The musician Tom Waits called “the roughest diamond in the mine”
When Tom Waits coughs, a puff of soot comes out. The jaunty-hatted star is a timeless treasure who seems to hark back through the eternities of civility, a street urchin who has seen it all. While his sound might be radically contemporary by turns, there is always the sense of a spit-and-sawdust soul to the star, so when it comes to a certain ruggedness, he certainly knows what he is talking about.
It’s the frayed edges that he finds himself drawn to, which is why the mania of Captain Beefheart’s music has always appealed to him. “The roughest diamond in the mine, his musical inventions are made of bone and mud,” he told the Guardian when discussing his love for Beefheart’s (Don Glen Vliet) 1969 oddity Trout Mask Replica.
He continues: “Enter the strange matrix of his mind and lose yours. This is indispensable for the serious listener. An expedition into the centre of the earth, this is the high jump record that’ll never be beat, it’s a merlot reduction sauce. He takes da bait. Dante doing the buck and wing at a Skip James suku jump. Drink once and thirst no more.”
On this occasion, Waits’ considered phrasing of a rough diamond seems fitting, too. After all, according to Beck, it is the mining past of Los Angeles that binds Waits and Vilet together like gems prised from the same strange scene. Speaking about Waits, Beck said: “He’s definitely one of the luminaries and one of those rare products of Los Angeles who has an interest in the history and background of the place.”
And he puts Waits’ late pal Vilet on the same list. “Beefheart also totally makes sense to me as someone coming from LA,” he continued. “He’s like that collective of people a few years ago called The Cacophony Society, who did things like douse themselves in mud and parade up and down Rodeo Drive. In some senses, this town can be like a wasteland, but at least it forces you to use your imagination.”
The truth is that beneath the glitz and glam that now resides in the hills, Los Angeles is the final frontier; thus, a certain roughness is an inherent necessity. For Beck and, indeed, Waits, this is personified by Beefheart. He might not be refined, but that is what makes his art all the more authentic.
According to Waits, this is what music, at its truest, is all about. As the grizzly star proclaims: “I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in.”
