Coffee With Tom Waits

In a roadside bar and restaurant near his farmhouse in northern California, Tom Waits sits with a cup of coffee and consents to a rare interview. As a singer, songwriter, musical innovator and wordsmith extraordinaire, his career spans four decades and more than twenty albums. Bob Dylan calls him a "secret hero", and a consortium of American music critics recently named him as one of the most influential artists of all time

- Is it true that Real Gone was largely recorded in your bathroom?

- Yeah, yeah, the acoustics are great in there. I moved instruments in there, a four track recording rig. When I went into the studio we set one in an empty schoolhouse near Sacramento. I had all these raw tapes that I made in the bathroom and I was hoping to replicate them, but the studio sounded nothing like my bathroom at home. Not even, the bathroom in the studio sounded like my bathroom. So it was really disturbing and kind of disconcerting to find out that you can't recreate what you've already done. Some things only happen once. And you can never re-create the conditions under which they happen. So I ended up using the tapes I brought and the musicians played over them.

- What were you trying to do with this album?

- What's interesting about most people is that they're great when they don't know they're great. Did you ever see someone dancing when they think no one is watching, or singing into a hairbrush in front of a mirror? Is that the best or what? So how do you keep that unforced spontaneity in a song? It's tricky. It's like catching birds. You have to sneak up on it. Songs are living and hopefully they will be living when you catch them, because otherwise you're just taking pictures of dead people.

- The album sounds more stripped down and raw than the others.

- Yeah, yeah. Bread, meat and cheese. That's what we wanted. Rudimentary, you know. A three legged table.

- If a table will stand on three legs, why add a fourth?

- Exactly. If you can say what you want to say with a gesture then you can just keep your mouth shut. The Italians can tell you a whole story with their hands. They can tell you anything. And music is a language, so why not?

- How do you and your wife work together?

- If you're doing a high wire act, you've got to have someone on the ground, right? You need someone around to tell you when you're full of shit and I'd rather have my wife say it than someone in the newspapers. So, you know, I watch her back, she watches mine.

- Is it hard to say goodbye to the words?

- Nah, nah, you can always use them again. They're like screws or nails. People used to burn down their house before they left town, go through the ashes and take all the nails, put them in a bag. Square ones were the best. Blacksmiths would make them.

- Do you pay much attention to politics?

- Not really. But I read The New York Times. I know the whole world's at war. I know our whole country is in deep turmoil and division. I don't think we've been this divided since the 60's. My kids are old enough if there was a draft right now, I don't know what I'd do. I sure wouldn't want to let my boys go.

- I've heard that you don't like Britain. Is that true?

- You guys had a sandwich crisis when I was there. They absolutely refused to make a sandwich in the way I wanted it to be made. It seemed almost like there was a federal plan for every sandwich in the country. No one was open to any influence from the outside and I remember getting angry and I jumped over the counter and I grabbed the meat and grabbed the bread and the guy wanted to call a constable on me. I guess his position was, 'I'm the manufacturer, it's my sandwich," and, being an American, my position was, "I'm paying for it, I'm eating it, it's my sandwich and I should be able to have it the way I want it."

- What are you reading at the moment?

- I start about ten books at the same time. My wife's a reader. She'll actually finish a book. I can't. She'll read Moby Dick and then some Buddhist thing and then some hysterical visionary Italian poet. I get what I want from a book and then put it in the stack. It's like the way I listen. I just suck out what I need and leave the rest.

- Where do tunes come from?

- Well, nothing comes out of nowhere. Nothing comes out of your hair. There's always a story that happened before it emerged in you. By the time you see something new in the garden it had a long history getting there. The same is true of tunes. It's really about the migration of seeds. That's how music changes. And I'm always interested in volunteering in the garden, you know. Pour a little extra water.

- There's a lot of talk in your songs about God and the devil, sin and redemption. What are your thoughts about religion?

- I don't know. I think the world is at war over this with Bush talking about crusades and whatnot. The things that fall out of his month are just. obscene. I don't know what to say abort religion. It's not really my area.

- But a lot of your characters think about the world in religious ways.

- I guess I think about it through them. That's my way of thinking about it. It's like the joke about the guy who goes to hell and they show him all these different rooms. In the first one everyone's on fire and screaming. "Nah, nah," he says. "You got anything else?" They show him another room and everyone is being stabbed by swords going at all angles through their bodies. "Nah, nah, nah," he says. The third room is a lot of guys standing around up to their waists in crap. They're drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes ... . 'This looks good," he says. "This is the room for me." And the devil goes, "Fine. Go get your coffee, get your cigarette and take your position." And then the devil gets on the microphone and he yells, "Coffee break's over. Everyone back on your heads." Maybe that's hell. Maybe there are more hellish places on earth. I think it's aII right here.

- It seems like your philosophy has got bleaker over the years. I'm thinking about songs like Misery Is the River Of The World or We're All Gonna Be Just Dirt In The Ground.

- Gee, I don't know. There are people who are being more afraid of being seen with an entertainment magazine than are afraid of the bomb, and people who are too scared of dying to leave their apartments. All you've got is your particular view from your bunker. I have a bleak view but I also believe in the mercy of the world  so I weigh them both.

- Did you say "mercy of the world" or "mercy of the Lord"?

- World. But maybe the world is the Lord. And we're God's eyeball. Hell, I don't know I need another cup of coffee [He comes back with a refill] I think you're born after you die. You go through a birth canal and you're born into another manifestation. Everything was alive once, right? Like Buckminster Fuller said, "Fire is nothing more than the sun unwinding itself from the wood." So perhaps we will be fire some day because the sun is in us waiting to be released. I don't know what the world is. Your interpretation is just as valid as mine. And right now I gotta make tracks and get on down the road.