Tom Waits for no man…but maybe a woman
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Tom Waits – Heartattack And Vine
Heartattack And Vine, 1980
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Tom Waits – Heartattack And Vine
“Whenever I hear ‘Heartattack And Vine,’ the bruising title track of one of Tom Waits‘ best albums, it reminds me of arriving in Los Angeles for the first time thirty years ago. The sheer force of the track never fails to pummel me in the chest. It’s as if Howlin’ Wolf were prowling the backstreets of Hollywood Babylon and figuring, ‘Fuck, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.’
I suppose it helps that ‘Heartattack And Vine’ — in one of its most caustic lines — references Cahuenga Boulevard, since it was on said street that I found the Hollywood motel I rashly opted to stay in on my arrival that night. If memory serves, it was a matter of minutes before I was befriended by a crew of feral street creatures who sold me some mind-shredding grass and then vanished into the night with all my traveler’s checks.
In a sense it was precisely what I’d come to Los Angeles to find: not the surface glitter and phony glamour, but the noir undertow, the menace lurking behind the palm-tree facade. I wanted to examine LA — as a symbol, as a metaphor, but also as a living breathing place — through the music made in it and about it: to trace the line that connected Brian Wilson to Black Flag to Axl Rose. (What is the line? Why, failed singer-songwriter Charlie Manson, of course.)”
—Barney Hoskyns, Preface to Waiting For The Sun: A Rock ‘n’ Roll History of Los Angeles, 2009
A great book and – since nobody has specifically dedicated a work to him yet – possibly the most Kim-Fowley-centric book you'll find. There's definitely more to be written about that lizard king…
Summer of 1980, I was busing tables and closed down the restaurant most shifts. I'd count up the share up tips that the waitresses tossed my way and head over to Tower Records to buy another couple of records before it closed. It must have been the end of the summer, just as I was getting ready to go up to my freshman year in SB, I walked in and they were playing HA&V. There were two or three people crowded around the clerk, looking at the album cover like there was some sort of explanation written there for this otherworldly sound coming out of the speakers: There wasn't. I grabbed a copy and haven't looked back.
I may have also bought an REO Speedwagon record too.
Favorite TW story is the one where Nicky Beat from the Weirdos punched Tom Waits and started a riot at the Troubador circa 1978. Had something to do with Waits' having a song covered by the Eagles or maybe it was Tommy hitting on Nicky's girlfriend Alice Bag? I've heard a few variations of the same story…
A really worthwhile publication, keep up the good work!