The album Tom Waits called “the watering hole”
Tom Waits has acquired a polarised position in the history of music, a sort of Marmite-like figure who garners love and hate in equal measure. It only takes listening to one song to understand why he has amassed this reputation. Pairing his grating, barking vocals with instrumentation that blends everything from jazz to cabaret, his sound certainly is an acquired taste.
While some find Waits’ distinctive stylings off-putting, his music has also become a reference point for many outsider musicians. His influence can be found in the output of everyone from PJ Harvey to Elliott Smith to Nick Cave. For those willing to open themselves up to the sonic experimentalism of Waits, his impressive discography can act as a watering hole for the weird and wonderful side of music.
Perhaps surprisingly, Waits found his own watering hole in a far less divisive artist – The Rolling Stones. With some of the most influential and beloved rock songs of all time sitting within their discography and record sales of around 200 million, it would be difficult to argue that the Stones are an acquired taste.
Though they sit in an entirely different sphere to Waits, that didn’t stop the genre experimentalist from praising their sound. While picking out 20 of his favourite records in a conversation with The Guardian, Waits named Exile On Main St. as his fourth pick, which he compared to both a tree of life and a watering hole.
Exile On Main St. was released in 1972, following on from Sticky Fingers just a year earlier. Incorporating more influences from blues, it makes sense that Waits favoured this record. Waits enthused, “But this is just a tree of life. This record is the watering hole. Keith Richards plays his ass off. This has the Checkerboard Lounge all over it.”
Waits was particularly enthusiastic about the song ‘I Just Want To See His Face’, which has a huge impact on his own vocal style, “particularly learning how to sing in that high falsetto, the way Jagger does”.
“When he sings like a girl, I go crazy,” Waits enthused, “I said, ‘I’ve got to learn how to do that.’ I couldn’t really do it until I stopped smoking.”
He borrowed from this technique for some of his own songs – ‘Shore Leave’ and ‘All Stripped Down’ for example – but maintained: “Nobody does it like Mick Jagger; nobody does it like Prince.” He’s not wrong. As a result, Exile On Main St., and the Stones’ work more generally, will remain a watering hole for budding musicians for years to come.
Revisit Exile On Main St., the album Tom Waits called “the watering hole” below.
