Mick Hartley

Sunday's BBC4 documentary Tom Waits: Tales from a Cracked Jukebox made me reconsider my views.

I'd always had Waits down as, basically, a poseur: a middle-class son of teachers who adopted the world-weary persona of a down-and-out drunk, singing of hard times and urban desolation with an absurdly mannered over-the-top gravel voice, chain-smoking the while and adopting suitably anguished expressions: a barfly exploring the underside of LA like Charles Bukowski, without - unlike Bukowski - actually living the life. 

I wrote about him a while back, quoting Stewart Lee:

Waits is just an actor pedalling a watered-down, glammed-up, version of the genuinely avant-garde artists that he’s co-opted, such as Captain Beefheart, but in a vaudevillian form that places his invented persona in inverted commas and ensures, rather than marginal cult status, commissions from arts houses and the adulation of thrill-seeking squares who’d be scared by the real thing.

Well….now I'd say that's a little unfair. Waits can't really be accused of selling out or popularising. He's hardly a household name; he's not playing Vegas. Yes, his Way Down in the Hole was featured as a theme in The Wire, but he's always refused to let his songs be used in commercials, even going to the courts to protect his image – "Apparently, the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad—ideally, naked and purring on the hood of a new car…I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor."

And he writes and performs some fine songs – even if, as here, he owes a lot to Brecht/Weill:

But, mainly, I'm no longer bothered about this poseur business. So what if he wants to adopt the persona of an LA beat hipster? If it works for him – and it clearly does – then good luck. We British have a particular horror of people pretending to be who they're not; especially the unforgivable sin of middle class people trying to make out they're working class ("mockney" etc.). Americans, bless 'em, aren't so hung up on such things. People can invent themselves.

Besides, it's all an act. He's a performer. And it's a performance he's grown into. What might have seemed forced in his twenties is much less so as he hits late middle-age.

There are plenty of videos at Waits' own website. I like God's Away on Business. Or the Chocolate Jesus performance on Letterman. Or I Don't Want to Grow Up. Or Hang On St Christopher….