The stories of Tom Waits’ unusual studio antics are legendary, but I don’t think I’ve heard this one before. “I was impressed by the amount of weirdo instruments he had hanging around. It’s an amazing collection. I thought, ‘Hello!’ He had a Mellotron, like an early version of the synthesiser, which was loaded entirely with train noises.”
This revelation, incidentally, is shared with us by none other than Keith Richards, who tells Uncut about his long, predictably colourful friendship with Waits as part of our cover story – from one old devil to another. Besides Richards’ warm and insightful recollections, there’s a deep dive into “Swordfishtrombones“, “Rain Dogs” and “Franks Wild Years” an extraordinary trio of albums that recast Waits as a master of creative daring. “I asked Tom if there was anything he was looking for,” one collaborator tells Graeme Thomson. “He put his hands up to his mouth and stretched them out in front of himself, and said, ‘I need more…’ and made a long whooshing sound.”
There are, I hope, a lot of other creatively daring artists to be found in this issue of Uncut – but I’d quickly like to draw your attention to Tom Pinnock’s Album By Album interview with the great saxophonist Charles Lloyd. It’s no bad thing when an interviewee starts off quoting advice he was given by Duke Ellington… Among other jewels, there’s Peter Watts’ piece on David Bowie’s final Ziggy gig – an oral history from the fans’ perspective that reads more like social history than a music magazine feature.
The Fat Angel Sings 