Free Wild Years by Jay S. Jacobs

Recording. Recalls Howe, “The funny thing was that at one point David[Geffen] said to me, ‘Don’t make a jazz record with it.’ And of course that’s what I made.”
    One of the first agreements that Tom and Bones struck was that this album was going to be a lo-fi product — a gritty assortment of expressions bearing no trace of studio polish. Even the artwork for
The Heart of Saturday Night
would have that low-life after-hours feel — a drawing of a tired and slightly dazed-looking Waits being sized up by a blonde hooker as he steps out of a neon-lit cocktail lounge at closing time.
    Howe needed an arranger for Tom’s new compositions, someone who could instinctively relate to what he and Waits were trying to achieve. He approached Michael Melvoin, legendary studio musician whose job list reads like a who’s who of twentieth-century popular music (Frank Sinatra, John Lennon, Barbra Streisand, Peggy Lee, The Beach Boys, Michael Jackson, Harry Nilsson, The Partridge Family, Bing Crosby, Quincy Jones, John Williams, Burt Bacharach, Dean Martin, Herb Alpert, Bette Midler, Cher — and there are many more). 2 Melvoin was so widely respected in the music business that he was voted president of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, the organization that presents the Grammy Awards, and he was the first practising musician to land this position. (Melvoin’s children have made their own mark on the industry: Wendy was a member of Prince’s band, The Revolution, and then formed her own group, Wendy and Lisa, with fellow revolutionary Lisa Coleman; Jonathan was a member of Smashing Pumpkins in 1998 when he died, tragically, of an overdose.)
    Howe and Melvoin had worked together before — with The Fifth Dimension and several other acts — and despite the fact that Melvoin hadn’t yet heard of Tom Waits, Howe felt that he had the sensitivity and the expertise to help them shape
The Heart of Saturday Night
. When Howe gave him a preliminary taste of Waits’s material, Melvoin says, “I knew that I was dealing with an extraordinary, different kind of talent. There were a couple of things about it. First of all, the lyrics . . . I would describe them as top-rank American poetry. I thought then, and I still believe, that I was dealing with a world-class poet. My degree from school was in English literature, so I felt that I was in the presence of one of the great Beat poets.” As a student Melvoin had played jazz behind Beat poet and essayist Kenneth Rexroth. Tom’s work was “a counterpoint to that experience. I was amazed by the richness of it. The musical settings that he was using reminded me of certain roots jazz experiences that I thought were very, very appropriate for that.”
    Melvoin never had a moment’s hesitation about taking on the
Heart of Saturday Night
project. “It seemed like a very good fit for my background. It amazed me how well [Tom and I] got on, immediately. I thought I understood what he was doing right away, and I felt great affection for him personally and professionally. My enthusiasm was full-blown right away.”
    The Heart of Saturday Night
signals its difference in its opening notes. Waits plays a bawdy barrelhouse New Orleans piano intro to “New Coat of Paint” that would do Dr. John, his future friend and legendary Big Easy ivory-tickler, proud. Over a strutting, preening peacock of a tune floats Waits’s voice (by now even raspier). The singer is planning a memorable night of drunken carousing with his sweetheart because their relationship is turning stale. Maybe a little wine, dancing, romancing somewhere in this sleepy old town can save them. This initiates the album’s unofficial theme. The songs of
The Heart of Saturday Night
form a loose chronology of a descent into loneliness: the singer and his lover set out together on an evening ripe with promise; they slide deeper and