One night I was sitting at a bar alone in San Diego, the bartender there was a ravenous brunette with f-holes tattooed on her back which she always showed off with a sheen backless sun dress that magically complemented her gorgeous tan. Our playful flirtations contributed to my nightly returns, seconded only to the eccentric selections that were available on the juke box. That particular night I put a twenty in and settled in for the long haul of solitude, the majority of the songs being sung by San Diego's own native son. Another man at the short end of the bar eventually grew tired of my selection and made it known to the bartender (who blew him off, turned and raised an eyebrow to me) and to the walls who were the only other occupants of the establishment. As I walked over to the man sitting there drinking sea breezes no less with his hat on the bar (strike three) I made it known to him that if he had something to say about my music he should take it up with the man who put it on. As usual it didn't come to blows and the man left seconds later, leaving me to revel in Tom and dreams of my lips tracing those f-holes.
I guess that man didn't know Tom Waits spent his early years in Chula Vista and worked the door at The Heritage nightclub in San Diego. He probably didn't know about how after the Coast Guard he migrated up to LA and got his start at the famous Troubadour where Damien Rice, Lenny Bruce, Bette Midler, Leo Kottke, James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, The Pointer Sisters, Liza Minnelli, Sheryl Crow, Karla Bonoff, Al Stewart, George Carlin, Tom Waits, Pavement, Rickie Lee Jones, Ramblin' Jack Elliot and Arlo Guthrie, Elton John, Linda Ronstadt, Hoyt Axton, The Eagles, Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Joni Mitchell and Neil Diamond all got their early starts. He probably didn't know either about this ballad which was playing in the background when I walked over in confrontation, a ballad of an album which would win him a Grammy, an album also featuring the great Keith Richards.
And it is his loss. Life is never a black and white set of rules and responses but I hold some make or break commandments one of which being I'll never respect a man who doesn't like Tom Waits. In scope and depth very few compare, in daring and originality he has no peer and in dedication to the craft of music and the encapsulation of emotions others struggle to escape his shadow.
Like Dylan I can't decipher the lyrics and I don't try. I view each verse as its own volume of a great masterpiece. One cannot analyze each line of a Jackson Pollock (in case you were curious the main art behind the title of this blog is my favorite Pollock) and shouldn't; one would never as Miles Davis why he hits each note. Rather music of such craftsmanship can only be analyzed in the soul, initial reactions that trigger the synapses and construct those old scenes from the past on the screen of your mind. From the opening note on your first virginal hearing of this song it is as familiar as an old t shirt, you know the song before you have ever heard it and continue on in a deja vu dream of raspyness.
For me this song plunges out of an old record player with cigarette smoke wafting from the revolutions, a lamentation of youthful love conjured up by visions of carnivals and boardwalk games made by a man on the end of his rope. There is a .45 waiting with a chambered round, other times a slow death from sclerosis after days of shakes and walking from cold showers over butts and glass on a filthy tiled floor. Then there are times when the sun is shinning, my malaise is in regression and I'm back on the beach in Coronado and the narrator is in the dunes off Ocean Ave making love to his muse as the sun sets across the Pacific below Point Loma.
If only that man stayed that night and let his mind ramble, if only my f-hole darling came across the bar one time and we set out for Mexico on my Bonneville. If only we took the risk we'd have a more convincing answer when questioned Who Are You?
