From: malcolm@wrs.com (Malcolm Humes)
Subject: Re: Tom Waits- Some Quotes on Bone Machine
Organization: Wind River Systems, Inc.
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1992 18:37:03 GMT

jamesc@cs.concordia.ca (SCHIDLOWSKY james c.) writes:

>I love the album, and as someone posted, it's in the same vein as Swordfish..
>to Frank's.  Only weirder.  He must be singing through a megaphone amplified
>by a speaker whose cone has been cut to ribbons.  I love it.  _The Ocean
>Doesn't Want Me_ is a scary tune.

In a recent interview in BAM magazine they mention that Waits has a whole
collection of different megaphones he uses, not just one.

Here's some quotes from the interview. I lied in the header, these aren't
all about Bone Machine specifically, but about the process of making it:

BAM: How do you go about selecting musicians? 

TW: He has to be be willing to go long periods without water. [Grins] You 
have to have a lot of miltary experience. At first it's a really difficult 
thing and then you get a second sense about it. It's like picking who you
want to go on this ship filled with rats into hell with. I like it because
it's really a journey at its best. Not always, but there are times when you
can relaly feel like you're going on an expedition together. It's like gum
surgery; it's a medical operation and you need people you can really trust. 
Sometimes it's like Fantastic Voyage. 

BAM: Getting shot into someone's vein...

TW: Yeah. Other times it's like sitting on the beach with a fire. It's 
different every time.The people you select will ultimately determine the 
quality of the expedition and what you discover. So you choose them carefully. 
Sometimes you have to lop a few headsd off. Sometimes it gets really bloody.
[smiles]

BAM: I get the impression you recruit almost as much based on personal 
characteristics as musicianship...

TW: [Pauses] Are you shapable? People like to be shaped. What you really
want to do is learn more about something that you don't know about. I'm
not saying that I'm going to teach them  that, but we're going to influence 
each other, in some way. 


----some other stuff about songwriting: 

BAM: How does the colloborative effort work with your wife? At this point,
she's not only involved in the language of your work, but also in the sound
of your albums. 

TW: Well, hey, I've been married for 12 years. It comes very natural. We've
been fighting about stuff for a long time. It's been really great, actually. 
It's changed my views of the world and it's made me more open to different 
things. I hear different things... You know, you wear down the floor in the
same place. The same thing with your shoes. You always wear them out in the
same place. And you do the same thing with music. Your hands go to the same 
place on the piano that they went last time. It's annoying. It's like your
hands have an intelligence. So you have to keep confusing them. 

BAM: That's what your wife does, she confuses your hands? 

TW: [Chuckles] [Adopting a Groucho Marx delivery] Oh boy, does she! We 
have a long of songs that didn't make it on the record... some of these 
songs are just not good enough to go anywhere, so you just kind of say,
"Sorry,  pal. You're nothin'. You'll never be nothin'. You'll always
be nothin'. 

BAM: It must be tough to tell them that. 

TW: It is. Some of them cry. Someone has to. The whip has to come down. 

BAM: On Bone Machine, do the songs sound like you heard them in your head? 

TW: No, I have to clean 'em up. The way I really hear 'em, they really
sound dirty in my head. 

---

quotes from BAM  September 4, 1992 


 
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