“He’s part of the earth”: Tom Waits’ incredible description of his first meeting with Keith Richards
The glossy sheen of the 1980s never rubbed off on Tom Waits.
While the vast majority of his old pals from LA’s early 1970s Troubadour scene had cashed in their chips to become “Easy Listening” drones in the Reagan age, Waits had run full speed in the other direction, even trading in his once pleasant-sounding singing voice for something more akin to a strung-out Rowlf the Dog. The compositions were fiercely non-traditional, and the instrumentation was all over the map. It ended up being the best work of his career.
At the height of this creative period, in 1985, a 36-year-old Waits released Rain Dogs, a record that was deeply American in its spirit but actually resonated more with his UK fanbase, reaching number 29 in the UK charts and just number 188 in the States. While writing the songs for the new album, which was a direct follow-up to 1983’s Swordfishtrombones, Waits found himself thinking about potential new collaborators to help achieve the sounds he had in his head. One name that kept springing to mind was a certain Rolling Stones guitarist by the name of Keith Richards, but Waits assumed that hooking a fish of that size would be impossible. To his surprise, Waits’ label Island Records reached out to Richards on his behalf, and with little hesitation, Keith was signed up for the project.
“I picked out a couple of songs that I thought he would understand, and he did,” Waits later said.
Richards ultimately contributed guitar on three Rain Dogs tracks, ‘Big Black Mariah’, ‘Union Square’, and ‘Blind Love’, while also providing backing vocals on the latter.
The Rain Dogs sessions were filled with guest musicians playing everything from accordions and banjos to marimbas, saxophones, bowed saws, and chests of drawers. “You can bang on anything,” Waits often explained. The arrival of Keith Richards into this chaotic ecosystem, however, still managed to make a big impression on Waits, leading to a friendship that would last for decades.
“[Keith] is part of the earth; an animal,” Waits told the LA Times after Rain Dogs‘ release. “I was expecting a big entourage like a Fellini movie, you know—people that don’t speak English, a lot of fur. And they just tumbled out of a limo. He comes in laughing, shoes all tore up.”
From here, Waits proceeds to describe the physicality of Keith Richards in the studio, doing so in the way Salvador Dali might have painted the same scene.
“[Keith] stands at 10 after 7, if you can imagine that,” Waits said. “Arms at 5 o’clock, legs at 2 o’clock, with no apparatus, nothing suspended. He’s all below the waist. And if he doesn’t feel it, he’ll walk away”.
“I was just flattered that he would come,” Waits added. “It’s kind of like a rite of passage or something.”
Richards was no less pleased with his own experience, and would collaborate with Waits again numerous times, later describing his friend warmly to Uncut in a 2023 interview.
“Tom’s music is so American,” Richards said. “Probably more folk-American than anything, but somehow modern. He’s a weird mixture of stuff; a great bunch of guys!”
