Month / June 2008

by crmayes

Words of Waits: II

Apparently Coldplay have done an advertisement for Apple – this is not all that surprising for Coldplay, but what does Tom have to say about musicians and advertising?

Interviewer:

Do you ever get approached by major advertisers?

Waits:

I get it all the time, and they offer people a whole lot of money. Unfortunately I don’t want to get on the bandwagon. You know, when a guy is singing to me about toilet paper – you may need the money but, I mean, rob a 7-Eleven! Do something with dignity and save us all the trouble of peeing on your grave. I don’t want to rail at length here, but it’s like a fistula for me…I have been offered money and all that, and then there’s the people who imitate me too. I really am against people who allow their music to be nothing more than a jingle for jeans or Bud. But I say, “Good, okay, now I know who you are.” ‘Cause it’s always money. There have been tours endorsed, encourage and financed by Miller, and I say, “Why don’t you just get an office at Miller? Start really workin’ for the guy.” I just hate it.

From Innocent When You Dream

by crmayes

Words of Waits

Tom Waits on New York City

When you see a leg come out of a cab with a $150 stocking and a $700 shoe and step in a pool of blood, piss, and beer left by a guy who died a half hour before and is now lying cold somewhere on a slab, you just take it all in. But it doesn’t really apply anywhere else. It’s like being in a very bizarre branch of the service. “I was in for four years.” I read that there’s a barge that goes out into the Atlantic with all the limbs from all the hospitals, and it got into a storm and capsized, and all the limbs washed up on Jones Beach. People were swimming and all of a sudden things got a little odd, a little dark. You’ve got to love it here, though.

Perhaps if Tom had written Sex and the City it would have been interesting.