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.
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