swordfishtrombones

Tom Waits found a new label and a dramatic new sound with the ragged experimental impressionism of this creepy and colorful cabaret carnival concept album.  After the bluesy howl of his final album for Elektra Records 'Heartattack and Vine', Waits wrote the music for Francis Ford Coppola's 'One From the Heart'.  It was on the set of that film that he met his wife screenwriter Kathleen Brennan, who became a major influence on his new creative direction.

'Swordfishtrombones' was recorded at Sunset Sound in Hollywood, CA with Tom Waits on production, vocal, chair, Hammond B-3 organ, piano, harmonium, synthesizer, and freedom bell; Victor Feldman on bass marimba, marimba, shaker, bass drum with rice, bass boo bams, brake drum, bell plate, snare, Hammond B-3 organ, snare drum, bells, conga, bass drum, dabuki drum, tambourine, and African talking drum; Larry Taylor on acoustic bass and electric bass; Randy Aldcroft on baritone horn and trombone; Stephen Taylor Arvizu Hodges on drums, parade drum, cymbals, parade bass drum, and glass harmonica; Fred Tackett on electric guitar and banjo guitar; Francis Thumm on metal aunglongs and glass harmonica; Greg Cohen on bass and acoustic bass; Joe Romano on trombone and trumpet; Anthony Clark Stewart on bagpipes; Clark Spangler on synthesizer program; Bill Reichenbach and Dick "Slyde" Hyde on trombone; Ronnie Barron on Hammond organ; Eric Bikales on organ; Carlos Guitarlos on electric guitar; and Richard Gibbs on glass harmonica. 

Waits confessed:  "I've always been afraid of percussion for some reason. I was afraid of things sounding like a train wreck, like Buddy Rich having a seizure. I've made some strides; the bass marimbas, the boo bams, metal long longs, African talking drums and so on ... I listened to some Mongolian stuff when I was getting ready to do this record. It sounded like Tibetan Voodoo. It caught my ear and helped me some...It's hard to play with a bagpipe player. I had an opportunity to play with my first bagpipe player on this record. You can't play with them. It's like an exotic bird. I love the sound, it's like strangling a goose. I played the trumpet when I was a kid, but I gave it up. I like it because it was easy to carry. It was like carrying your lunch. A piano, you have to go to it. You never hear anybody say "Pass me that piano, buddy." Composing on different instruments will give you different songs. So, I'm trying to get away from the piano as a compositional device and find something else to write on...The problem is that all these things pass through you all the time, and when you sit down to write, it's really just like purchasing a butterfly net. It's going on all the time, it's just that you're going to draw a frame around it now. You're going to reach up and grab some and swallow it. There are times when you're more receptive to it than others. There are times when I feel more musical than others. I used to write a lot on the road, in hotels and stuff, that whole transient quality of my life. I'm not really what you'd call anal retentive. I found that the traveling brought me to a certain place as a writer. Now, I'm working on something that requires myself to stay put. I find it difficult to write on the road now. I'd like to go to Rangoon or Hong Kong. Be there, come home and write. Get something on you and come me. I wanted to join the Navy when I was a kid. But, you know the expression, the Navy's not just a job, it's $39 a month. When I turned 18, I got tattoos and thought that was it. I think the Navy is no longer a career opportunity for me but it's nice to know it's there."

'Swordfishtrombones' took more than a year to get released after the recording was finished.  Eventually, he signed a deal with Island Records and the album became his first to chart in the UK.  It made its way to number one hundred and sixty-seven in the US, sixty-two in the UK, forty-eight in the Netherlands, and eighteen in Norway.  Waits says:   "I was trying to do a bit of an - uh - adventure, do some type of 'Beggar's Opera' in a way, with songs that had some kinda relationship to each other, whether it was later on in the story, or in some kinda discombobulated sequence. Thematically, I put in the instrumentals to try and provide connective tissue."







http://www.tomwaits.com/
















"Swordfishtrombone"
"That's the title song. It has kind of a Cuban night club feel to it. It's a story to try and give an overview of a character. We tried it with a lot of different ways. It was arranged differently with electric guitar and drums. We had trombone on it and trumpet and ended up..we.. I had to discard most of what we had done and completely rearrange it just to get it as simple as possible. So that it just kind of rolled and allowed me to tell the story over it without any interruptions.  Tenkiller Lake, that's in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So, "He came home from the war with a party in his head and an idea for fireworks display."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FRgGheX4jk






"Johnsburg, Illinois"
"My wife is from Johnsburg, Illinois. It's right outside McHenry and up by the ching-a-lings. She grew up on a farm up there. So it's dedicated to her.  It's real short. Somehow I wanted just to get it all said in one verse. There are times when you work on a song and end up repeating in the second verse what you already said in the first. So I thought I would be more appropiate if it's just like a feeling of a sailor somewhere in a cafe, who opens his wallet and turns to the guy next to him and shows him the picture while he's talking about something else and says: "Oh, here. That's her." and then closes his wallet and puts it back in his pants.
It relates in some way to "Shore Leave" in the sense that it talks about Illinois. So thematically I was trying to tie it into "Shore Leave".





 "16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought-Six"
"I tried to get a 'chain gang work song'-feel holler. Get a low trombone to give a feeling of a freight train going by. It's Stephen Hodges on drums, Larry Taylor on acoustic bass, Fred Tackett on electric guitar, Victor Feldman on brake drum and bell plate and Joe Romano on trombone.  So, I wanted to have that kind of a sledgehammer coming down on anvil. Originally I saw the story as a guy and a mule going off looking for this crow. He has a washburn guitar strapped on the side of his mule and when he gets the crow he pulls the strings back and shoves this bird inside the guitar and then the strings make like a jail. Then he bangs the on the strings and the bird goes out of his mind as he is riding off over the hill. So I tried to make the story a bit impressionistic but at the same time adding some very specific images in there. I worked a long time on this. The feel of it was really critical. I added snare and we pulled the snare off 'cause it made it shuffle too much. I liked the holes in it as much as I liked what was in them. It was a matter of trying to get that feeling of a train going. Originally I tried it just with organ and bass. Then I was afraid to add too much to it 'cause sometimes you get a feel that's appropiate. If you try to heap too much on it then it crumbles into the strain."




"Frank's Wild Years"
"Charles Bukowski had a story that essentially was saying that it's the little things that drive men mad. It's not the big things. It's not World War II. It's the broken shoe lace when there is no time left that sends men completely out their minds. So this is kind of in that spirit. Little of a Ken Nordine flavour.  Ronnie Barren alias Rev. Eather from New Orleans, Lousiana, on Hammond organ and Larry Taylor, originally with Canned Heat, on dog house.  I think there is a little bit of Frank in everybody."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fsBj65IODk




"Down, Down, Down"
"It's best described as pentecostal revron man. I was stranded in Arizona on the route 66. It was freezing cold and I slept at a ditch. I pulled all these leaves all over on top of me and dug a hole and shoved my feet in this hole. It was about 20 below and no cars going by. Everything was closed.  When I woke up in the morning there was a pentecostal church right over the road. I walked over there with leaves in my hair and sand on the side of my face. This woman named Mrs. Anderson came. It was like New years eve... Yeah, it was New years eve. She said: "We're having services here and you are welcome to join us." So I sat at the back pew in this tiny little church.  And this mutant rock'n'roll band got up and started playing these old hymns in such a broken sort of way. They were preaching, and everytime they said something about the devil or evil or going down the wrong path she gestured in the back of the church to me. And everyone would turn around and look and shake their heads and then turn back to the preacher. It gave me a complex that I grew up with.  On Sunday evening they have these religious programs where the preachers they are all bankers. They get on with these firering glasses and 700 $ suits. Shake their finger at America. So this is kind of my own little opportunity at the lectern."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7O5scQhbsE










'Swordfishtrombones' 
full album:


01 00:00 "Underground"
02 01:58 "Shore Leave"
03 06:14 "Dave the Butcher" (Instrumental)
04 08:33 "Johnsburg, Illinois"
05 10:02 "16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought-Six"
06 14:32 "Town with No Cheer"
07 18:58 "In the Neighborhood"
08 22:04 "Just Another Sucker on the Vine" (Instrumental)
09 23:47 "Frank's Wild Years"
10 25:38 "Swordfishtrombone"
11 28:44 "Down, Down, Down"
12 30:58 "Soldier's Things"
13 34:18 "Gin Soaked Boy"
14 36:40 "Trouble's Braids"
15 37:57 "Rainbirds" (Instrumental)