“We can’t go back”: the song Tom Waits wishes he could redo
The great thing about art is that it lasts. It captures human emotions, experiences and talent and preserves them over time. The problem is that this permanence cuts both ways. When an artist like Tom Waits looks back and wishes he could redo something, it’s too late.
There are many stories like this, and it perfectly shows how art intersects with the human experience. We are doubtful creatures, insecure and analytical, often prone to looking at something we should be proud of and instead picking it apart, finding small flaws and magnifying them.
Humans could make something completely perfect and flawless, but still find something to worry about. It seems to be in our very nature to constantly want to be innovating and improving, to look at something we made, no matter how great it is, and still want another shot at making it even better.
George Harrison felt that way about his album Extra Texture. Jimi Hendrix always felt that way about Electric Ladyland, hoping to give it a refresh before he died. As for Tom Waits, he feels that way about his 2011 track ‘New Year’s Eve’.
Unlike other artists wishing they could go decades back in time and fix up a bum note or level up the guitars or even just clear up some production issues, Waits’ gripe is with a relatively new song, and is partly with the simple fact that he sang it himself.
Even though it would erase part of the song’s existence as his artistry, Waits wishes he could go back in time and get someone else to sing it, or at least sing it like someone else. “That ‘New Year’s Eve’ song – I was listening to it in the car the other day, and I started singing it a completely different way, like I imagine Mick Jagger might sing it, or Sam Cooke, way behind the beat,” he said.
Part of it is simply him imagining his own track coming through a different, smoother voice. But this is also a classic case of a great idea hitting just too late, as Waits seemed to realise that the beat of his vocals should hang back a little, trail a bit behind the instrumental, adding, “Like ‘Bring It On Home To Me’.”
However, the idea hit in 2016, exactly five years too late, as he added, “I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a good way to sing it – but we’ve done it now, we can’t go back and redo it.’”
But that’s the way it goes. Sometimes, when making something in the studio, the artist is left striving and striving, and they get there, but not all the way. They make something good and something that works, sometimes they even make something truly great, but then still, years down the line, in the most random of contexts, the true, genius idea will hit. As if it missed the original bus or got held up somewhere along the way, the shiniest idea will arrive too late.
“There are surprises that happen – you try something a bunch of different ways, and finally you say, ‘Oh man!’” Waits said, explaining this experience that any creative can likely attest to. But while the lucky few get that lightbulb moment when there is still time to change it before the creation is locked into time’s concrete, plenty simply have to deal with a lifetime of wishing they could have another go.
