I knew Tom was a musician, but not that he'd created this song, I've only known of his talent in movies. It turns out he's a Hall Of Fame rock n roller, but, I'm not aware of a single song of his that he was famous for (by sales) and after looking online, see he never had a hit song that made it to the American Top 40.
but movies? OMG, he's got the face for movies... and I remember him in 7 Psychopaths, Licorice Pizza, Book of Eli, Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (that is one incredible movie, and the co-stars are all legends too) Dracula (ditto legendary costars) Fisher King (Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams!) Outsiders (see where this is going? Swayze, Lowe, Cruise, Dillon, Diane Lane) and Rumble Fish (Lane and Dillon again, Rourke, Cage, Hopper and Fishbourne)
Anyway, point is, huge talent, massively respected by actors, and musicians - but not a radio star. How damn strange!
The biker (lifestyle) magazine Easyriders was a bit wild in its early days, but to its credit it has en excellent writer in charge of rock'n'roll music reviews. One time there was an interview with the relatively unknown Tom Waits, who by then had already released a few albums. The reviewer thought that even of TW didn't ride a motorcycle, being a drunkard (at the time) and generally being a bit irreverent towards life, he was stil 'one of us'.
ReplyDeleteOther famous covers of TW's songs are 'Jersey Girl' by Bruce Springsteen, and artists like Joan Baez, Norah Jones, The Ramones and even Johnny Cash have used his songs.
Dang, that makes sense that Easyriders would love him! And I listened to Norah Jones, and the Eagles, and Springsteen, and those 3 songs weren't hits either. There's something about Downtown Train that made it a hit, and I think it was that Rod Stewart and his team could make a melodic ballad out of it. I think it's an 80s classic. Not just one of many songs that was the musical background in my day to day radio listening, it reached #3 on the US Billboard Hot 100, #1 on US Adult Contemporary and Album Rock charts, #1 in Canada, and the Top 10 in the UK and earned Rod Stewart a Grammy nomination. THAT is a hit. So, why didn't Tom Waits have any success as a singer with it? My perspective is that he's a dang good song writer, and not a good singer or musician, I suppose. Lots of songwriters make number one hits, repeatedly, for the IT GIRL of the day. Hall and Oates, and Prince, wrote a BUNCH of them, and other people went all the way to number one on them, but couldn't do anything with their own songs - like Sinead O'Conner with that song from Prince, "Nothing Compares 2 U,"
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