It was 2001 and we were on holiday in the south of France. As family will testify, one of my favourite holiday pastimes is exploring the aisles of the local supermarket. There’s any number of tasks to fulfil on arriving on foreign soil with a bunch of under twelves so, in the interests of avoiding the peskier jobs, I’ll always opt to do the supermarket run. On this day (pre sat nav) I was trying to find the local LeClerc or Carrefour and one of my daughters had elected to accompany me. She was around eight going on nine at the time and old enough to sit beside me in the passenger seat. As we cruised the Provencal lanes in the dappled light of a summer’s day she decided to help sort out my CD collection which was bundled into the glove compartment.
One by one she pulled out each album and tried to marry the discs to the appropriate jewel cases. She stopped at one particular album and showed me the sleeve. You like this one a lot, dad, don’t you…..Tom Watts. He’s good isn’t he? I agreed, of course, and quickly also concurred to her suggestion that we put the CD on and listen to the music. Now Mule Variations isn’t the most dark or testing of Tom Waits’ catalogue, but it has its challenging moments. My daughter decided that it was a good opportunity to sing along with the lyrics. This worked well until it came to the classic spoken word song, What’s He Building.
It’s a great song and a clever satire on the idea of personal freedoms….who has a right to know what and to what extent do we guard our privacy are the themes in the song. If that sounds a bit dull then I have failed to make the important point that, like all Tom Waits songs, it makes its point with humour.
He’s all to himself
I think I know why
He took down the tire swing from the pepper tree
He has no children of his own, you see
He has no dog, he has no friends
And his lawn is dying
And what about all those packages he sends?
This was treasure enough if the comedy hadn’t been heightened by by young daughter’s determination to speak the lyrics along with him. It’s still my favourite Tom memory. But you can see from this photograph that I’ve collected a good few Tom albums over the last few years. Some are more accessible than others but all are worthwhile.
On this week’s AC we’ll skim through some of these albums and earlier vinyl as we celebrate Tom’s 75th birthday which is next Friday, 7th December. Although every song will be a Waits original we’ll intersperse all his performances by versions of his songs by many of our favourite country and Americana artists . You’ll hear Johnny Cash, Nanci Griffith, Tift Merrit, Norah Jones and Crystal Gayle. In the words of Kathleen Brennan, Tom’s wife, you’ll hear ‘grim reapers and grand weepers.’ You’ll hear songs they wrote together and songs which have become 20th Century Standards and will, I suspect, last years longer than the writer and your radio host. So do join me if you can this coming Tuesday evening on BBC Sounds or BBC Radio Scotland for a two hour celebration of a great troubadour.
