[The latest installment of our soundtracks series is even more rambling than some of my own screeds. Christ you lot are like a burst dam aren't you! Allow me to present one half of Drunk Country, generally known as DC to you regular commenters, and a man who harbours a Tom Waits obsession that may even eclipse my own, although I think I'd give him a run for his money. He also, along with a dubious cast of cohorts, presents the fine show The Waiting Room on Error FM. It can be downloaded as a podcast, and I recommend you go and do just that. Perhaps start with The Waitsing Room, for some topical material.]

In 1981, when essentially rebuilding a career that had stalled after 8 moderately well received albums, Tom Waits decided to do voice-over work on a television commercial for Ralston Purina (now owned by Nestle). The product was a dry dog food called Butcher’s Blend. Waits’ unmistakable bourbon-cracked delivery was underscored by a light, feathery blue-smoke jazz, almost identical to that taking centre stage on his meisterwerk Nighthawks at the Diner. Embarrassingly for him it earned three prestigious industry awards: the Toronto Television Cinema International Winner, Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival & Clio Awards Festival, New York. He vowed it would be the first & last whoring of his personality & talent.

Since then it has been well documented that Waits harbours an indelible distaste for artists that ‘appear’ in commercials. That little blip in 1981, against his better judgement but necessitated by financial desperation, sharply refocused his opinion that “Commercials are an unnatural use of my work”. Ever since, Waits has “adamantly & repeatedly refused this dubious honour”, referring to it as “like having a cow’s udder sewn to the side of my face. Painful & humiliating” – a perfect Waitsian metaphor if ever there was one.

Waits has defended his right to be & remain “radioactive to advertisers” on no less than 8 occasions – in 1993, in an obvious cash-in on the growing success of the Black Rider LP, Cohen/Third Story Music Inc. licensed Heartattack & Vine, Ruby’s Arms & the medley from the One from The Heart OST, for a Europe-wide Levi’s jeans commercial, a series of French Williams’ Gel shaving cream ads, & a Suchard Chocolate commercial in Argentina respectively.

Tom Waits & Crystal Gale – Opening Montage/Once Upon a Town[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/TomWaitsandCrystalGale-Opening Montage-OnceUponaTown.mp3]

Waits went apeshit. Waits sued. Waits won.

What then, you may well ask, does this all have to do with Waits’ music in soundtracks to movies, documentaries & plain old made-for-TV films? Well, quite simply, the onset of Waits vs. The Commercial Break can be traced directly back to 1980 when the publishing of the Waits penned OST, featuring Crystal Gayle, for Francis Ford Copploa’s mildly successful slush-fest of a movie One From the Heart, was administered by Herb Cohen’s Fifth Floor Music Inc.

As a direct result of this ‘job’, Waits & Cohen agreed to an amendment to their existing contract, which specifically included a clause prohibiting exploitation of Waits’ songs in commercials. This amendment eventually saw to the vitriolic disintegration of Waits’ relationship with Cohen, his long time friend, manager/publisher & attorney.

Along with his brother Martin, & nephew Evan (who acted as lawyer de facto), Herb set up Fifth Floor Music Inc, which later transferred to his established Third Story Music Inc. Incidentally, Evan Cohen became the CEO of Manifesto Records, Inc. (the successor to Bizarre/ Straight Records) whose first release was the tribute album Step Right Up: The Songs of Tom Waits &, in 2000, the album New Coat of Paint (another tribute album).

The One From the Heart soundtrack, itself beset with legal & copyright issues with CBS/Columbia & artistic differences between Coppola & Waits (Coppola wanted the soundtrack to run like Sgt. Pepper – i.e. songs interlinked with a running theme – sound effects taken directly from the movie to be over dubbed onto the music, etc.), took 2 years to complete. It was eventually released, 8-plus months after the movie had premiered, in 1983. The legal wrangling, label and studio politics and contractual hubbub led to Waits ‘separating’ from the Cohen/Asylum/Fifth Floor triptych – just after his final, contractual obliging LP Heartattack & Vine for Asylum and before the release of Swordfishtrombones for Island.

It was critically very well received but the studio bosses and Columbia (who had the license to distribute) were not prepared to push a soundtrack, almost a year late in its appearance, for a film that seriously under-whelmed in the box office – beset, as it was, by last minute re-edits and poor test audience reviews. Only by playing off the European arm (where the film fared a sight better) against the American CBS office did Waits’ legal team force a re-think and a re-working of the album’s design and concept and secure a long overdue worldwide release. It was now to be billed as ‘Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle Sing Music from One From The Heart’, with the front and back artwork flipped so the two singers were now the main focus and the movie reduced to an afterthought.

Later that year the soundtrack was nominated for an Academy Award. It also led to Waits meeting his future wife Kathleen Brennan, then working as a script analyst for Coppola’s Zoetrope studios. She was to become the driving force behind pretty much all of Waits’ involvement in film/theatre scoring and acting to this day.

This wasn’t, however, Waits’ first foray into the soundtrack or the movie business.

Waits’ debut acting role came in 1978 as Chilly in the movie On The Yard. Later that same year, for Robert Altman’s A Wedding, Waits contributed songwriting duties – a collaboration that would come full circle in 1993 with Altman’s Short Cuts in which Waits plays a limo driver called Earl Piggot.

Again in 1978, Sylvester Stallone hired Waits for a cameo role in the ill-fated and frankly appalling Paradise Alley as a Hoagy Carmichael-style bar pianist. A few tiny remnants of Waits’ music make it onto the Paradise Alley soundtrack, Meet Me in Paradise Alley & Annie’s Back in Town, but his appearance as the keys man was mostly left on the cutting room floor. Still, beginnings.

In total Waits’ songs and music (over 200 individual, original pieces at the last count – not counting the concert/opera movie Big Time) have to date appeared in over 80 – yes, read that again, EIGHTY – major motion pictures since 1978. It’s a shopping list of classics, the easily forgettable, obscurities, & delightful ‘he did that?’ surprises. Here’s a small sample:

Down By Law (1986); Ironweed (1987); In Una Notte Di Chiaro Di Luna (1989); Night On Earth (1991); Jersey Girl (1992); 12 Monkeys (1995); Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead (1995); Dead Man Walking (1995); Basquiat (1996); The End Of Violence (1997); Fight Club (1999); Pollock (2000); The Perfect Storm (2000); Shrek 2 (2004); Hellboy (2004); Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room (2005); Robots (2005); East Of Sunset (2005); Domino (2005); Jarhead (2005); Wristcutters – A Love Story (2006); Le Scaphandre Et Le Papillon (2007).

That short list alone would be a healthy CV for any recording artist, but when you factor in the amount of films Waits has also acted in (over 30 and counting), where his music hasn’t featured on the soundtrack, (not to mention the amount of times his songs have been covered by other artists for film soundtracks), then it’s clear Waits is one of – if not the – most successful musicians/actors of all time. I genuinely cannot think of anyone else in either industry who shares such a high level of such cross-over exposure.

When asked what the experience of writing One From the Heart meant to him, Waits replied “It was good for me, it disciplined me, it made me.”

As cheesy as the film may be, as overtly lush on string and bombastic orchestration as the soundtrack most certainly sometimes is, One From the Heart was a turning point in Waits’ career, musical direction and, most importantly, his practical, professional and personal outlook.

28 years ago Copploa told Waits to “Write anything & we’ll find a place for it.” – it seems that unique privilege remains intact to this day.

Tom Waits – Broken Bicycles* – From One From the Heart
Tom Waits – Candy Apple Red – One From the Heart
Tom Waits – Picking Up After You – One From The Heart
Tom Waits – Telephone Call from Istanbul – Generation X
Tom Waits – Goin’ Out West – Fight Club
Tom Waits – Jesus Gonna Be Here – Domino
Tom Waits – I Hope That I Don’t fall In Love With You – East of Sunset

*this is a 2-track demo chosen to be used in the movie over the 28 track orchestrated string version because they felt the strings over dramatised events & the demo was exactly the right tone for the scene that required it.

You can actually buy this soundtrack here. It’s bloody gorgeous.

Posts in this series:
- Crash Calloway from Pretending Life is Like a Song writes about The Commitments.
- Nate, who plays viola in The Young Republic explains why some terrible films have excellent scores.
- My dearest darling Mrs. Toad sings the praises of the High School Movie.
- DC, presenter of The Waiting Room, goes on a truly interminable ramble about the great Tom Waits and One From the Heart.
- Brother of Toad talks about how the context of music can interfere with its use in a movie.
- John sums up Natural Born Killers in three sentences.
- I have a go myself by writing about the art of referencing films in your song lyrics and what it lets you do.
- Tim from The Daily Growl digs away at the sensual texture of In the Mood For Love.
- Matt from Draped in Velvet might never forgive the false start of the world of rap-rock.
- Ian from Broken Records delivers the rant that started this all off: why soundtracks just don’t work!