Wild Years

by Jay S. Jacobs

  In early 1999, Waits surprised many people by signing with Epitaph Records, an independent label formed by former Bad Religion member Brett Gurewitz. Epitaph, specializing in punk and ska, boasted groups like The Offspring, Rancid, and Pennywise. It seemed like a weird fit — one scribe suggested that Waits’s next album be called Mohawks at the Diner.1 Yet on one level it made perfect sense. Waits had always appreciated individuality above all else, and Epitaph steadfastly adhered to a do-it-yourself philosophy.

  Waits was impressed by the fact that Epitaph was one of the few labels owned and operated by musicians. After meeting with Gurewitz and staff, he said he liked their musical diversity, he liked their eagerness — and, he joked, he liked the brand new Caddy they gave him. Waits gave Epitaph a “long-term lease” on the new album he was working on, which was called Mule Variations. The label would release the album, but Waits would retain all rights. Their contract was for that album alone, though both Waits and Gurewitz would be pleased to extend their agreement if all went well.2

  Waits was positioned as the cornerstone act of Anti, Epitaph’s off-shoot imprint for respected artists who did not share the punk/ska sensibilities of the label’s other acts. By the year 2000, Anti was also home to bluesman R. L. Burnside, punk pioneer and former Clash leader Joe Strummer, and country outlaw Merle Haggard. The Epitaph people are “easier to be around than folks from Dupont,” Waits told David Fricke of Rolling Stone. “Not to generalize about large recording companies, but if you’re not going platinum, you’re not going anywhere.”3

  But before getting down to Mule Variations, Waits had another job to do, one that he felt strongly about. His pal Chuck E. Weiss had been a popular live performer for years but had only one album to show for it, a demo tape that was released against his wishes in 1981. It was titled The Other Side of Town, and it was pulled from the market soon after it appeared. In the meantime, Weiss had been writing and singing, but he never seemed to get around to recording his stuff. He claimed to have gotten sidetracked by his regular club gigs, the odd acting job, and some movie-scoring work. Furthermore, due to his fear of flying, his reputation had not extended much beyond the Los Angeles area — he’d hardly ever toured. Waits was anxious to rectify the situation. He felt that Weiss was far too talented to languish in obscurity any longer. His music had to be brought to a broader audience. Tom was at last able to drag Chuck E. into the studio and there Weiss concocted his first real album. It was called Extremely Cool. Waits coproduced and added vocals to the mix.

  The album is a rib-tickling mixture of rock, blues, jazz, and zydeco. “I’d like [people] to see it as some kind of alternative jungle music,” comments Weiss. It kicks off with the infectious “Devil with Blue Suede Shoes,” followed by the love-triangle blues “Deeply Sorry,” in which a man finds his girlfriend having sex with his mother. Laughing, Weiss swears that this particular song is in no way autobiographical.4

  Other terrific cuts include the jazzy “Sonny Could Lick All Them Cats”; “Oh Marcy,” a zydeco love song as tangy as gumbo; and the straight-ahead rocker “Jimmy Would.” Waits produced, cowrote, and sang on the sad lament “It Rains on Me” and the structurally intriguing “Do You Know What I Idi Amin?” Waits, Weiss insists, was the brains behind “Idi Amin,” which starts a cappella and gradually builds as instrumentation is added. Weiss is continually surprised at how few people seem to remember the murderous Ugandan dictator of the 1970s.5

  When the album was finished, Waits helped Weiss to land a recording contract, and Extremely Cool was released in early 1999. Mule Variations’ moment had arrived. Tom and Kathleen managed to create a pool of about sixty songs. “I want to do a whole record of [Kathleen’s] dreams,” said Waits. “She has amazing dreams … I think they should all be turned into songs.”6

  It was an exciting period, because the songs were coming on fast and thick but Waits had no sense of what the end product would be. It could be fish; it could be fowl. The thrust of the album could be painful introspection, death and decay, like Bone Machine, or the reflections of a contented family man. Each harbored its own mysterious potential. It was a piece of a puzzle, a picture that was slowly being revealed. At first, Waits wanted to name the album Eyeball Kid, after a song he’d cobbled together about a circus freak — literally, a walking, talking eyeball. After a while, that stopped feeling right, so he began sorting through other songs to find the key to the album. Eventually, Tom and Kathleen settled on the album title Mule Variations, because Kathleen would always tell Tom that she hadn’t married a man, she’d married a mule.7

  Life tends to intrude on those who are caught up in a fever of creation and want to put everything else temporarily on hold. The writer needs to escape both mentally and physically, but for the writer who is a parent this is often impossible. When the writing team and the parenting team are one and the same, it becomes a matter of seizing the moments whenever they present themselves. Says Waits, “I usually keep a tape recorder with me all the time. It’s little. The quietest place for me is in the car, driving on the road. Because at home, if I go into a room and close the door the kids all want to know what I’m doing in there. Then when Kathleen and I are in there together writing, then they really go crazy. It’s like the whole bottom just dropped out. ‘What are you guys doing in there?’ It’s funny, but the car is a better place, really.”8

  By now, collaborating with Kathleen was second nature to Tom. They had it down cold. “One person holds the nail, the other swings the hammer,” Waits commented to Hoskyns. “We collaborate on everything, really. She writes more from her dreams and I write more from the world. When you’re making songs you’re navigating in the dark, and you don’t know what’s correct. Given another five minutes you can ruin a song. So time’s always a collaborator. Over the years [Kathleen’s] exposed me to a lot of music. She doesn’t like the limelight, but she’s an incandescent presence on all songs we work on together. We’ve got a little mom-and-pop business. I’m the prospector. She’s the cook. I bring the flamingo, she beheads it; I drop it in the water, she takes off the feathers. No one wants to eat it.”9

  The next order of business was to assemble the musicians. Waits wanted to hire a gang of the usual suspects, people who could decipher his musical shorthand, so he got on the phone. Longtime bassist (and brother-in-law) Greg Cohen committed. Guitarist Marc Ribot would lend a hand if he could spare the time away from his new band, Los Cubanos Postivos. Fortunately, Ribot was able to lay down some tracks for the album. Saxophonist Ralph Carney and blues bassist Larry Taylor, both Waits standbys, came along for the ride. Rounding out this solid crew were bluesman Charlie Musselwhite and John Hammond on harmonica and Les Claypool of Primus on bass.

  Then Waits started casting around for people who could add a whole new sound dimension to his set of variations. Having become a big fan of hip-hop folk alchemist Beck, Waits invited multi-instrumentalist Smokey Hormel from Beck’s band to sit in on many of the songs. Rap, Waits had come to believe, was the true folk music of the inner city, and he was deeply interested in the way sampling creates a sound collage, a pattern of diverse tones and textures. Waits himself had been striving to fabricate such collages for years through other means. Now he was ready to sample. He integrated DJ M. Mark “The III Media” Reitman’s turntable work into three album tracks.

  When the recording process was under way, Waits’s hands were full. He was producing, bending and prodding the material, directing his team of old and new contributors, playing, and singing. He was in his element. Speaking to Hoskyns, he remarked, “You have to decide what your role is going to be. You farm out or subcontract the rest of the job. I don’t always do my own electrical work at home. I usually hire an expert. So we hired professional musicians — and I don’t know if I can honestly consider myself part of that group. I am the creator of forms and I sometimes get my own way. The main thing is to have people working with you that will succumb to the power of suggestion. The whole thing is kind of a hypnotic expe
rience, and when you say you want musicians to play like their hair is on fire, you want someone who understands what that means. Sometimes that requires a very particular person that you have a shorthand with over time.”10

  Mule Variations was recorded at Prairie Sun Studios, a converted chicken ranch way out in the sticks. “If you set up right outside with the dogs and chickens,” Waits told the Times of London, “it’s amazing how your surroundings will collaborate with you and be woven into the songs.”11 Shades of Bone Machine.

  With Mule Variations, Waits wedded the two eras of his sound. Songs like “Filipino Box Spring Hog” and “Big in Japan,” wild sonic experiments, recall Bone Machine; smoother, piano-based cuts, like “House Where Nobody Lives” and “Hold On,” regenerate his Elektra period sensibilities. Strangely, it all comes together quite naturally.

  “Big in Japan” starts things off with a thundering intonation. It shocks the listener with its violent musicality. Waits had actually made this intro years before in a Mexican hotel room by switching on his tape recorder and yelling and banging on a chest of drawers until it was reduced to kindling. He was trying to find the music in the chaos, attempting to make a simple savage act sound like the stylings of a hopped-up band.12 The experiment was successful, and for the price of a cheap piece of furniture Waits had a little symphony of destruction. Every once in a while he’d pop the tape onto his cassette player and laugh. He had no plans to use it until it occurred to him that “Big in Japan” would benefit from an intro that could jolt the listener into sitting up and taking notice.

  The song is about Japan as a haven for entertainers. Celebrities who can no longer draw a crowd anywhere else often find that their popularity lives on in Japan; and A-list stars who are too proud to hawk cars, whiskey, television sets, or cigarettes at home can shill with impunity there. Visiting Japan is like visiting Mars, says Waits. He, himself, isn’t big in Japan — except in a Godzilla-steps-on-Tokyo kind of way.13

  Songs like “Big in Japan” and Bone Machine’s “Such a Scream” are far more rock-oriented than anything Waits did when he was young.

  “I always start at the wrong end of everything,” he told Hoskyns. “Throw out the instructions, and then wonder how you put this thing together. Maybe I’m raging against the dying light. What do they say? Youth is wasted on the young? You’re more in touch maybe with those feelings the further you get from them. Time is not a line or a road where you get further away from things. It’s all exponential. Everything that you experienced when you are eighteen is still with you.”14

  With the Mississippi John Hurt–meets–Bruce Springsteen story song “Hold On,” Waits proves his point. His ability to manufacture more accessible music has never left him. “Hold On” is a sensitive ballad about escaping bad relationships in a town that hobbles the spirit. Over a bed of acoustic guitars, Waits spreads his detailed analysis of small-town existence and the ties within it that bind. Just like a good short story, the song dramatizes the problems of its characters, pulling us in, making us care.

  “Get Behind the Mule” is like an old-time blues lament. Waits had heard the story of legendary bluesman Robert Johnson — that he’d sold his soul to the Devil at a Mississippi crossroads for the ability to deliver sublime blues. The music came pouring out of him, and within the space of a couple of years he had recorded some timeless tunes, including “Crossroad Blues,” “Love in Vain,” and “Sweet Home

  Chicago.” But then, like many of those who deal with the Devil, Johnson died young. When he had first run away from home in pursuit of his dream, Johnson’s father had said, “Trouble with Robert is he wouldn’t get behind the mule in the morning and plow.”15

  The gorgeous, melancholy love song “House Where Nobody Lives” builds on a strong lyrical idea, comparing an abandoned house to a person who lacks the capacity for love. Waits told David Fricke that the notion had been triggered by an old house he’d seen in the vicinity of his own. “It had busted windows, weeds, junk mail on the porch. It seems like everywhere I’ve ever lived, there was always a house like that. And what happens at Christmas? Everyone else puts their lights up. Then it looks even more like the bad tooth on the smile of the street. This place in particular, everybody felt so bad, they all put some Christmas lights on the house, even though nobody lived there.”16

  Another of Waits’s Ken Nordine–inspired spoken-jazz numbers, “What’s He Building?” is told from the perspective of a man keeping an eye on his neighbor because he’s persuaded that the man is up to no good. He’s not exactly sure how, but the guy has no friends, receives a lot of mail, and reads funny magazines. And what about those strange sounds coming from his house? It’s not just an echo. It’s not the T.V. Something evil is afoot … “We seem to be compelled to perceive our neighbors through the keyhole,” says Waits. “There’s always someone in the neighborhood, the Boo Radley, the village idiot. You see that he drives this yellow station wagon without a windshield, and he has chickens in the backyard, and doesn’t get home ’til 3:00 A.M., and he says he’s from Florida but the license says Indiana … so, you know, ‘I don’t trust him.’ It’s really a disturbed creative process.”17

  “Chocolate Jesus” is an ironic look at the selling of religious figures. Tom’s father-in-law, the type who’s always on the lookout for a new way to make a buck, provided the inspiration. He’d once brought his powers of persuasion to bear on Tom and Kathleen in order to get them to invest in something called Testamints — little lozenges for religious people who have trouble finding time to worship in this hectic modern world. The mints had a cross on one side and a Bible quotation on the other. Tom and Kathleen thought this was hilarious and started playing around with the idea. They came up with a new product concept — the chocolate Jesus. “He died for our sins, and He’s a yummy treat, too.”18

  A radical mood shift is achieved with “Georgia Lee,” a somber requiem for a little girl named Georgia Lee Moses who was murdered not far from Waits’s home. While friends and neighbors turned to each other for comfort and support at her funeral, Waits sensed that everyone was wondering why Georgia Lee had gone unaided while she was still alive. Where were the police? The social workers? Could anyone have saved her? Why wasn’t God there to protect her? With “Georgia Lee,” Waits helped to ensure that this little girl did not wind up as an anonymous statistic.19

  When Mule Variations was ready to be sent out into the marketplace, there was a danger that it would sink without a trace. After all, it had been six years since Waits’s last album, and that’s an eternity in the music business. Things had happened. Since the release of The Black Rider in November 1993, multiplatinum artist Bruce Springsteen had seen his spare, subdued Ghost of Tom Joad sell a fraction of the pace his offerings normally sold at. Prince had released the equivalent of ten full-length CDS. Rap and R&B had pretty much replaced rock and roll in the hearts of a hefty portion of the music-buying public. The top-of-the-pops position had been wrested away from Nirvana and Pearl Jam by Britney Spears and The Backstreet Boys. In the larger arena, the world seemed a confusing and scary place as the century drew to a close. Speculation was rampant that when the clock chimed midnight on December 31, 1999, systems would crash worldwide, bringing civilization as we know it to an end. A sex scandal had nearly toppled Bill Clinton, one of the most popular American presidents of our time. School violence had reached terrifying new levels. America Online, an upstart Internet company that had been in business only for the time it had taken Waits to record three albums, had become powerful enough to purchase Time Warner, the largest media conglomerate in the world. The sense that almost anything could happen permeated the atmosphere.

  The music world was in turmoil. Record companies were swallowing each other up. Polygram bought A&M, Geffen, Motown, Island, Def Jam, and many of the other more successful small labels. Universal bought Polygram, slashing and shuffling its cache of small labels. The industry was also up in arms about Napster, the computer program through which music f
ans were downloading musical selections from the Internet for free, seriously impacting on record sales. Many established acts — among them superstars like Springsteen, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Rod Stewart, and Madonna — found that their sales figures were dwindling alarmingly. Tom Waits could never begin to match the commercial clout of artists such as these. By the time Mule Variations came out would even a sliver of the pie be left for him?

  “It’s like looking for your waitress,” Waits said to Fricke. “People get like that with artists. We are a product-oriented society. We want it now, and we want an abundance of it in reserve. But there are limits to what you can do. One is not a tree that constantly blooms in the spring; the fruit falls and you put it in a basket … There’s something to be said for longevity. For some people, being in pop music is like running for office. They court the press in a very conscientious fashion. They kiss babies. No matter how black their vision is, their approach is the same. I’m more in charge of my own destiny. The songs are coming all the time. Just because you don’t go fishing today doesn’t mean there aren’t any fish out there. So you don’t fish for a couple of weeks, a couple of years? The fish will get along fine without you.”20

  As it turns out, there was nothing to worry about. Mule Variations became the highest-charting album of Waits’s career, debuting (and peaking) on the Billboard album charts at number thirty. Less surprisingly, it was also critically acclaimed. Mojo named it best album of the year, and Waits was nominated for two Grammys, winning the award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Not only had Tom Waits been remembered during that long silent stretch between albums, but also the music world had caught up with him a bit. Industry insiders and fans alike were according him a new respect. His influence had loomed over the previous decade, and not just in the area of music. It can be no coincidence that the ultimate hipster doofus of nineties’ pop culture, Kramer of the wildly popular T.V. sitcom Seinfeld, mimicked the trademark wardrobe and hairstyle. A growing number of musicians considered cutting edge in their own right were citing Waits as a key influence — among them Les Clay-pool of Primus, Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse, and Beck.