‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’: The song Tom Waits said he listened to 10,000 times
Tom Waits is California born and raised, but not in the way you might expect.
He wasn’t a Hollywood kid; instead, growing up in California’s forgotten towns, areas that feel like relics, with their car shows and county fairs, and the ghosts of the place, and their ghost songs, greatly inspired Waits.
In particular, one spot inspired him to no end: a pizza shop. After dropping out of school at 18 and already knowing he needed to make it into the entertainment world, one way or another, he was working the job so many born talents find themselves doing, which is waiting tables.
Moving out of his hometown of Pomona to the slightly more bustling National City, it had the same old-school, run-down feel and on the city’s strip, Waits could be found working at Napoleone’s Pizza restaurant. Ever the artist, the man was taking notes, writing down interesting stories he overheard, or words he didn’t know, making that pizza place Waits’ personal artistic arena for a while, as he looked out into the busy street. He eventually poured all those stories into tracks like ‘The Ghosts of Saturday Night’, with its long title including the location tag, ‘After Hours At Napoleone’s Pizza House’.
From heartaches to new loves, out-of-towners to old regulars, Waits captures the sights of the night, making his own sound for it, but if he were to mute his own singing, a different song would play.
“Right across the street was the Western [nightclub], where Hank Williams used to play, not when I was there [but earlier]”, Waits recalled of that stretch and the people who had frequented it before him. Now, there was no live Williams, but there was a juke box in his pizza place, and he had free rein over it.
“I learned a lot at Napoleone, and the jukebox had ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’ [a 1962 hit for Ray Charles]; I must’ve heard it 10,000 times,” he said, picking out that Charles song as one of the most impactful pieces of music in his life. Part of it comes down to the tune itself, and it’s true crooner energy and hyper-romanticism that lived in a love of Waits’ early work. From then on, he’s always counted the track amongst his all-time favourite songs.
However, for the most part, Waits’ love for the track exists as part of his love for Napoleone’s, and the way place and nostalgia fuel him. Very few other artists would be willing to admit that the most important place in their career was a pizza show, but Waits is. “It was really my home, National City, and I loved my job working there,” he said, remembering how he moved through the ranks from server to potwasher to cook.
At every step, the city seemed to bring him a story to write about, inspiring his entire debut, Closing Time, with tales of late-night feelings and observations, or the various character studies on The Heart of Saturday Night. Even by 1975, when Waits was too successful to be making pizzas anymore, and was busy recording with Robert Plant, he still chose to name his third record Nighthawks at the Diner, still honouring how a place like a restaurant becomes a hub of stories, and how hospitality workers get to hear them all.
