'THE HEART OF SATURDAY NIGHT'
(11-track LP/ 'ASYLUM RECORDS'/ 1974)
Tom Waits' observations on the human condition are second-to-none. He's still on the go after what seems like aeons, he's still producing wildly original material, and last year he managed somehow to release two full length long-players simultaneously which is no mean feat. It was his eccentric and darkly disturbing 'Mule Variations' album, though, that got me hooked - and pushed me to interrogate his huge back catalogue.
So backtrack to 1974 and this piano-led meander though some mean city streets and ocean-deep soul-searching and destroying.
What's more the dreary 'cartoon' cover pictures a semi-smart, bearded, smoking Tom on the cusp of being led astray by a sus-looking woman who's a dead ringer for modern-day Madonna. Who knows, maybe Madonna actually took a look at this cover a few years ago and designed her image overhaul in tribute to the lady on the cover. Whatever, they both look - and lick? - alike.
Each to their own, the heart of Saturday night in Tom's eyes is tainted by overblown heartache and rabid depression. The life and soul of Saturday night is clearly dead and buried as he laments, piano never far away, for New York and America over. He's lonely, and in the poignantly sullen 'San Diego Serenade' he's hugely contradictory ('I never felt my heart-strings till I nearly went insane; I never saw the East Coast till I moved to the West') as he convinces us that you don't appreciate anything until it's been left behind and it's too late.
Never one for raising smiles or cracking jokes, the music is taken seriously� and the musicianship is perfect.
'Shiver Me Timbers' has dimension added with subtle guitar bits, but it's the title track of the album - complete with cool, ground-breaking (?) urban-sounding SFX - and 'Diamonds on My Windshield' that are the unsurpassed highlights. 'Diamonds on My Windshield' in particular is irresistible for its originality and the fact it's a cool, Beat Poetry-inspired monologue of rhyme and reason with the lyrical Waits always on the verge of crooning.
If you're not familiar with Tom Waits' voice, think first of a depression-era Springsteen. Steeped in soul and blues, Britain's own Richard Thompson also springs to mind, while the melancholy tone of these sad songs must have surely proved a major inspiration for the lyrics of Scottish pop-rock band Del Amitri.
Yep. On 'Depot Depot' Tom sings 'I'm going to paint myself blue' as though he isn�t blue enough already, while the LP closer in the cleverly-titled 'Ghosts of Saturday Night' has him musing about a pizza house's hash browns.
Indeed. Whoever professes that this man is a genius is right alright. (STEVE RUDD)