TomWaitsAWeek | Tom Waits – Alice (2002, US)

Today’s spotlight is on number 526 on The List, submitted by swordgeek. This is the last spotlight in our #TomWaitsAWeek feature.[1]

As mentioned in our previous spotlight, Waits’ 1993 album The Black Rider brought in someone who would become a key collaborator and influence on Waits, one Robert Wilson, an absolute fixture in the world of experimental/avant-garde theatre. While the earlier Franks Wild Years like Black Rider was also a stage-to-studio affair, I feel like adding Wilson into the mix amplifies the fact that the most Tom Waits of Tom Waits traits really glitter when the cinematic/stage-worthy qualities of his story-songs are given more room to breathe. Indeed, if, in another timeline, Waits only existed in the world of off-Broadway musical theatre, his brilliance would not be diminished in the least. So, yes, the Waits/Wilson collab albums – Black Rider, Alice (i.e., the subject of today’s spotlight), and Blood Money – are essentially soundtracks. And, because they’re soundtracks, it could be easy for someone who hasn’t yet heard them to feel intimidated without having seen their originating theatrical piece, or even assume these are curious artifacts only for Waits completists, akin to his film soundtracks. However, I would suggest one need not be guarded in approaching them. These albums, my friends, are absolute gems just as the ‘regular’ studio albums are, with Alice, imho, shining the brightest.

Similar to how Waits had first written the Black Rider songs for the Wilson-directed musical/”cowboy opera” of the same name (which premiered in 1990), Waits and Kathleen Brennan wrote songs for Wilson’s opera Alice (which premiered in 1992) and then later tweaked them for the studio album. While Alice the opera is primarily about Lewis Carroll’s rather questionable/creepy thing for Alice Liddell, the young daughter of some friends and possibly his muse for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, at least when approached as an off-stage collection of songs, Alice seems but one character in a typical Waits-ian cast, complete with circus performers. And, given all we’ve heard thus far on our journey through Waits’ discography, the music itself is familiar territory, particularly with a few callbacks to Small Change‘s “The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)”, as well as some of the eclectic instrumentation used since the beginning of his experimental phase. I, for one, really love this album, and would likely place both it and Black Rider in my Top 5 Waits Albums list, if I had to make one.

Given my attempt to cover all the albums consecutively in the previous #TomWaitsAWeek spotlights, it should be noted here that Alice didn’t immediately follow Black Rider. First of all, there was an entire decade between the Alice opera and album. When asked by The Onion A.V. Club[2] on this matter, here is what Mr. Waits said:

The Onion: So, why did it take you so long to record the songs on Alice?

Tom Waits: The songs were written around ’92 or ’93, ’round in there. It was done with Robert Wilson in Germany. We stuck ’em in a box and just left ’em there for a while. They were aging like the honey. And we locked in the freshness. They were hermetically sealed. You move on to other things, you know? And then you go back and say, “Well, this was okay.”

O: It was kind of developing a reputation as the great lost Tom Waits album.

TW: I bought a copy of the bootleg on eBay. ‘Cause I didn’t know where those tapes were.

During this decade, Waits also released a non-Wilson collab album, the fabulous Mule Variations (1999). I think I learned my lesson while writing the last spotlight though, so I won’t attempt to summarize that album here too. However, I would say that Mule Variations/Black Rider/Alice is perhaps my favorite run in Waits’ discography, for whatever that’s worth. I will also not attempt to summarize the final few albums, i.e., Blood Money (2002), Real Gone (2004), Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards (2006), and Bad as Me (2011). Well, except for noting that Blood Money was actually released at the same time as Alice, and is also studio versions of songs that Waits and Brennan originally wrote for a Wilson musical (namely Woyzeck, which premiered in 2000), so let’s just say it’s Alice‘s fraternal (or conjoined?) twin.

That said, I did want to ramble on a tiny bit further here before logging off to finish the rest of our listening schedule[1] for the week, because there’s some WONDERFUL rabbit holes to go down when looking at this partnership and period, particularly on Wilson’s side. In between Alice the opera and Alice the album, aside from the aforementioned Woyzeck, Wilson racked up a number of entries in his CV that blow my mind just thinking about them. For instance, in addition to a handful of new projects with Philip Glass (with whom, as mentioned last spotlight, he had collaborated with on the 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach), during this time Wilson also collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto in 1999 for a Lincoln Center Festival piece called The Days Before – Death Destruction & Detroit III, which riffed off of my favorite Umberto Eco novel, The Island of the Day Before. Also, he completed the third in the trilogy of his works performed by the German Thalia Theater company (the first two being Black Rider and Alice), the 1996 Time Rocker, the music for which was written by none other than Lou Reed. AND THEN, Wilson would collaborate again with Reed in 2000 on an Edgar Allan Poe musical called POEtry, which ran at BAM. Reed would go on to release a studio album based on the musical, The Raven (2003), which features Willem Dafoe, Laurie Anderson, ANOHNI, Steve Buscemi, Ornette Coleman, The Blind Boys of Alabama, David Bowie… Like, OMG, to have been in New York at that time!

Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed/are enjoying #TomWaitsAWeek, or at least can devote some time in the future to the three Waits albums we have on The List…and beyond. I myself haven’t yet finished going through Waits’ studio discography, and also now have some physical media to track down. Speaking of which, I’ll sign off with one last thing from that Onion interview quoted above:

Tom Waits: You know what I really love? The CD players in a car. How when you put the CD right up by the slot, it actually takes it out of your hand, like it’s hungry. It pulls it in, and you feel like it wants more silver discs. “More silver discs. Please.” I enjoy that.

The Onion: Do you have one in the Cadillac?

TW: No, I have a little band in there. It’s an old car, so I have a little old string band in the glove compartment. It’s grumpy.

• Bandcamp: Tom Waits – Alice
• Discogs: Tom Waits – Alice

Edit: As provided in the comments by icastico, here’s a link to a bootleg of the original Alice demos – they’re fantastic and definitely worth checking out!

• Youtube: Tom Waits – Alice: The Original Demos

[1]For those listening through the discography with us, Alice was part of yesterday’s listening schedule. Here’s what’s left on the docket for today: Friday – Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, Bad as Me.
[2]Thanks to BramMeehan for this link!