to music too much,” she admits, “so when I feel the need to listen to music, I put on my old faithful [albums] that I know are going to work for me. I have ten cds I've had for years and years . . . like Tom Waits's
Closing Time
. I'll never, ever tire of that record. It's timeless.” McLachlan covered “Ol' 55” on her
EP
The Freedom Sessions
.

David Geffen envisioned building Waits's reputation by offering his songs to other artists. Creating exposure for a fledgling artist by inviting more established acts to record his or her material was a strategy that Geffen had implemented for years, dating back to the days when he managed Laura Nyro. Pop songstress Nyro had, like Waits, been adored by the critics from the outset of her career, but she'd had trouble accessing a broad audience, so Geffen went to work convincing some big-name acts to record her songs. As a result, Laura Nyro songs became hits for such luminaries as The Fifth Dimension (“Blowin' Away,” “Wedding Bell Blues,” and “Stoned Soul Picnic”), Three Dog Night (“Eli's Comin'”), Blood, Sweat and Tears (“And When I Die”), and Barbra Streisand (“Stoney End”).

Now it was Tom Waits's turn, and Geffen flexed his networking muscles. “I turned Bette Midler on to his music. And a lot of other people. I put The Eagles together with his music. I tried to get Rod Stewart to record one of his songs.” Geffen suggested to The Eagles that they record “Ol' 55.” In a Hollywood bar one night, Tom ran into an Eagle who told him that the band had heard the song and was thinking of recording it. Waits was flattered. Shortly afterward, he hit the road for about three months. He didn't hear another thing about it until “Ol' 55” showed up on The Eagles' 1974 album
On the Border
. The band also released “Ol' 55” as a single (the flip side was a tribute to actor James Dean).

The Eagles' version of “Ol' 55” was solid, well recorded, but it was characterized by the band's Southern California country-rock vibe, and it didn't approach the depths of Waits's own recording. For The Eagles, “Ol' 55” was just a car, but for Waits it was a lifeline. An unimpressed Waits called the
On the Border
version of his ode to the automobile “antiseptic” and then remarked that the only good thing he could think of to say about your average Eagles album was that it kept the dust off the turntable. Soon afterward, Fairport Convention and Matthews Southern Comfort alumnus Ian Matthews gave “Ol' 55” a shot, as did folk singer Eric Andersen. Tom finally concluded that he much preferred his own version.
¹⁸

In the meantime, Herb Cohen had employed the Geffen strategy and talked Tim Buckley into trying his hand at recording a Tom Waits song. Buckley was himself a respected songwriter with several acclaimed albums under his belt
— Happy Sad
(1969),
Starsailor
(1970) — and a cult following to boot, so some industry insiders were surprised at his decision to include a version of Waits's “Martha” on his 1974 album
Sefronia
. But the decision turned out to be a wise one. Buckley added his own twist to this gentle, wistful tune without sabotaging Waits's intentions.

As his old songs, for better or for worse, took on new life, Waits was moving ahead. He'd taken his act on the road, winning new fans by delivering the goods in person. He'd been writing some new songs.
Closing Time
was launched, and now it was time to record a new album.

In the summer of 1974, Waits hunkered down to work on his follow-up album. It's conventional wisdom in the music industry that if an artist's first album is a hit then the second will disappoint; after all, he's had years to work on the first album but the countdown's on for the second (in publishing, it's called the second-novel syndrome). Waits was well aware of this, and he resolved not to fall victim to the sophomore jinx.

David Geffen wanted to hook Waits up with a new producer and immediately thought of Dayton Burr “Bones” Howe, who had engineered or produced a string of acts, ranging from Elvis Presley to The Association. The tall, gangly Bones — who'd been given his nickname as a schoolboy — was probably best known for shaping the pop-soul sound of The Fifth Dimension. Geffen and Howe had worked together for years, ever since Geffen, highly impressed with The Association's sound, had offered to manage that band for free. Geffen felt that Howe and Waits would be a good match, “because Bones had a background in jazz. I thought that he was a perfect mix of jazz and pop for Tom.”

Howe recalls Geffen's approach: “He said, ‘I want you to produce an artist that's just strictly an album artist. The guy's never going to have a hit single, so you just concentrate on making great albums with him.'” Waits was in the studio at the time working on demos for his new album, so Geffen urged Howe to listen to a few of them and see what he thought. If Howe liked what he heard, Geffen would set up a meeting with Tom.

“He sent me the demo tape, and I listened,” says Howe. “I heard all this Jack Kerouac in there. This is something I really know about. In my engineering days, when I was engineering mostly jazz records, sitting in a motel room in Miami, just going on into the tape recorder, I had put together an album of about four hours of Kerouac. I had gone through all
that material and put an album together for him. It was called
The Beat Generation
. . . I was really familiar with Kerouac's work, so David set up the meeting with Tom.”

Geffen had also filled Waits in on Howe, describing his larger projects — the work he'd done with The Association, The Turtles, and The Fifth Dimension — but Waits wasn't very excited by Howe's credentials. They sounded a lot like Jerry Yester's, and the plan had been to attempt something new in the recording process. Still, Tom did agree to meet with Bones. “I started talking to him about Jack Kerouac,” Howe reminisces. “Then I told him I'd engineered all these jazz records. I guess David had told him the other things I'd done. But that was really the cement. The glue with Tom and me was jazz and Kerouac. He said, ‘Do you know that Kerouac once made a record with Steve Allen?' I didn't. And he said, ‘Well, I have a tape of it somewhere and I'll get it.'”

That particular album — which was called
Kerouac
/
Allen
— was one of Waits's favorites. He'd slip it onto the turntable and hear Kerouac intoning tales of hard times and life on the road while the original
Tonight Show
host and piano player wove in a little unobtrusive jazz. Waits loved the way Kerouac's stories were transformed by the music. As he spoke over the melody, Kerouac's poetry and prose metamorphosed into song. Waits had started exploring this dynamic in his own work. He gave Bones a copy of
Kerouac
/
Allen
and was happy to see that the album had a similar effect on him. “It was one of those things,” remembers Howe. “We were trading tapes and talking about music. Do you know this saxophone player? It was just that kind of natural thing. We decided to do
The Heart of Saturday Night
together.”

Interviewed by Barney Hoskyns of
Mojo
in 1999, Waits remarked that “In those days, nobody would even think of sending you into the studio without a producer. In their minds, they give you thirty grand, you might disappear to the Philippines and they never see you again. They're not giving you thirty grand, they're giving [it to] this guy who plays tennis and wears sweaters and lives in a big house. They're giving him the money and he's paying for everything. Just show up on time and stay out of jail.”
¹
So the guy who wore sweaters and the guy who was managing to stay out of jail got down to it. Waits and Howe held late-night meetings at Duke's Coffee Shop, where they would throw ideas onto the table and discuss the songs that Tom was writing. Then they would head over to Wally Heider Recording. Recalls Howe, “The funny thing was that at one point David
[Geffen] said to me, ‘Don't make a jazz record with it.' And of course that's what I made.”