#416 Tom Waits - Mule Variations (1999)
MUSIC HISTORY WRITTEN BY HEAD WRITER DJ MORTY COYLE:
Released on April 16th, 1999 on the Epitaph offshoot ANTI-label, this is American singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist, and actor Tom Waits’ 12th studio album.
Tom was born in Pomona, California on December 7th (my birthday!) in 1949 and then moved with his mom and sisters to Chula Vista, a middle class suburb of San Diego when he was 10 after his parent’s divorced.
Inspired first by great R&B and Soul artists like Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett, James Brown, and the Motown roster, before hearing and becoming obsessed with Bob Dylan, Tom played in high school bands before dropping out in 1968. Unlike many of his Hippie contemporaries Waits was infatuated with the ’50s Beat Generation poets, writers, and Jazz musicians like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Lord Buckley, and Louis Armstrong.
He began hitting the San Diego folk music circuit as a teen in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s before moving to Los Angeles in ’72 to be a songwriter.
In L.A. he signed with David Geffen’s and Elliot Robert’s Asylum Records and proceeded to have little critical and no commercial success with his first album, “Closing Time” until the Eagles recorded that album’s, “Ol’ 55.”
He made 6 more albums for Asylum, built his critical and cult following, toured a lot, started acting in films, and had romantic and musical relationships with Bette Midler and Rickie Lee Jones before being asked to create the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1982 film, “One from the Heart.”
It was on that film that Waits met his future wife, collaborator, manager, and muse, Kathleen Brennan, who was an assistant story editor.
She turned him on to avant-garde, experimental musicians like Captain Beefheart and Harry Partch which heavily influenced his next career direction. He took his artistic reinvention to Island Records for another 7 albums that further cemented his reputation as one of the most successful cult artists ever.
This long-awaited follow up to his final Island Records release, 1993’s, “The Black Rider” was produced and written by Tom and Kathleen.
While utilizing his familiar “found” instruments, various vocal stylings, experimental recording techniques, and sonic freak outs, he also added the textures of a couple DJs into the mix.
The six year wait was worth it and Tom’s fans were also rewarded with his first extensive tour since 1987.
It was mostly critically-acclaimed as a return to the heights of his best work (although Rolling Stone only gave it 3 out of 5 stars for being too familiar Waits’ territory) but it still won that year’s Grammy for “Best Contemporary Folk Album.”
He’s starred in many films since this album but released only a few more albums since this one. His last as of now was “Bad As Me”, released in 2011, the same year that he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Neil Young.