Can't you just picture it? A boozy, down-at-heel but likeable curmudgeon runs fingers far too elegant and gentle for his hunched-over frame across the keys while a
femme fatale stands behind the piano, wreathed in a pall of thick smoke that curls from her loosely-held cigarette holder, the faint aroma of her cheap perfume belying her (no doubt soon to be hocked for another bottle of whiskey) faux fur coat draped with careful abandon across her shoulders. The pianist, enraptured by the lovely woman at his side, tries to chat her up while she, at once haughtily rebuking his advances while inwardly succumbing to his charm, laughs at his pathetic attempt at seduction, her voice icy and sharp as glass, but with just a hint of thawing towards the strange little man on the piano.
And so you have set the mental scene for a song which, though never released as a single, yet ranks as one of the best-matched duets in music history. Perfectly complementing each other's styles, the woman is Bette Midler, singer and actress, while the man who tries to woo her from the piano keyboard through the bottom of a shotglass is none other than Tom Waits.
Tom Waits and Bette Midler --- I never talk to strangers
Taken from the album “Foreign affairs”, one of Waits' least famous and criminally less regarded, “I never talk to strangers” is the story described above, where Waits and Midler meet in some seedy downtown bar, she wanders over to where he is tinkling the ivories and he tries an old line on her, which she rebuffs coldly as he plays the piano. He points out that he
”Ain't a bad guy/Once you get to know me”, and she asks him
”Who asked you to annoy me/ With your sad, sad repartee?” By the end of the song of course, they've come to know each other better through their exchanged barbed banter, and decide to go off together.
Waits is as ever perfection as the barfly playing the piano for the price of a Johnny Walker and a pack of Marlboros, while Midler is at her most acid and uppity, her voice a perfect foil for Waits' gruff, booze-wrecked singing. It really is a joy to listen to, almost out of another time --- you almost expect Humphrey Bogart to wander in and say “You played it for her, so you can play it for me. Play it Sam,” and Waits to turn a withering eye on him and slur “My name's not Sam, buddy!”
A great example of two icons getting together to play a very low-key, laidback and quite sad in its way song, a tale of broken lovers and two people who are looking for someone to assuage the pain of their lives, if only for a short time. Any port in a storm, as they say.
Waits seldom duets, but when he does he chooses only those who will work best with him, people he admires and who get his music, and who can provide him the sounding-board he needs to bring the best of out both performers. On this song, Midler does just that, and it's to the credit of both that the song turns out as it does. Should have been a classic.