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Live Review
by SashaS
24-11-2004
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| Tom Waits: there is no voice like his... |
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Live: Tom Waits
Hammesmith Odeon, London
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Tom Waits: an ultra rare visit by America’s foremost songwriter
Some of today’s pop stars weren’t even born the last time Tom Waits visited this country, this town and this venue. It is precisely 17 years and one day ago that the gruff voiced singer/songwriter extraordinaire graced the very same stage. Things have certainly changed in his favour: from a deep cult in 1987 he’s become a force with mass public.
Tickets for the 3,000-capacity Hammersmith Apollo sold out in a mere 20 minutes, with an estimated 60,000 fans trying to get tickets for this ultra rare Waits's visit. Ticket were changing hands for about £450 by touts outside the venue and had appeared on eBay for more than £600.
Material matters aside, this was a show that combined adventure in sound, some epic moments and a fair dose of humour. All backed by some incredible music, songs of great tonality, scope, cadences, imagery… Melodies strange and beautiful, erratic sounding and instruments employed as diverse as piano and ‘beatbox’, on the jaw-dropping ‘Eyeball Kid’.
Drink’n’ciggy flavoured voice of Waits, now 54, has not lost its marinated quality, although the man’s given up on the vices that threatened to derail everything in his life. And yet, it is like it liberated him to become more experimental, more wild, less compromising [as if he ever were] as the recently released ‘Real Gone’ testifies.
A jovial Waits made reference to his long absence from London and his own age by addressing the fans with "It's good to see you… Okay, all right, yeah, seventeen years… But you look good y'know? Heh. The three ages of man, aren’t they? Youth, middle age and 'You look good'." Later on he told an anecdote about tomato-eating as a spectator sport in ancient Rome; he also ‘sang’ through a bullhorn, danced like a man possessed and acted as a self-deluding drunkard but whatever he did - overpowering charisma shined like a saint‘s hallo.
Waits's two and a half hour set included songs taken from all across his 21 album 31-year career [although extremely economical on the material from the 1970s and ‘80s with ‘Invitation to The Blues’ being the only one outta the ‘decade-taste-bypassed’] including tracks from his legendary ‘Rain Dogs’, ‘The Heart Of Saturday Night’ and ‘Alice’ albums as we’ll as ‘Real Gone’.
Backed by a three piece, and son Sullivan on occasional percussion, Waits played guitar, piano and an instrument that was covered [probably chamberlain] for selection of cuts to stop your heart: ‘Johnsburg, Illinois’, ‘Make It Rain’, ‘Come On Up To The House’, ‘Sins Of The Father’ [11 glorious minutes], and the concluding monster of ‘House Where Nobody Lives’.
The show was the last date on the acclaimed singer/songwriter/actor/author’s brief, fourteen date, ‘Real Gone’ tour, to promote the album and some of the world’s biggest stars were in attendance. Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke was spotted in the crowd as was folkstress Beth Orton, jazz midget Jamie Cullum, Norman Cook, Zoë Ball, Jerry Hall, Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton who are currently in the UK filming their new version of ‘Charlie And The Chocolate Factory’ at Pinewood Studios, with which Waits is rumoured to be involved.
Wonder how Mr Yorke felt after this show? Humbled, stunned, stupefied, thinking-of-giving-up…? It was mesmerising, extraordinary, the strange, the original, the precious return, da biz! Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!
SashaS
29-9-2004
Tom Waits's album 'Real Gone' is available now on Anti-Inc/Epitaph
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