Tom Waits’ Top 20 Beautiful Maladies
Listen now and avoid the rush
An astute music critic once observed that Tom Waits’ singing voice sounds like a bullfrog gargling a mouthful of gravel.
Wait… It was my wife who said that.
We were driving through East St. Louis — a Tom Waits town if ever there was one — at the tail end of a ten-hour road trip, during which I displayed the unmitigated gall to subject her to an entire hour of Tom’s music.
Wow. His voice is just awful, she said.
If you’re not acquainted with Tom Waits, now’s the time to get familiar. He’s been performing music since the late 60s, but he’s as far from the Beatles and Stones as you could imagine. Picture a smoky dive bar where a scruffy guy in a rumpled suit is playing piano, possibly drunk, and between drags on a cigarette, he sings a mélange of sad weepers and mad creepers, all in an appallingly raspy voice. He’s been making exceptional music for half a century. And like so many great musicians of his generation, soon he’ll be dead.
Please make it stop, she said.
Fair enough. His voice is grating. My wife is a trained singer with a beautiful voice, but it doesn’t take a musical expert to realize Tom Waits sings like a gut-shot hyena.
But I wasn’t even playing the weird stuff. These weren’t the bizarre, crazy-as-a-shithouse-rat songs I could have played for her.
Instead, these were Tom’s gentle, touching songs, carefully selected for mildness. I hoped they would help her see the light. These were the love songs, the sad ballads, the mournful elegies, full of pianos and violins, without a chumbus, dousengoni, or pneumatic calliope in earshot. (Yes, those unusual instruments appear on several of his albums. Google them if you dare.)
These were the songs when he toned down the raspy voice and did his best not to sound like fingernails scraping a chalkboard.
Don’t think about his voice, baby. You’re missing the point. Focus on the lyrics. Listen to the words.
Like these from “Time:”
“Well, she said she’d stick around
’til the bandages came off.
But these mama’s boys just don’t know when to quit.
And Matilda asks the sailors,
“Are those dreams, or are those prayers?”
So just close your eyes, son. This won’t hurt a bit.”
This is the great Tom Waits, winner of Grammys, member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Covered by everyone from Rod Stewart to Widespread Panic. From the Eagles to The Ramones, Allison Kraus to Meatloaf. Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Elvis Costello, Indigo Girls, Tori Amos, Bette Midler, and Johnny f***ing Cash. The incomparable Tom Waits. One-of-a-kind doesn’t begin to describe him.
Come to think of it, maybe his gravelly vocals are the reason other artists turned his songs into their hits. But his subject matter is no more attractive than his voice. His songs are filled with hard-luck tales of misfits, fugitives, and grotesques. A pregnant hooker writing a sad Christmas card to her old flame. A burned out salesman setting his own house on fire and sipping a beer as it blazes. A little bird falling hopelessly in love with a whale. Tom Waits is the patron saint of vagrants, gravediggers, carnival barkers, and three-legged dogs everywhere. His horrifying stories pierce like a dagger to the heart.
Like so many musicians of his generation, Tom Waits hasn’t exactly lived a healthy lifestyle. He said more than once, “Reality is for people who can’t face drugs.” He once quipped on a talk show, “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.” Dozens of video clips show him smoking like a chimney, puffing even while singing his songs at a piano. But he says those days are far behind him. Now he’s an herbal tea and carrot juice man. “A guy who writes murder mysteries doesn’t have to be a murderer.”
But Tom turned 71 this year. At his best, he resembles an aged, grubby gelding rode hard and put up wet. He’s not likely to last the decade. So listen to his music now while you still have some semblance of an open mind.
And one of these days when he’s dead, and the devil gets his due, you’ll be able to tell everyone you were listening to him for years. And geez, he was something else.
Tom’s Top 10 Sad Weepers:
10. Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind) (Small Change, 1976)
9. Downtown Train (Rain Dogs, 1985)
8. I’m Still Here (Alice, 2002)
7. Fish & Bird (Alice, 2002)
6. Johnsburg, Illinois (Swordfishtrombones, 1983)
5. Hang Down Your Head (Rain Dogs, 1985)
4. Take It With Me (Mule Variations 1999)
3. Alice (Alice, 2002)
2. Time (Rain Dogs, 1985)
1. Hold On (Mule Variations 1999)
Tom’s Top 10 Mad Creepers:
10. Frank’s Wild Years (Frank’s Wild Years, 1987)
9. Step Right Up (Small Change, 1976)
8. Poor Edward (Alice, 2002)
7. 16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought-Six (Swordfishtrombones, 1983)
6. Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis (Blue Valentine, 1978)
5. Ninth & Hennepin (Rain Dogs, 1985)
4. Hang On Saint Christopher (Frank’s Wild Years, 1987)
3. Tabletop Joe (Alice, 2002)
2. The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me) (Small Change, 1976)
1. What’s He Building? (Mule Variations 1999)
P.S. Tom’s voice sorta grows on you.
