Is there any movie you've seen that you would have liked to have been in?
I wouldn't have minded sort of being in "Short Cuts". I thought that was a great film. But it probably would have been a lesser film if I had been in it. I can't act, that's my problem. That's my big secret.
Oh, now, come on. What do you think is the most alarming trend in music today?
What really excites me is the music done by individuals who are basically trying to articulate their own personae, so it's music that's made by eccentrics. It isn't really designed to relate to a mass of people. I'm talking about Leonard Cohen or Tom Waits or Van Morrison. People who aren't really making music in order to provide for a voice of a generation rather their own - what's going on inside of them.
Musically and lyrically Primus are an abstract affair. With titles like "Pudding Time" and "Fish On", it's impossible to be sure where they get their inspiration.
"From everything. I was a TV junkie when I was a kid, so I guess that's affected me somewhere along the line. Lots of different types of music -- I'm a big Tom Waits fan. We actually got him to do some vocals on one of the tracks on the new album, so I got to meet my hero! He's my favourite lyricist, for sure, and he's also a very charismatic character."
When the records 'Swordfishtrombones' and 'Raindogs' came out, I thought it was a very brave move, because he had such a totally complete persona, based around this hipster thing he'd taken from Kerouac and Bukowski, and the music was tied to some Beat/Jazz thing, and suddenly it's exploring music that was something to do with Howlin' Wolf and Charles Ives. I think I was envious, not so much of the music, but his ability to rewrite himself out of the corner he'd appeared to have backed himself into. It was an audacious thing to do, and I think that anyone who can't recognize the quality of that music really doesn't have their ears on the right way round!
'Everyone else is in smatterings of designer casuals. Mistah Waits arrives straight off an old record cover in a '64 open topped Cadillac, with fins, with a funnel of dust trailing down the dirt road. The gravel voice gets out some howdy-doodys and his clothes and hair are crumple-sculpted to him. Doesn't seem to have a straight bone in his bearing and kills me off with his cool by growling out a compliment for 'Withnail'. Out of the side of his mouth. Like we might be being spied on by the bailiffs. Him, rolling tobacco and reefer. Winona [Ryder] and I are 'We've got all your recordings, Tom!' to which he just heh-hehs.'
Jarmush mentioned that Tom waits, this other guy and he loved Lee Marvin and in fact made a fan group called The Sons of Lee Marvin. Apparently the order of business was strictly to sit around and watch lee Marvin movies. Then he mentioned that they were trying to get Nick Cave to join the club.
She talks about meeting Tom circa 1975. The first image from this period is a set of those posing-in-the-25-cent-photo-booth-together images. Tom looks like we know him -- face long and stretched, with a goaty goatee on one end and a big old bluff of hair on the other. She's cute. She's bohemian, pixie, arty, smiley. She says of Tom, "He was eccentric, but not all of the time. It was almost like he knew when to be eccentric, which is nice." She talks about how she was hanging out at the Troubador a lot (a club in L.A.), and they kind of hooked up because they both liked 'West Side Story' a lot. That was how they would find each other in a crowd -- one would start singing "When You're a Jet" and the other would join in. She said they were the only two people who knew the song.
"Tom didn't know all the words, though he pretended like he did."
Henry Rollins talks about meeting Tom backstage at Lollapalooza and telling him a story about a fan letter he received. The letter is from an ambulance driver who felt up and then fell in love with an unconsious woman, who later died. So Henry asks Waits what he should have told this poor fellow, and Waits says "No no no you handled it all wrong, What you should have told the guy is: (pause) (Loudly) Forget her! Forget her! She's haunting you from the grave! She did the same thing to me!! (or something like that). Rollins does a passable imitation of Tom's reply.
In this week's Entertainment Weekly, Winona Ryder tells what three albums she always has with her these days:
No. #2: Tom Waits, Closing Time: "An old favorite. It's like the American Express card: I don't leave home without it."