Sunday 23 October 2011

Tom Waits 'Innocent When You Dream'

An exert from the book that congregates interviews with Tom Waits, from 1974-2004:

Waits drives a 1960 four-door Cadillac Coupe De Ville. It's a bigger car than he probably needs, and he admits that. It devours gas, smells terrible, radio doesn't work. But it's good for little trips, like visits to the dump. Dumps, salvage yards, rummage sales, junk shops--these are his special retreats. Waits loves to find strange and resonant objects hidden deep in piles of garbage, objects he can rescue and turn into new kinds of musical instruments.

"I like to imagine how it feels for the object to become music," he says. "Imagine you're the lid to a fifty-gallon drum. That's your job. You work at that. That's your whole life. Then one day I find you and I say, 'We're gonna drill a hole in you, run a wire through you, hang you from the ceiling of the studio, bang on you with a mallet, and now you're in show business, baby!'"

From an interview for GQ, June 2002, with Elizabeth Gilbert.

Tom Waits 18th album 'Bad As Me' is released in 50 minutes time.