What happened to Tom Waits?
A painful sense of resignation has been for a long time, too long the emotion that prevails in the soul of the fans of Tom Waits. In fact, almost fourteen years have passed since “Bad as me”, the last (excellent) album published by the brilliant Californian artist, who after the 21st 2011 has ceased to make new songs available to the public, as if he had reached the level of saturation compared to the album-tour-interview routine or, God does not want, lost his creative skills. And sixteen are even the springs passed from his last tour, called “glitter and doom”, which dates back to 2008.
This does not mean that the man of Pompona was with his hands in his hand or said goodbye to the world out there – Tonight, surprisingly, he returns to sing for “last stop”, documentary Rai 3 (here the preview video and the story of Luigi Montebello).
Registered music
But after the last tour and the most recent album In fact, there is no lack of testimonies of his artistic talent in the various fields in which Tom wanted to continue exercising him. Among these is that of recorded and published music, as demonstrated “Shenandoah”, the traditional Corsaro made together with Keith Richards for the “Son of Rogues: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys” project (2013); The covers of “The Soul of a Man” and “John the Revelator”, who see Waits accompanied to percussion by his son Casey contribute to “God Don’t Never Changes: Songs of Blind Willie Johnson “(2016), album-toning to the seminal singer and guitarist Gospel-Soul born in 1897; And also the version of “Bella Ciao” given in 2018 to the old collaborator Marc Ribot For his collection of protest songs “Songs of Resistance (1942-2018) “. In short, all non -original songs that Tom has characterized with the unmistakable stamp of his voice. Voice that can also be heard in the six pieces, also recorded several years earlier, of the quadruple self -celebrating album of Replacements “Dead man’s pop” (2019).
Performance
Not exactly a flood of engravings, it must be said, as is the number of performances followed by the 2008 “glitter and doom and doom tour”: the interpretation on the piano of the poetry of Lawrence Ferlinghetti “CONEY Island of the Mind” at the award ceremony Literary Litquake’s Barbary Coast held at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco on October 2, 2010; The four songs of their repertoire sung and played at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York on the occasion of the welcome in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame of 20 January 2011; the duet with Mick Jagger on the notes of “Little Red Rooster ”during the concert of Rolling Stones At the orange Arena of Oakland, California, on May 5, 2013; The ten songs of their songbook with which at the Shoreline Amphitheatre of the Californian Mountain View on October 27 of that same year he honored the invitation delivered to him by Neil Youngalways animator of the charity concerts of the Bridge School.
After that time Tom climbed on stage in only three further occasions: on 11 September 2017, at the Lagunitas Brewerry in Petaluma, always in California, when he made the choir a Mision Staples who sang “Respect Yourself” of Staple Singers; On March 18, 2022, on the stage of Troubadour – the place where fifty years earlier had been noticed by the founder of Elektra/Asylum David Geffen -, to celebrate his fraternal friend with a scalghed band Chuck E. Weissdisappeared for a few months, with a song written four hands from the latter and by Tom: “It rains on me “; And finally, again to commemorate the disappearance of a friend – the producer and arranger Hal Willner -, at the st ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, where on July 20, 2022, alongside great artists such as Bono, Elvis Costello And Michael Stipehe sang three songs, including the one that gave the name to the event: “I’m be seeing you”, made famous by Frank Sinatra.
The catalog
If therefore Waits seems to have pulled the rows on the boat both as regards the composition, or at least the publication, of new original songs and as regards the performance in concerts in its name, there is a sector of ‘music’ and in These last years saw him and his wife and collaborator Kathleen Brennan Very active: that of remastered and, more rarely, of the remix or the rearrangement of the songs of its/their catalog. In 2017 they were therefore remastered in digital, vinyl and cd six of the discs released for the anti-epitaph, and, among these, “Real Gone ”(2004) was also Rimixato. In 2018 it was the triple CD “Orphans” (2006) that was in turn remastered, where the three records that make it up – “Brainrs”, “Bawlers” and “Bastards” – were made available to purchase even individually, Wanting in colorful vinyl (as would have happened in all subsequent remaster). Also in 2018, the remastered versions of the records released in the seventies for the Elektra/Asylum label were published, while in 2022, in conjunction with the twentieth anniversary of the albums “Alice” and “Bloodmoney”, two digital versions of such were released Disks each containing five songs live. In July of the following year, it was finally the turn of the remastering of the works released between 1983 and 1992 for Island and here we are talking about five masterpieces: Swordifishrombones, “Rain Dogs “,“ Frank‘sort Wild Years ”,“ The Black Rider “and” Bonemachine “. In August 2024, for the twenty -five years of “mule Variations ”, a new version of“ Get is transmitted on digital platforms Well tea Mule” With some changes to the text and sung with the only accompaniment of a Wurlitzer electrical plan. In fact, this is the first time that Tom, thirteen from “Bad as me”, records and disclosed his music, even if we are not faced with an unpublished original song and we must settle for the new arrangement of an old song. Better than nothing, however, also because the piece will be distributed in vinyl on April 12 as part of the “Record Store Day”.
Non-insurance and work with cinema
If Tom Waits since 2008 has no longer been on tour and since 2011 he has no longer written and published fresh material, it is also true that those who follow him and admire as an actor cannot accuse him of hiding. Limiting ourselves to the last sixteen years, in fact, the American artist has worked for directors of the caliber of Terry Gilliam, Francis Ford Coppola, Ethan And Joel Coen, PaulThomas Anderson And Jim Jarmush In eighteen films: live action and animated, short- and feature films, for cinema and for television, in cameo parts and as a protagonist, in flesh and blood or as a narrator.
The narrative voice is actually a role that has always seen Waits rather requested, a circumstance of which no one can be surprised, considering that we are dealing with one of the most iconic voices of contemporaneity. If we sieve his entire career, we recognize his unmistakable vocal stamp already in the short film Thriller Greasylake (1988), while the following year you listen to it in the role of the radio DJ Tad T. Taylor in Mystery Train of Jarmusch (1989) and in ’97 in the documentary Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight. It is his voice of Captain Hook in Shrek 2 (2004), as well as that of the giant swallow Virgil in the animated short film The Monster of Nix (2011) and, in the same year, the narrative one that illustrates the introductory scenes of the Twixt coppolian horror. Tom returns to the animated film both in 2014, when I double Lloyd’s character in the Simpson Homer episode Goes to Prep School, both in 2018, interpreting Captain Millipede, narrator of the short film “The Moon‘sort Milk ”, is still in 2021, always as a narrative voice, in the animated TV series“ Ultra City Smiths “. And even in a few months, in the “Wildwood” Stop Motion animation film, we will hear it to make a character named Sterling Fox speak.
It is therefore not surprising that the vocal cords of the multifaceted Californian artist were also chosen to accompany the episode of the docu-series “The human factor” which will be broadcast on Rai 3 at 23:10 tomorrow 25 February.
Nobody sounds like Tom Waits.
Tiberius Snaidero is the author of “The art of being Tom Waits”, a volume published by Volibero last year, of which Rockol published the introduction, which can be read here.
