The “essential” Bob Dylan album Tom Waits loves most of all
It’s not hard to draw a line between Bob Dylan and most of the rock and roll set that followed his lead. Even The Beatles jumped on his personal pop song bandwagon after their first meeting with the icon in 1964. However, for Tom Waits, the gruff-voiced jazz-inflected musical genius behind Swordfishtrombone, his most outstanding achievement wasn’t the landmark albums he delivered in the studio but the grotty grit he achieved on one of his more peculiar records.
“I didn’t really identify with the music of my own generation,” Tom Waits once said, then pausing for a moment and adding: “But I was very curious about the music of others.” In that sentiment, we find Waits picking out some of his favourite albums of all time with The Guardian. With 20 records on show, it provided a sincere look into the creative mind of one of rock and roll’s anomalies.
As Tom Waits once said: “My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane”. With that, it will come as little surprise that the deep, gravelly voice of Mr Waits has been discussing some artists that have inspired him through the years. A few years back, Waits compiled a list that brings together what he would consider his most cherished albums of all time, a collection of records that he has carried around with him since his early days working in music. Within that list were doffs of his proverbial cap to some of music’s finest minds.
As well as noting Thelonious Monk as a genius, picking out one of Frank Zappa’s final LPs and labelling Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man as one of the best of a storied career, he naturally picked out a record by Bob Dylan too. From The Beatles to Bruce Springsteen, almost every artist can attest to Dylan being a huge influence on their career. But, rather than pick out a classic album of Dylan’s — and there are a lot of them to choose from — Waits went for something a little more off the beaten track.
Considering who is picking the list, it’s perhaps no surprise that the Dylan album Tom Waits chose as his favourite was recorded in the depths of Dylan’s grittiest moments. He chose The Basement Tapes, the record Dylan recorded with The Band in 1975. Rich with the kind of under-the-fingernail-dirt that has enriched Waits’ own career, the album seems a perfect match.
Speaking with The Guardian, Waits noted of the LP: “With Dylan, so much has been said about him, it’s difficult to say anything about him that hasn’t already been said, and say it better. Suffice it to say Dylan is a planet to be explored. For a songwriter, Dylan is as essential as a hammer and nails and a saw are to a carpenter. I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in – so the bootlegs I obtained in the 1960s and ’70s, where the noise and grit of the tapes became inseparable from the music, are essential to me.”
Dylan represents something otherworldly to songwriters, and especially to Waits: “His journey as a songwriter is the stuff of myth because he lives within the ether of the songs. Hail, hail The Basement Tapes. I heard most of these songs on bootlegs first. There is a joy and an abandon to this record; it’s also a history lesson.”
So there you have it. Forget Blonde on Blonde, Bringing It All Back Home or Highway 61, if you’re looking for an album that captures the essence of Bob Dylan, then take Tom Waits’ advice, and stick on The Basement Tapes.
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