Patrick Humphries
:: Small Change : A Life of Tom Waits
Début albums are the distillation of the writer's experience to that point, all the overheard snatches of conversation, the road signs and fragments that sizzle on the grill of the writer's imagination.
"I may be a little sentimental, but I'm not nostalgic."
"Sometimes you wish you could take the time when you have the time, put it somewhere, save it, because there's times when you haven't got time. Spend it there. Ahhh - you kids! Gotta full life ahead of ya. I've had 35 summers. That's all. Think about it."
"... Tom Waits was guaranteed space on my turntable whatever deviationist tactics he was employing."
"The problem is that most instruments are square and music is always round."
"What I usually do is I write two songs and I put 'em in a room together and they have children. I have to start with two. I don't write year round, I write like a season and them I'm done. I would like to be able to write through it all, but ... it gets hard, so you say I'm gonna set this time aside and for me a lot of it's like going back to a place where you go a lot, but the season changed and the vines grew over the entrance ... and you get back there and you say well I'm standing right where I was, how come I can't get back in ... and then you realise that things grew over and then you get through that and you see the little path and then you're on your way..."