The Loneliness of the Longdistance Nighthawk
Niall Stokes shares a barstool with Tom Waits
Niall Stokes, 17 Jun 2008
This interview was published in Hot Press in April 1979, shortly after Tom Waits' first appearance in Dublin.
Tom Waits came to Dublin a cult figure. His albums have been bought, but in small-to-medium quantities. He’s been given good reviews and had an album voted among the Hot Press critics’ top twenty of ‘78. He’s also received more radio play here than in many other places, primarily through Dave Fanning’s show on Big D radio. But by no means could he be considered a major name. And yet with little promotion other than a half-page ad in this paper and a bunch of the regular mentions this kind of international visitor almost inevitably gets, he sold-out the Olympia Theatre. And he played a brilliant gig to the packed house. It was possibly the musical event of the year, before an audience which spanned every kind of musical barrier and pigeon hole. Tom Waits came to Dublin a cult figure. He left a legend.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
On stage shades of Marcel Marceau. Louis Armstrong. A black bell-boy in a hotel, in a ‘50s movie. A waiter in an Italian restaurant. The simple guy that pumps the petrol at the service station down the road.
Shades of someone very close to me who can’t keep still when he stands and scratches his head with a cigarette in his hand and screws up his face when he’s trying to get something important out but he can’t. Someone who looks grubby and unkempt and unshaven and smokes like a trooper and curses louder.
Shades of Loudon Wainwright in his controlled delivery and his sense of timing and his demented ability to make people laugh. And then to hit them with something that should, if only people saw it clearly enough, inspire sheer terror beyond the sound of fading chuckles.
Tom Waits dominates the stage with his admirably humble presence, fills it physically with his mime and movement and then vacates the spotlight quietly to allow his sax-player or guitarist to come through and play a rivetting solo.
His voice is gravelly and hoarse and laden down with the weight of almost too much emotion but the songs carry it and it carries the songs in the kind of symbiotic perfection which defies analysis. It’s an experience. It just is.
Page 1/8 <Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next>
©Hot Press 2011. Why be a member? | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy