Tom Waits describes his “most thrilling musical experience”
There have been plenty of legends that Tom Waits worked with over his extensive career. From The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards to his on-off relationship with Bette Midler that led to her appearance on ‘I Never Talk To Strangers’, Waits pulled from across the world of music and encountered plenty of odd figures along the way.
Equally, Waits has performed in some of the wildest places any artist has visited. from front porches to foreign countries, Waits is among the better-travelled musicians in the world. He might have ceased touring after the 2008 ‘Glitter and Doom Tour’ in 2008, but his jaunts brought him to every conceivable dive bar, theatre, arena, and stage available to a performer.
So, what did Waits consider his most thrilling musical experience? It wasn’t any of his collaborations or staged performances. Instead, it was a comparatively ordinary experience in New York City near where Waits would eventually move to in the 1980s. As one legendary musical shrine called to him, he found some unexpected pleasures outside.
“My most thrilling musical experience was in Times Square, over thirty years ago,” Waits wrote in a 2008 promotional interview with himself. “There was a rehearsal hall around the Brill Building where all the rooms were divided into tiny spaces with just enough room to open the door. Inside was a spinet piano – cigarette burns, missing keys, old paint and no pedals. You go in and close the door and it’s so loud from other rehearsals you can’t really work- so you stop and listen and the goulash of music was thrilling.”
Waits has a thing for old-school music history. In the same self-interview, Waits lamented that he was born too late to experience Vaudeville at its height. Although he wasn’t able to wander inside the halls of the Brill Building, by the 1970s, he wouldn’t have been missing much. Most of the building’s best writers had left by that point, leaving Waits to find more interesting things around the corner.
“Scales on a clarinet, tango, light opera, sour string quartet, voice lessons, someone belting out ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’, garage bands, and piano lessons,” Waits added. “The floor was pulsing, the walls were thin. As if ten radios were on at the same time, in the same room. It was a train station of music with all the sounds milling around… for me it was heavenly.”
Check out ‘Anywhere I Lay My Head’ down below.
