To try to answer Big3's question as to why we love Waits, I think I know why I do anyway, and it can be summed up in five simple words: he couldn't give a sh!t!
Basically, for me, Waits never set out to make his music popular. He never wanted, or got, a hit single (though his music has made hits for many, many other artistes). He knew he was an acquired taste, and if people weren't bothered to make the effort to get to know him, then f**k them. He built up a solid fanbase of people who were, in the main, sick of the wallpaper music and MTV pop being purveyed as music, he appealed to people who wanted something more, something different, something off the wall. True, his followers would be most likely eclectic themselves, but that was no bad thing.
Waits would have been as happy playing small jazz clubs or dime-a-dozen joints in the heart of Jersey as he would be selling out stadia and arenas. He's probably happiest in the studio, giving birth to screaming new affronts to the mainstream, unleashing wild new sounds and learning to play the navajo nosepipe and the Outer Mongolian beadboard. A more wild version of Paul Simon --- well, no, there are similarities, but Waits would kick Simon's ass. A crazed Mike Oldfield or Vangelis on steroids? Hmm. Not really.
Hard to jam Waits into any sort of pigeonhole: he just sits there tinkling piano and downing whiskeys, refusing to be made into something he's not.
In the end, Waits is comparable only to one person, and that is Waits.
He's unique, he's uncompromising, and he doesn't give a pair of fetid dingo's kindneys if you like him or don't. He ain't in it for the money --- he's there for the music.
And that, I think, is why we love the guy.
__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018
|