Franks Wild Years

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Mortality is a recurrent theme, from “Dirt In The Ground” (“We’re all gonna be. . .”) to “All Stripped Down,” “The Ocean Doesn’t Want Me” (a tale of contemplated suicide), “Jesus Gonna Be Here,” the rambunctious paean to childhood, “I Don’t Wanna Grow Up,” and certainly the broken-hearted, confessional classic Waits ballad, “Whistle Down The Wind,” which was beautifully covered by Joan Baez on her titular 2018 album. Waits explained at the time: “Yeah, ultimately, it will be a subject that you deal with. Some deal with it earlier than others, but it will be dealt with. Eventually we’ll all have to line up and kiss the devil’s arse.”

It has only been in my later life of listening to Tom Waits that I have realised this, which has done nothing but increase my enjoyment and appreciation of this album tenfold. By bringing in the boundaries a little bit, Waits explored in depth ideas, characters and journeys that he only teased people with on Dogs and Swordfish. [Lynn: I've had an idea for a new pub called the Dog And Swordfish or perhaps The Rain And Trombone.] If anything, these self-imposed parameters freed up Waits to showcase his flexibility and range; gone was the safety net of escaping to another lyrical or musical shore – this is him pinning himself down and loving every minute of it. He is at his most confident and self-assured. Each song is a platform for a new vocal muscle to be flexed, resulting in a cavalcade of characters under one lyrical roof. Well Frank settled down out in the Valley and he hung his wild years on a nail that he drove through his wife's forehead Michael Blair, who later played with Lou Reed and Elvis Costello, provided percussion on the album. “For a multi-percussion player, it was like: pinch me, please. You know, how many times in your life would anyone ever get a chance to play with somebody who wrote so well, all these bulletproof songs, one after another. They could all really be pop songs, if you arranged them in a different way. Or if the singer had a different type of voice.” Waits, he recalls, would never be specific about what he wanted; it would be “play like a Russian barmitzvah, or Alice in Wonderland”. “You didn’t say, ‘What does that mean, Tom?’ – you just went for it. I think when something began to sound like the song he wrote in his mind, that’s where we started.”

20 Issues

The first two songs on Franks Wild Years have a similar feel to the band Morphine. They more than likely got their sound from Waits. "Blow Wind Blow" is a bit tedious. "Temptation" makes me imagine Waits crossdressing. The vocals are hysterical. "Innocent When You Dream" is the saddest drinking song I've ever heard. "I'll Be Gone" is a great way to recover from it, with a polka beat and pompous trombone. "Yesterday Is Here" had me anticipating a gunshot and closeup of Clint Eastwood smoking one of those cigars that he hated so much during the filming of the "Man With No Name" trilogy. The trombones don't go away though. They're combined with distorted flutes on "Please Wake Me Up." I can't help but laugh.

Tom Waits - Chart history Billboard". www.billboard.com. Archived from the original on April 23, 2016. Working with experimental composer Francis Thumm, and taking inspiration from the music of found-object composer Harry Partch—plus Waits’ friend, Captain Beefheart—the renowned singer-songwriter reinvented his sound, album by album. Offiziellecharts.de – Tom Waits – Franks Wild Years" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved 8 September 2023.

Cromelin, Richard (August 30, 1987). "Waits: Dreamlike, Distant". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved February 14, 2016. Various versions of " Way Down in the Hole" were used as the theme music for the HBO series The Wire, including Waits' original version for the second season. The songs "Temptation" and "Cold Cold Ground" were used in Jean-Claude Lauzon's film Léolo (1992). "Cold Cold Ground" was also used in the series Homicide: Life on the Street. "Temptation" and "Straight to the Top (Vegas)" featured in the film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), and "Innocent When You Dream" featured in the film Smoke (1995). [9] His wife was a spent piece of used jet trash: made good Bloody Marys, kept her mouth shut most of the time, had a little chihuahua named Carlos that had some kind of skin disease and was totally blind .