Tom Waits – ‘Gun Street Girl’

I saw Tom Waits first on Night Network, an 80s early hours show in which celebrities sometimes reviewed the videos of upcoming releases. On this occasion the typically odd pairing of Vivien Westwood and Nico Mcbrain agreed on only one thing and that was that Tom Waits was a genius. The video was ‘Hang On St Christopher’ and watching it emitted the same repulsion/compulsion I often felt when I first encountered a figure I would go onto love. Waits seemed to be a cross between something from The Muppet Show and The Hunchback Of Notre Dame. But the two experts loved it, so what did I know? I went out and bought the tape of Rain Dogs (the wrong album for the track I was after as it happened) and listened to it non-stop for four years. I could choose anything off it, but ‘Gun Street Girl’ contains multitudes, Waits a filter and a fixed identity, able to be the former because he is so confident of the latter, a stream of consciousness ventriloquist whose singing is writing as a performance art. This over-the-top persona, whether it was his longing to be someone else, or a drunker and more damaged version of himself, was cover that afforded him greater freedom as an artist, freeing him from the expectation of having to be capable or normal. In all his songs, but especially this one, I heard the ubiquity of the irrational that helped me realise that I didn’t have to waste my time coming up with sensible explanations for people or things. From him I moved to the blues, Beefheart, Dr John, Springsteen and Warren Zevon.

And more personally still, Tom emboldened me in the use of my actual speaking voice. Having contracted glandular fever that had ended in throat nodules that needed burning, my voice was as deep and guttural at sixteen as it is now, which made me both a figure of suspicion and some mockery. But if I sounded like Tom Waits, it couldn’t be all bad.