TOM WAITS ON SONGWRITING
Tom Waits: Those are the wild sounds. Songs are domesticated, complacent little creatures who will never get out in the wild again. I like my songs raw, with the pulp and seeds. Those are nutrients. It's not good to listen to too much highly processed music. It leads to heart attacks and apparently rheumatic fever.
As soon as the songs hear the crack of that rifle, they go running for cover. But I've usually got three days worth of food and a scope. You want to avoid recording the feathers and throwing away the bird, I guess. You do want something to be living in them. So you sneak up on them. Because the recording process involves putting something through a machine, you have to wonder what falls down into the filter. Sometimes we pull out that lint and make other songs. I thrive on pain and discomfort. I like misunderstandings. I think I have an auditory processing problem. I like when I hear a song from a radio far away and I mishear it. As it limps across, it gets interrupted by the tractor or an airplane or the wind.I like the missing pieces. I don't like things too tidy. Terry Gilliam heard the line "in a Portuguese saloon"(from The Part You Throw Away), and he thought I was saying, "On the porch, the geese salute." That's better! I hope more people misunderstand me.
Source: USA Today (USA), by Edna Gundersen.
Photograph: Robert Yager
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