Photo:the legendary © Jill Furmanovsky
Tom Waits: "It's a scary business. Like creating a Frankenstein monster. You gotta make sure you don't kill the music even as you're creatin' it. That's the hard thing - pullin' out the feathers without killin' the chicken." Originally 'Frank's wild Years' was just a lowlife fragment of a song, tucked away on 'Swordfishtrombones'. Why'd he choose this particular tale of ordinary madness to expand on...? "The story. It was a place to begin. It just lent itself to elaboration. I opened it up, screwed the head of it. Spontaneously. From the pressures of modern life. Heh heh." Biographical? "Well, I don't own a dog. I like dogs but I don't own one. Never burned down a house either. Least, not intentionally."I ain't usually around when people are listenin' to my stuff. I don't get to hang around listenin' to the listener listenin'. Uh I really dunno how they fit into all of this." See, over here, we mark time with songs. That's really all we do in this culture. Other places, music's got a more direct relationship to the culture - wedding songs, funeral songs. I guess Ireland still has some of that left. More spontaneous too, people join in, update the words, sing along. 'I don't think my music is that social. It sure ain't part of the advertisin' industry either. Some guys in this town write songs to fit a bottle of beer or a tennis shoe. Jingles. Singin' adverts. I ain't part of that too much."
Source: New Musical Express magazine (UK), by Sean O’Hagan.
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