Released - March 1973
Genre - Jazz
Producer - Jerry Yester
Selected Personnel - Tom Waits (Vocals/Piano/Guitar); Delbert Bennett (Trumpet); Shep Cooke (Guitar/Backing Vocals); Peter Klimes (Guitar); Bill Plummer (Bass); John Seiter (Drums/Backing Vocals); Jesse Ehrlich (Cello); Tony Terran (Trumpet)
Standout Track - Ol' '55
For me, perhaps the most significant album of 1973, amid all the brash sound and colour of glam rock and prog was this quiet, unassuming little collection of folk and jazz tunes, in that it marked the debut of the artist who came to have a stronger grasp on my imagination and my heart and my mind than any other I've ever discovered. Never before or since has an artist fascinated and obsessed me quite so much (although Bowie, Springsteen and Eno all came close). For well over a year, Tom Waits was more or less exclusively all I listened to as I hungrily devoured his entire discography, and has remained a constant in my listening habits ever since, and a pinnacle of artistic imagination and musical innovation. It might be something of a surprise, then, that his arrival on the music scene was so quiet and understated as this lovely album. It would be very easy to listen to Closing Time and dismiss Waits as just another folk singer-songwriter of the West Coast scene, but the independent spirit and depth of character is there if you look hard enough.
I first encountered Waits back in 2007, when my brother, Barney, played me a now-famous recording of him singing perhaps his best-loved song, "Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen)" on the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977. Barney spoke effusively about the incredible sense of ravaged dignity and simple profundity in the song. I listened to Waits's ragged, gravel-soaked voice and immediately disliked it, telling Barney I hated it and had no interest in him. A year later I found an old copy of Waits's 1980 masterpiece Heartattack And Vine and bought it for Barney's birthday. A year after that I went to see Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus, which stars Waits as the Devil, and suddenly became fascinated by him. That a musician who commanded such respect and admiration in my brother for being a songwriter of incredible depth and beaurty could also portray a character with such wit and colour and an innate sense of beatnik cool caused me to suddenly become deeply interested in what Waits represented, and to go and get hold of some of his records. I got hold of his first two records, thinking it made sense to start chronologically, as well as the aforementioned Heartattack And Vine and perhaps his best-known album, 1985's Rain Dogs. Like many coming to Waits for the first time, his voice had initially had something of a distancing effect for me, so his early records ultimately proved the perfect place to start. On Closing Time, that ragged bellow is totally absent, with the voice instead being one of nasal, reedy clarity, almost Dylan-esque in places. It meant that by the time I got to the albums where Waits's voice has become truly guttural, I had already fallen in love with everything his music represented, and suddenly that voice became an integral part of what I enjoyed about him rather than something alienating. I'm not necessarily saying that Closing Time is the perfect place for everybody to start with Waits, as it's a long way from the style of music he would become best-loved for, but it worked for me.
Over the following year or so, I delved further and further into Waits's work. It's difficult for me to say exactly why it is that he became so important to me - perhaps I had never before found an artist who so perfectly managed to bridge the gap between noble beauty and cartoonish weirdness that generally informed so many of my tastes in music, film, comedy, everything - I love to be moved by art and I love to be surprised by it, and Waits at his best was able to do both better than anybody else I had ever found. I won't go into too much detail about the breadth of Waits's career here, as there'll be plenty of time to talk about his other work as this blog marches onwards, so I'll focus on what role Closing Time has in the grand scheme of things.
By 1973, Waits had fostered a small community around himself in LA's folk scene. Initially based in San Diego, he used to travel up to LA and perform covers of Dylan songs as well as his own compositions at the Troubadour club, before eventually relocating to the city itself to try and give more of his time to it, recording a series of demos with manager Herb Cohen in 1971 (these demos would eventually be released as the two-volume The Early Years compilation, against Waits's wishes). He eventually caught the eye of David Geffen, head of Asylum Records who had signed artists like the Eagles and Joni Mitchell. Geffen quickly signed Waits and helped him to record Closing Time with producer Jerry Yester of the Lovin' Spoonful. What is so remarkable about Closing Time is just how unremarkable it is (which is to say nothing of its quality, which is truly brilliant, but only of its musical influences and styles). While Yester was keen to mould Waits into a folk singer of the likes of Mitchell or Neil Young, Waits determinedly steered the album towards a more traditional jazz style. Throughout the 60s, he has been essentially unimpressed by many of the developments in rock music and had generally turned to older jazz music of the Tin Pan Alley traditions - simple, piano-based ballads rather than upbeat folk rock numbers. While to a casual listener there is little on Closing Time that is truly surprising - these are traditional folk and jazz songs and show little in terms of radical musical innovation - they do give a fascinating insight into Waits's sense of character. He had no interest in painting himself as some sort of iconic young rebel, but rather chose to settle into the character of the old-fashioned troubadour, sitting at the piano wreathed in smoke and singing songs that sounded decades old. The songs might not have been too radical, but the spirit behind them was one of dogged determination to avoid current conventions, even if it meant reviving styles of music that had essentially fallen out of favour.
Lyrically, on Closing Time Waits already demonstrates the two ideas that would fuel the majority of his songwriting even to this day. In songs like "Ol' '55" there is the sense of a true-life sketch celebrating everyday, normal people. It's a song that depicts a guy driving home from seeing his lover late at night in a beaten-up old car and has a glorious sense of everyday escapism similar to the kinds of everyman idealism that Bruce Springsteen exemplified over on the East Coast. But while Springsteen chose to tell his stories of the average man on the street via upbeat, guitar-based rock music, Waits again clung to tradition and told his stories via simple piano-based folk tunes. Later in the 70s, Waits would establish himself as perhaps the ultimate example of a songwriter who expressed the everyday trials and lives of drunks and deadbeats and drifters, finding the beauty in their simple day-to-day routines in the tradition of his beat-era heroes like Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac. On the other hand, songs like "Martha" express the imagination that would also fire a huge amount of Waits's writing. While it's steeped in the same sort of everyday poetry that fuels "Ol' '55" (it's the story of an old man calling up a long-lost love and confessing to her that he has loved her his whole life despite both of them having been married since), it does give an insight into Waits's ability to imagine himself into characters. Rather than following the mould of most rock music and telling stories of young dreamers, Waits steps effortlessly into the shoes of an old man whose entire life, with all its regrets and disappointments, is behind him. Perhaps the closest match for Waits at the time in terms of imaginative, old-fashioned songwriting is Randy Newman, who, on albums like Sail Away, is able to draw imaginative sketches of disparate characters in old-fashioned, jazzy arrangements. But even on Sail Away there's a sense of hip, ironic cool that Waits entirely eschews here in favour of sincere romanticism.
The tunes themselves are simply masterful - considering Waits would become legendary for making music that is difficult and challenging and unconventional, on his early records he demonstrates just how good he is at writing a melody that is unforgettable and beautiful. Overall, in terms of the battle between Waits and Yester over the stylistic direction of the record, Waits wins out - there are a few more folk-based tunes, the best being "Ol' '55" itself, which remains one of my very favourite Tom Waits songs. The minute I first heard its effortlessly beautiful piano chords I knew this would be an artist I would love, and its soaring chorus is one of his best. Many of the other more folk-oriented tracks, such as "I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You" or the country twang of "Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards)" are pretty enough but pale in comparison to the album's jazzier moments. The shuffling drums, stand-up bass and trumpet parts beautifully compliment jazz tunes like "Midnight Lullaby" and the gorgeous "Grapefruit Moon," and pretty much the entire last two thirds of the album is classic song after classic song.
The aforementioned "Martha" is a real masterpiece, the sense of broken loss that bleeds through the lyrics reinforced by Yester's wonderful string arrangements, and "Rosie" is one of the more stirring country-folk tunes on the album. "Lonely" is such a simple and mournful tune, with such a stark arrangement, that it easily manages to be the saddest moment on the album (even despite the presence of "Martha") and really recalls the Broadway songwriting traditions of Tin Pan Alley. The upbeat and jazzy "Ice Cream Man," propelled by its bass and drum parts, is one of the few moments that the whole band really get to have fun together, and then there's the instrumental title track. One of the final songs recorded for the album, the whole thing was done in one take and sees Waits provide slow, mellow piano accompaniment to Tony Terran's beautiful trumpet melody. Yester recalls the extended moment of quiet that followed the end of the recording session, and it's a moment you can really feel as it dies away - it's a stunningly wonderful piece of music that leaves your heart warmed and fades into a beautiful quietness.
For all its beauty and quality, Closing Time, despite being critically well-received, went more or less unnoticed at the time, and it was only via covers by the likes of the Eagles and Tim Buckley that any of these songs got much attention at the time. Perhaps Waits simply wasn't contemporary enough to capture the imagination of the general public - he was neither a cool young rock musician like Springsteen nor a forward-looking musical visionary. He appeared to be just a curious throwback to outdated jazz music. Waits didn't let the lack of sales bother him - he knew the kind of music he loved, and the kind of character he wanted to play. He would never be a typical rock musician, and he revelled in the roleplaying of being the strange, romantic beatnik. By the end of the 70s, the lack of industry attention would eventually begin to drive him to frustration, being one of many factors that would contribute to his turning to more radical styles of music, but for the foreseeable future he saw no reason to stop making music in the traditions he loved, and that sense of character would only deepen further in the coming years.
Track Listing:
All songs written by Tom Waits.
1. Ol' '55
2. I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You
3. Virginia Avenue
4. Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards)
5. Midnight Lullaby
6. Martha
7. Rosie
8. Lonely
9. Ice Cream Man
10. Little Trip To Heaven (On The Wings Of Your Love)
11. Grapefruit Moon
12. Closing Time
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