The two musicians who define Los Angeles, according to Beck
When musing on the strange ways of Los Angeles, Jack Kerouac, in the midst of a seven-year amble searching for the heart of the United States, holed himself up in a lowly motel somewhere in Hollywood, and wrote: “I could hear everything, together with the hum of my hotel neon. I never felt sadder in my life. LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; New York gets godawful cold in the winter. But there’s a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in the streets. LA is a jungle.”
If by “jungle”, Kerouac meant a wild west, then Beck would undoubtedly be in agreement with him. However, he doesn’t necessarily see this as a saddening thing; he simply marvels at its madness and civility in stupefying coexistence. It is, in fact, one of the few places on Earth whereby if you haven’t got a therapist, you’re considered mad.
In Beck’s opinion, the true most of this great city should embody that sense of anarchy. And so, he believes that Tom Waits’ fist is right in there. “Tom’s someone I see at the airport,“ he told Mojo. “He’ll be going through the security X-ray machine and I’ll be coming out of it, and we’ll just pull over and talk about welding for a couple of minutes. 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.“
David Bowie may well have called it “insidious“, but Beck’s view is rather more nuanced when it comes to its inherent self-destruction. “LA’s a city that kind of hates itself, so the past is never really maintained for posterity. Tom represents a part of LA that died a long time ago, and he keeps it alive for us.“
As such, he also believes another LA native, Don Van Vliet (AKA Captain Beefheart), defines the city. “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 Cacophony Society that Beck speaks of is a society that defines itself as “a randomly gathered network of free spirits united in the pursuit of experiences beyond the pale of mainstream society.“ While I wouldn’t say Waits and Beefheart were that exactly, they do both certainly explore the outer-limits of society in their music from the edge of the world.
Waits loves Los Angeles, and he has always soaked it up like a sponge and wrung it out in his songs. As he told the LA Free Press back in 1974: ”I love this city, I love Los Angeles, but right now my point of view is a little blurred because I don’t have a car,” he bemoaned. ”I love to drive, and it’s conducive to writing for me.”
Continuing: ”Everybody needs a different climate in which to create, like for some people it’s the sun streaming through the blinds, or the Rocky Mountains, or a room sanitized for your protection. There ain’t no music out in the country. All the music’s in the city. Symphonies on 23rd Street. Traffic jam sessions going on all the time. There were times when I was out on the road where I would have given my left nut to be on the Harbor Freeway at 5:30 in the afternoon, just to listen. I love it.”
