“Some songs need work; some write themselves. “Came out of the ground like a potato, always the best ones,” Waits says. “Most of my songs are contraptions. Take the head off that doll and screw it onto the side of that washing machine. But the best ones come out just like a litter. I usually […]
“Some songs need work; some write themselves. “Came out of the ground like a potato, always the best ones,” Waits says. “Most of my songs are contraptions. Take the head off that doll and screw it onto the side of that washing machine. But the best ones come out just like a litter. I usually start with two tunes, put them in a room together and they have kids. There are usually two songs that are the parents of the rest. That’s my theory.”
My mother, actually, just pointed out this interview to me.
SFGate’s Joel Selvin, who used to be a terrible pop music critic back in the, what, seventies, eighties, whenever he started, but has turned into a pretty good writer these days, interviewing Tom Waits.
That’s a really good interview. He mostly lets Waits, a somewhat reclusive man, speak for himself, but the writing manages to keep the vaguely surreal, vaguely poetic tone of Waits work. Not an easy thing to do and Selvin pulls it off.
I met Waits once, in Hawaii.