TOM WAITS - THE PIANO HAS BEEN DRINKING

THE PIANO HAS BEEN DRINKING

TOM WAITS

SONGWRITER: TOM WAITS

COUNTRY: U. S. A.

ALBUM: SMALL CHANGE

LABEL: ADYLUM RECORDS

GENRE: ROCK

YEAR: 1976

 

             Thomas Alan Waits(born December 7, 1949) is an American musician, composer, songwriter and actor. His lyrics often focus on the underbelly of society and are delivered in his trademark deep, gravelly voice. He worked primarily in jazz during the 1970s, but his music since the 1980s has reflected greater influence from blues, rock, vaudeville, and experimental genres.

         Waits was born and raised in a middle-class family in Pomona, California. Inspired by the work of Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation, he began singing on the San Diego folk music circuit as a teenager. He relocated to Los Angeles in 1972, where he worked as a songwriter before signing a recording contract with Asylum Records. His first albums were the jazz-oriented Closing Time(1973) and The Heart of Saturday Night(1974), which reflected his lyrical interest in nightlife, poverty, and criminality. He repeatedly toured the United States, Europe, and Japan, and attracted greater critical recognition and commercial success with Small Change (1976), Blue Valentine(1978), and Heartattack and Vine(1980). He produced the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's film One from the Heart(1981), and subsequently made cameo appearances in several Coppola films.

             In 1980, Waits married Kathleen Brennan, split from his manager and record label, and moved to New York City. With Brennan's encouragement and frequent collaboration, he pursued a more experimental and eclectic musical aesthetic influenced by the work of Harry Partch and Captain Beefheart. This was reflected in a series of albums released by Island Records, including Swordfishtrombones(1983), Rain Dogs(1985), and Franks Wild Years(1987). He continued appearing in films, notably starring in Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law(1986), and also made theatrical appearances. With theatre diretor Robert Wilson, he produced the musicals The Black Rider(1990) and Alice (1992), first performed in Hamburg. Having returned to California in the 1990s, his albums Bone Machine(1992), The Black Rider(1993), and Mule Variations(1999) earned him increasing critical acclaim and multiple Grammy Awards. In the late 1990s, he switched to the record label ANTI-, which released Blood Money(2002), Alice(2002), Real Gone(2004), and Bad as Me(2011).

      Despite a lack of mainstream commercial success, Waits has influenced many musicians and gained an international cult following, and several biographies have been written about him. In 2015, he was ranked at Nº 55 on Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.

          Small Change is the fourth studio album by singer and songwriter Tom Waits, released on September 21, 1976 on Asylum Records. It was recorded in July at the Wally Heider Recording Studio, in Hollywood. It was successful commercially and outsold his previous albums. This resulted in Waits putting together a touring band - The Nocturnal Emissions, which consisted of Frank Vicari on tenor saxophone, FitzGerald Jenkins on bass guitar and Chip White on drums and vibraphone. The Nocturnal Emissions toured Europe and the United States extensively from October 1976 till May 1977.

The piano has been drinking, my necktie is asleep

And the combo went back to new york, the jukebox has to take a leak

And the carpet needs a haircut, and the spotlight looks like a prison break

And the telephone's out of cigarettes, and the balcony is on the make

And the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking

 

And the menus are all freezing, and the light man's blind in one eye

And he can't see out of the other

And the piano-tuner's got a hearing aid, and he showed up with his mother

And the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking

As the bouncer is a sumo wrestler cream-puff Casper milktoast

And the owner is a mental midget with the i.q. of a fence post

Cause the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking

 

And you can't find your waitress with a Geiger conter

And she hates you and your friends and you just can't get served without her

And the box-office is drooling, and the bar stools are on fire

And the newspapers were fooling, and the ash-trays have retired

Cause the piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking

The piano has been drinking, not me, not me, not me, not me, not me.