Franks Wild Years [CD]

I bought "Frank's Wild Years" in 1985 when I was 16, because I'd heard Bruce Springsteens cover of 'Jersey Girl' and learned that it was written by Tom Waits. I had no idea what to expect. I distinctly remember bringing it home and putting it on the recordplayer when a friend of mine from school was around. When the needle hit the record and the first sounds came out, he burst out laughing and said 'too bad, huh?'. That's the way it is, all great things in life take time to get into: Whiskey, coffee, opera, I hated all of them the first time I tried them. Off course I kept playing "Frank's Wild Years", not quite understanding why, but it won me over. It won my friend over too and soon we realised that this was big, way bigger than one album. Then next album I bought was "Closing Time". When I put it on, I thought "what's this?" a completely different artist... after 3 plays the same thing happened. And the same thing happened with every new Tom Waits album, something different, difficult, something that you needed to listen to and decide whether it worked or not. It inevitably did. The sound, in time has become more distinct, more experimental and the lyrics has gone from traditional lovesongs with a twist, to compelling poetry where just a few words can spark images and emotions. Since that summer evening in a Copenhagen suburb, Tom Waits has played the soundtrack to the key moments in my life. When I think of the times of the greatest happines, sorrow or moments of feeling 'alive' (in only the way teenagers can), Tom is right there in the background. His early piano ballads, his avantgarde trilogy Raindogs/Swordfish Trombones/Frank's Wild Years or his later wild, weird and wonderful stuff, all is great, all is worth devoting months, years, a lifetime to. The list of truly great songs is endless, many of them has been covered by other artist and gone to the hitlists, in a more commercial version than the original. Of course one of his greatest songs, Tom Trauberts Blues, was written after an evening in Copenhagen with danish folksinger Mathilde (shirt stained with blood and whiskey...what did happen?) Possibly, out of such an outstanding and unparralelled body of work "Frank's Wild Years" is the best album. If you have never listened to Tom Waits, you may buy "Frank's Wild Years" and hate it. But if you give it a chance, and listen to it a couple of times, it will probably be the beginning of a wonderful, sentimental, romantic, beautiful, challenging, but never dissapointing journey... So, if you have ever held on to a lamppost for support, dreamt about the one that got away, longed for a love that was far away or felt like burning down your house and hitting the highway for a new start. Start the journey with "Frank's Wild Years".

The thing I like about Tom Waits is his songs are little movies. So it is impossible to hear Innocent When You Dream (a particularly good song on this album) without seeing barroom grotesques, squeezing tears from their faces as they howl out the tune. And of course the irony of a beautiful, delicate lyric being throttled by these Tom Waits reprobates is just perfect.

One other thing I like about Mr T is that he 'acts' his songs. Therefore no matter how heartfelt, angry or etc the song, there is always a bit of tongue in the cheek, a bit of burlesque, a little twinkle in the eye. Therefore none of the rock star posturing of his peers, because there's just a touch of silliness and absurdity to it all, no matter how genuinely heartfelt.

By the way, this is one of his finest records. When you first here it, it sounds so diverse it's like flicking channels when you're drunk in a hotel room someplace far away. Vegas, devil, german barroom, operetta, spaghetti western, the Muppets (fozzy bear missed his train).

Then you realise, after about the fourth listen, that life is indeed a vegas devil german barroom cast as an operatic spaghetti western and that fozzy really has missed his train.

Don't worry about buying an easy Mr T album first. Just get on that plane fool and fly.

I have reviewed Rain Dogs and Swordfishtrombones before on Amazon and find myself modelling this review very much on those; FWY is a very similar, if even more extreme extension of those two previous albums. It's arguably slightly less accessible to my ear than those two, but has not yet quite stumbled drunkenly off into even the more esoteric, jarring landscape of Bone Machine or The Black Rider.

As with all later Waits albums, I have learnt not to judge until I have listened to nothing else in my car CD player for at least a full week. It takes that long to really start to pick up on and get into the rhythms and theme of his albums, to get beyond what seems at first jumbled, distorted noises, interferance and background sounds and actually start to recognise the evocative and complex but strangely soothing and even charming music and poetry that awaits the listener. You basically need time to catch up to the genius of Tom.

Also as with previous albums, Frank's Wild Years comes across as a very specific soundtrack to an imaginery movie. Each track sets a scene so vividly, with odd dialogues, strange characters and incidental sounds that you could close your eyes and imagine you were listening to a movie rather than an album. In this case the general image I get of the movie is that it is set in Berlin, in a long abandoned art neuveau style theatre - all cobwebs and mouldering curtains. Then, one night every year at the stroke of midnight, a ghostly Weimar Kabarett is is performed on the rotting stage by a reanimated Marlene Dietrich to a ghostly audience of dinner jacketed ghouls from 20s Germany. I realise that that's a pretty fanciful and specific image to get from an album - but that's what Tom Waits does to you.