The destination is one of two stops on an afternoon itinerary that also
includes a funky barbecue spot, where the walls are decorated with
cowboy artifacts, including an old rifle and a pair of well-used chaps.
"Now, it used to be right around here," he says in that familiar growl.
"You don't think they moved it to a 'better location' do you? It's
a
salvage shop. Maybe they moved it to a 'worse location.' "
Finally Waits-- whose new "Mule Variations" album is his first in six
years--spots the shop, and he pulls into the parking lot.
Wearing a floppy old hat and jeans that hang so low on his rump that
it
looks as though he forgot to give them the final hitch when pulling
them
on, Waits steps from the truck and heads into the shop, which is filled
with everything from rows of old toilet bowls to faded soft drink signs.
"I do all my furniture shopping here," he says as he wanders through
the
dusty aisles. He points to a zebra-striped telephone, but appears most
excited by a foot-high artillery shell, which he taps robustly with
his
finger. He likes the sound and says he would like to use it on his
next
album.
Watching this, you wonder if Waits is really interested in all this
stuff or if he's just trying to provide colorful atmosphere for the
story. The answer comes when the shop owner spots Waits and waves to
him
with the enthusiasm reserved for one's best customers.
"How ya doin' Ray," Waits responds. "Got anything good today?"
The owner directs Waits to a New Year's Eve horn from the turn of the
century, and Waits' eyes brighten. He gives the horn a few toots and
smiles at the sound. He buys it--as well as the artillery shell, a
pocket knife for himself and a toy car for one of his three kids.
"This is a good haul," he says, slipping behind the wheel of the massive
Silverado. "Sure you don't want to go back and get that zebra-striped
phone?"
Interviewing Waits isn't as much fun as accompanying him to the salvage
shop because the pop veteran can get cranky when he thinks questions
are
getting too personal--and you'd be surprised how far that line extends.
You can understand when he doesn't want to go into detail about his
family or tell you exactly where he lives (he'll only say it's about
an
hour from here). But how personal is it to ask him why it has been
six
years between albums?
And that question is being asked a lot these days because "Mule
Variations" is shaping up as Waits' biggest seller, a work that contains
some of the most personal and affecting music he's written in a
distinguished three-decade career. The collection, on Epitaph Records,
debuted at No. 30 on the U.S. charts and broke into the Top 10 in
various European countries. Estimated worldwide sales to date: 500,000
copies. He's also being featured next Sunday on VH1's "Storytellers"
series and is venturing onto the concert trail for the first time in
years. The live dates include three nights, starting Saturday, at the
Wiltern Theatre.
It's hard to tell whether Waits, 49, resists many questions because
he
truly thinks they are too personal or because he enjoys being one of
pop's enduring riddles.
"Want the truth or you want me to play with you?" he asks at one point
during the afternoon.
Even the offbeat locales, such as the salvage shop, are, one senses,
an
attempt to give visiting journalists plenty to write about without
getting too deeply into his life. He also frequently brings a stack
of
books with him to interviews, so he can start quoting them if the mood
strikes him--another diversion.
For most of a career that started when he was discovered at "hoot night"
at the Troubadour in West Hollywood in the early '70s and soon tabbed
the next great hope in the booming Southern California singer-songwriter
sweepstakes, Waits has fought tenaciously to avoid appearing
conventional--as an artist or as a person.
In such landmark albums as 1974's "The Heart of Saturday Night" and
1976's "Small Change," he wrote wonderfully evocative songs about losers
with big dreams and dreamers with unlikely victories--songs that quite
possibly could have made him a major seller. Several major pop-rock
figures, including the Eagles and Bruce Springsteen, have recorded
his
songs over the years.
Rather than stick in the commercial groove of the singer-songwriter
tradition, however, Waits began experimenting with bluesy, boozy
monologues. He once described his approach as part Damon Runyon and
part
Mickey Spillane, but you could substitute any number of combinations
and
have been equally on the mark: part Jack Kerouac and part Lord Buckley,
part Charles Bukowski and part Captain Beefheart. His voice, too, took
on increasingly harsh touches, causing his singing to be described
over
the years as everything from a "scabrous rasp" to a bark.
Waits, too, branched out into acting--generally cast, in such films
as
Jim Jarmusch's "Down by Law," Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's
Dracula" and Hector Babenco's "Ironweed," as eccentrics, which only
made
it all the harder to draw a line between Waits and his image. He has
also written music for movies (notably Coppola's "One From the Heart")
and for stage productions, including "Franks Wild Years."
Asked about his puzzling image, Waits just shrugs as he sits in the
restaurant, "Oh, everybody has a ventriloquist act. Everybody. Rodney
Dangerfield has an act. Bob Dylan has an act. I guess it's a question
of
who's the dummy. Where do you leave off and where does a character
begin? I don't know. . . . Let's order some food."
"I was born in the back seat of a Yellow Cab in a hospital loading zone
and, with the meter still running, I emerged, needing a shave, and
shouted 'Times Square and step on it!' "
That's how Waits described his birth in an early Asylum Records press
bio. Whether he was truly born in that cab or in a hospital bed, the
date was Dec. 7, 1949, and the city was Pomona, where he was one of
three children.
His parents were both teachers, and the family moved to the San Diego
area when he was 12. He says he always liked music, even played trumpet
in the high school band.
One of his seminal experiences was seeing the dynamic James Brown in
concert as a youngster. Though thrilled by the performance, he was
also
intimidated by it. How could he ever even approach something that
inspiring on stage?
It wasn't until he saw blues singer Lightnin' Hopkins and Bob Dylan
that
he started to see a place for himself. "Here's a guy Dylan on stage
with
a stool and a glass of water, and he comes out and tells these great
stories in his songs," Waits recalls. "It helped unlock the mystery
of
performance."
After high school, Waits worked at a variety of jobs, including doorman
at a San Diego music club and dishwasher at a pizza place. But he'd
take
the bus each week to Los Angeles and stand in line for hours to play
a
few numbers at hoot night at the Troubadour, which at the time was
the
most important club showcase for new talent in the country.
Waits soon created enough of a buzz to get a contract with Asylum
Records, which released "Closing Time," his debut album, in 1973. The
collection didn't make the national sales charts, but it brought him
waves of acclaim.
While Asylum label mates the Eagles, who recorded Waits' "Ol' 55" on
their "On the Border" album in 1974, chronicled the glamour of the
Southern California lifestyle, Waits explored the underbelly of the
same
world--skid row rather than "Hotel California," if you will. This
quickly separated him from the generally accessible Southern California
singer-songwriter movement populated by the Eagles, Jackson Browne
and
John David Souther.
Waits' canvas was barrooms and strip joints, and his old-time hipster
wardrobe and beatnik storytelling made him seem part of that world
rather than just an observer. Critics used terms such as "urban romantic
poet" and "irrepressible night cat" to describe him.
Whether he was bored by the straightforward approach of his early Asylum
albums or thought it wasn't sufficiently challenging, Waits began to
experiment as a writer and singer--squeezing blues, folk, jazz and
even
country influences into all sorts of twisted, eccentric textures.
Waits' experimentation was intensified when he switched to Island
Records in the early '80s.
"I have an infatuation with melody, but also with dissonance," he said
when asked about such extreme touches as singing sometimes on stage
through a bullhorn. "I am attracted to things that fall outside of
the
practical domain of music. . . . I like hearing the orchestra tune
up.
That for me is the show."
Though some of the steps since then have been as puzzling and uninviting
as some of Neil Young's forays into techno and rockabilly in the '80s,
Waits has come through it all with a body of work that stamps him
clearly as one of the most important figures of the modern pop era.
The
range of artists he has influenced stretches from Rickie Lee Jones
to
Eddie Vedder.
"There was a time back then when I could see that we were all going
to
wind up in the Salvation Army bargain bins unless we did something
unique," he says at the restaurant, when asked about his musical vision.
"It came to me in a dream. There was my album sitting in this big stack
of old records underneath a bunch of old clothes and old platform shoes
and shovels. . . . So, in some way I realized I wanted to try to make
something unique, something that you'd want to keep."
Waits, who chain-drinks coffee, stirs his latest cup and reflects more
on those pivotal years.
"It wasn't like something you sit down one day and decide. It wasn't
like I was at a crossroads and asked myself, 'Am I going to go down
AM
boulevard or Eccentric Avenue?' It wasn't that simple. It's the result
of a hundred little decisions."
Even if Waits is reluctant to talk about the changes in his personal
life that resulted in him stepping out of the Los Angeles night life
fast lane in the early '80s and becoming a family man in the open spaces
up here, he gives us some of the results of the changes in "Mule
Variations."
Though there are some raw blues and harsh, experimental touches, the
heart of the collection is a series of deeply moving ballads, many
reminiscent of the sentimental undercurrents of such ballad standouts
as
"The Heart of Saturday Night" and "Innocent When You Dream."
Some of the songs, including the romantic "Picture in a Frame" and the
comforting "Come on Up to the House," are as personal as anything he
has
ever written. "House Where Nobody Lives" is a chilling look at life
without family and love.
Waits acknowledges that his personal life was getting a bit out of hand
before his marriage in 1980 to Kathleen Brennan, a former Hollywood
story editor, who frequently collaborates with him on songs. The couple,
has three children, ages 5 to 15.
Waits moved to New York around 1980, partly to shed some of the
hard-drinking L.A. habits, even enrolling in a fitness class.
Smiling as he recalls an image from that period, he says, "I was running
down the street to the Y to work out and I had a glass of alcohol in
one
hand, with some aluminum foil over it so it wouldn't spill, and a
cigarette in the other hand, . . . and I realized I was kind of coming
apart."
He met Brennan after returning to Los Angeles to write the music for
"One From the Heart"--and the relationship was pivotal, says Francis
Thumm, a musician and high school teacher who has known Waits for nearly
30 years and who has worked with him on some projects.
"If you could ever divide anyone's career and life in half, it would
be
Tom's up to 'One From the Heart' and after that , and a lot has to
do
with Kathleen," says Thumm, who lauds Waits' musical curiosity and
daring. "She has had a wonderful influence on him. She encouraged him
to
pursue a lot of the things he wanted to do creatively, and she also
affected him as a person."
Waits as family man?
"Well, I guess I didn't have a good rehearsal for it," he says of his
bachelor days around Los Angeles. "It wasn't like everything I had
done
up to getting married was to get myself in position to be an effective
family man. But I guess you could say I rose to the occasion."
Waits won't go so far as saying one reason he took so long between
albums was that he wanted to devote time to his family, but he does
say
he wanted "to pull myself out of the limelight for a while."
About the gentle, open tone of some of the songs, he says, "I guess
they
are a bit more vulnerable than before, I don't know. Maybe I feel more
at peace with myself, more able to talk about these things without
being
afraid of what people are going to say. Maybe I was too vulnerable
before."
He pauses, twisting his head nervously the way he does when singing.
"I don't know where we're going with all this," he says finally. "We
in
therapy or something? It's what I wrote about this time. Tomorrow,
I may
write nothing but astronaut music for 10 years because this was too
close to the bone."