More thoughts from Tom (To Waits on Music)

Are sounds as important as songs for you?

Tom Waits:  

Always. The surface of a song is important to me, but you can't get away from the fact that you still have to write a song. You can't just rely on the texture or the technique you use to record it. I do like to experiment with all that. What's interesting about working with great engineers is that if you stop by the side of the road and drag something out of the ditch, throw it in the truck and bring it down to the studio, these guys will circle it like it's a moon rock. They'll mic it, hit it with a hammer, and find out the most expeditious way to approach it. Move it around to different parts of the room. They don't make value judgements. They're more like scientists. They get very subjective about the whole issue of sound. But you don't really know when you're going in what you're looking for. Sometimes you find it while you're there.

What does the term punk rock mean to you, if anything? Does it relate to your contrarian nature, or is it just a style of music? 

Eventually, all these things become ingredients. Everyone can't wait to take something and bury it so they can dig it up later. Everything seems to go through that process. It's all a big Salvation Army of style. And it's all still available at all times for everyone to enjoy on whatever level as a main course or as an appetiser. Punk rock is more about the posture and the politics and the attitude, and being as iconoclastic as you possibly can. There's a band on the label, NOFX, who were getting played on the radio, and they were livid. They said, "We'll get our lawyers down here. Get that record off the radio!" And they did, they got it off the air.

Would you do the same? 

I don't know, it's not my thing. I kinda like hearing myself on the radio. It's happened once or twice, and I liked it. I've been trying for 25 years to get on the radio in some form or another, so I'm a bit of a different challenge. But I salute it. I salute diversity and standing up for what you believe in, living your life the way you want to live it. It's a good place for me to be. I don't know what it means, except that [Epitaph is] trying to branch out a little bit. If you're only selling napkins and tableware, you're going to have to diversify at a certain point.

Don's Tunes

 

Source: Exclaim (Canada), by Michael Barclay. Transcription as published on Exclaim

Photo by Michael Putland