Sure, you get a bit of this and a bit of that in his songs. Try, Waits’ dark-as-a-dungeon reappraisal of the 1938 Disney ditty Heigh Ho (The Dwarfs Marching Song) on Stay Awake and regurgitated on Orphans as evidence. The best part of the deal is that his songs and, heigh ho-ho, extraordinary renditions are like nobody else’s. See? That’s how reading about Waits tinkers with a writer chap’s keying fingers. Like picking out just the red ones from a jar of M&Ms or Smarties while blindfold and allowed to use only your sense of taste. And did I mention meretriciousness? Humphries has wisely not set himself the task of unpicking verity from verisimilitude. Try, “I’ve always maintained that reality is for people who can’t face drugs.” (Did he filch the quip? Much like the lobotomy preference option one, does it matter? Allow Waits a few populist tendencies too.) He also protects his privacy, keeps his wife and partner-in-song Kathleen (née Brennan) and their family pretty well hid. His snappy one-liners are notable for their fragrance of insect repellent. And, though everybody lies, Waits lies splendidly. Waits sends reports, sometimes Californian Chinese whispers, back from the Old Weird America. With Waits, you don’t get, in Humphries’ turn of phrase, “the open-heart surgery of Joni Mitchell or James Taylor”. Waits is no Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne or James Taylor. Like Waits, The Many Lives of Tom Waits does, however, allow Humphries to don the Chandleresque cap (alliteration wins out over fedora) when telling the tale. Waits doesn’t peddle autobiographical or confessional stories-in-song in an L.A. And every writer who writes about Nick Drake and Richard Thompson – and now Tom Waits – will ever have occasion to acknowledge – or avoid acknowledging – Humphries’ groundbreaking achievements. The expression is the title of one of the American mandolinist David Grisman’s finest, early breakthrough compositions. His Nick Drake (1997) and Richard Thompson: Strange Affair (1996) are true E.M.D. Amongst his string of fine books, two are seminal – as in standard works. The London-based writer, Patrick Humphries is an old hand too, an established music writer whose subjects include Dylan, Hitchcock, Elton John, Pink Floyd, Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen. Improbably, though in a nice way, The Many Lives of Tom Waits is his first major biography of the man. That applies to his music and to his secondary career as a fellow who pops up in such films as The Two Jakes, The Fisher King and Bearskin: An Urban Fairytale. Or similarly responding to that plaintively lonely Russian lass or that Nigerian pet-lover-in-distress. Buying into that singer-songwriter job description might be likened to buying eau de cologne or Viagra on the strength of a spam message. Suckers! To call Waits a singer-songwriter would be like damning him with faint praise. He has regaled us with many mythologies, mostly hand-woven and threadbare enough for the unwary dupe to be taken in and buy him that figurative drink out of pity. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.In a hoary old quote that pops up in Patrick Humphries’ The Many Lives of Tom Waits, Waits, that lovable whey-faced geezer in black with a pork-pie hat, quips, “Marcel Marceau gets more airplay than I do!” Things may have improved marginally in the meantime – Marceau dying in 2007 will have given Waits a chance to cut in – but Waits has proved tenacious when it comes to avoiding anything so vulgar as a whiffette of becoming a popular singing star.You are as handy as a pocket on a shirt! (That’s mighty handy!).They live so far out in the country that they get their sunshine pumped in!.That will happen when pigs fly! (Pigs fly?).(Take what and a grain of salt isn’t very much!) Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite! (I wouldn’t sleep in that bed!).Money doesn’t grow on trees! (Of course it doesn’t!).It ain’t over until the fat lady sings!.If the good Lord is willing and the creek don’t rise! (Sounds serious!).I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole!.I feel finer than a frog’s hair split four ways! (I didn’t know frogs had hair!).Don’t count your chickens before they hatch!.Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed?. A watched pot never boils! (This is so true!).A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!.Here’s 40 old phrases and sayings you might have heard: When I hear myself saying such, I smile and again I think of my grandmother. Some of them you heard so often that they managed to make it into your vocabulary. Did you grow up in the United States hearing your elders say phrases that you had no idea what they meant? I know I did.Įven today, when I hear or read such, I find myself thinking of my grandmother and recalling those old sayings coming out of her mouth.
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