The five best covers of Tom Waits songs
Tom Waits was once asked in a TV interview with Don Lane, “How does a guy with a voice like that decide to be a singer and succeed?”, but a similar question can be put to anyone who decides to take on one of his songs.
There really is no point in trying to out Tom Waits Tom Waits. There is only one, and he is all-conquering, mighty, mysteriously of the Earth and of the wind, and he is unapproachable. The trick to a great Waits cover is approaching it with your own unique voice, and shuffling inside his song and making it fit you, rather than trying to climb up to his position on the mountain.
Waits himself threw down the gauntlet early in his career, (correctly) assessing that the Eagles’ cover of his ‘Ol 55’—the very cover which essentially put him on the map with the general public—was “a little antiseptic”. His assessment and assertion that the band are “about as exciting as watching paint dry” might just have put plenty of other singers off approaching his material. If he thought that their ‘Ol 55’ cover was “antiseptic”, then God only knows what he thought of Rod Stewart’s 1989 bastardisation of ‘Downtown Train’.
Another surprisingly antiseptic cover came along more recently from Puddles Pity Party, when he took on ‘Come On Up to the House’. Of all the people you’d expect to be able to deliver an appropriately weird and wonderful Tom Waits tribute, who better than a singing clown? Well, suitably strangely enough, it seems that someone better suited to singing these songs was indeed someone you’d much less expect, after all, and that was Scarlett Johansson, who in 2008 released an entire album of Tom Waits tunes.
In fact, just like with other iconic and idiosyncratic, unique and much-covered men like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Neil Young, most of the best covers of Waits’ songs come from women’s voices.
Five of the greatest ever Tom Waits covers
Ramones – ‘I Don’t Wanna Grow Up’
Tom Waits might have sung in 1991 that he never wanted to grow up, and though he has always had a free-spirited, young-at-heart personality, he has always at least sounded like an old man.
A group who never sounded any different, never looked any different and never ever seemed to grow up was The Ramones. Their teenage-angst-filled 1995 version of Waits’ Bone Machine Peter Pan-athem (Peter Panthem?) wouldn’t have sounded out of place alongside any of their own early classics like ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, ‘Rockaway Beach’ or ‘Do You Remember Rock and Roll Radio?’.
Mick Flannery – ‘Martha’
Alongside his explorations along the more far out avenues of musical possibility, and all of his extraordinary experimentations with sound and shape and form, Tom Waits is also, and maybe more than anything else, a devastatingly heartbreaking and beautiful wordsmith.
One of his most devastating and heartbreaking ballads came on his very first album in the shape of ‘Martha’, which is absolutely perfect for Mick Flannery’s broken-hearted and booze-worn croon.
Marissa Mulder – ‘Downtown Train’
When Rod Stewart sang ‘Downtown Train’ in 1989, he and producer Trevor Horn threw everything at the recording and then some. Sure the chorus soars and it can be a lot of fun to belt along with, but there was no subtlety in the song any longer, and no nuance in the performance.
The same can not be said for Marissa Mulder’s stripped back rendition from her 2013 cabaret show and subsequent live show made up entirely of Tom Waits tunes, Tom…In His Words. Accompanied by a jazzy piano and occasional guitar, Mulder’s voice is at times thin and whispy, at times smoky and strong. She’s weak and she’s strong, she’s pleading and demanding, and she’s hoping and wondering, and she is making you feel everything that she is singing in a way that even such a great singer as Rod Stewart couldn’t get close to with the same song.
Phoebe Bridgers – ‘Georgia Lee’
This was already about as devastating, haunting and harrowing a song as anyone has ever released in Waits’ own brilliant Mule Variations performance, but somehow Phoebe Bridgers managed to make it even more heart-shattering to listen to in this eerie, desolate and despairing reading.
“Why wasn’t God watching? Why wasn’t God listening? Why wasn’t God there for Georgia Lee?” Beautiful, and brutal. When Tom Waits said that he likes “beautiful melodies telling me terrible things”, he wasn’t lying.
Joan Baez – ‘Whistle Down the Wind’
I think that Tom Waits is one of the greatest singers of all time, but some people seem to disagree. No one can disagree about the beauty of Joan Baez’s voice, though, and here the beauty of her voice and her playing converge with the beauty of Tom Waits’ words to create a life-affirming and life-changing recording.
Baez has held on to her voice incredibly well over the years, but the extra depth, wisdom and heartbreak that comes through thanks to her age and experience on lines like “I’m not all I thought I’d be”, “I can’t stay here and I’m scared to leave” and “I’m stuck like a shipwreck out here in the dust”.
This song is a perfect example of the transformative power of music, and is, I believe, one of the greatest achievements in modern music, but, it’s no wonder that it’s so wonderful. It’s one of our greatest ever singers singing a song by one of our greatest ever songwriters.
