From the wheeze of the steam piano and the off-notes-played-on-purpose to Wait’s whiskey-dripped growl, this song is one of the most magical songs I’ve heard in my life and one I could listen to on repeat, over and over.
Siri pulled it out of the ether on me in the car this morning and it had been years since I heard it; listened to it six times in a row, the whole way home.
There’s something both familiar and other-worldly in the lyrics, as if we are listening to a song composed and sung from the very edges of consciousness Waits is singing about. It’s a lullaby and a lament, a sleeper’s waltz at the end of a drunken evening.
I had hoped to learn more about it to be able to post something with more substance, but I should have known. This is Tom Waits, and nothing is out there in the open and obvious with him. The Wikipedia entry for the song is two sentences long.
The song has been used to accompany a Banksy art installation and has been covered a number of times, but I could not find any production notes, stories or inspirations for the song. In his intro on this video of a live performance of the song, Waits tells us a number of places where the song did not originate, including learning it from his dad, some children in the alley behind the theatre as well as learning it from Gregory Peck.
I want to sit with him, pour a drink and talk about the world this song lives in, because it is only visiting ours.