Bob Dylan was known for his disappearances — for becoming nothing to a generation that wanted him to be everything. He dissolves but never reveals. He is unknowable. Tom Waits can also seem unknowable, but he is the opposite of Dylan. Waits is the accumulation of everything. He’s Andy Kauffman. He’s Bob Dylan. He’s Jackson Pollack. He’s Jack Kerouac. He’s Marlon Brando. He’s Captain Beefheart. He’s a drunk pawnbroker. He’s a hobo. He’s a nowhere, nobody Jazz singer. He’s an actor. He’s a muse for Francis Ford Coppola, Jim Jarmusch and Terry Gilliam. He’s a voice. He’s a string plucker. He’s a junkyard of art and ideas and jewels and garbage and life and love that just grows and grows. 

There are many Tom Waits songs that I love. It’s no overstatement to suggest that “Jersey Girl” is the greatest love song of the Rock era. It’s perfect. And he of course has dozens of others — aching Folk songs, drunken Jazz numbers, Soul howlers and antique odds and ends that you want to put up on your shelf and live with. But for all of those great songs and those unforgettable album sides, Waits failed to put together a complete masterpiece during the first two decades of his career. He was so prone to asides, jokes, drunken reverie and stream of consciousness that he seemed incapable of completing his own “Blonde on Blonde” or “Astral Weeks.” Instead, we got wild yarns, tipsy wisdom and postcards from the road, croaked over minimalist lounge jazz and old time balladry. To be clear, he built a great discography. He built a cult. He built an extraordinary career for himself. But he didn’t have his masterpiece.

Not that he needed one. But he deserved one. He kept churning out great records, always on the verge but never fully realized. Then he’d get on the train with his partner, Kathleen Brennan, pack up his hobo friends, an upright bass, some whiskey, two vintage suits, some aftershave and play to mid-sized theaters around the world. But suddenly, in 1988, after the relatively modest “Frank’s Wild Years,” the albums stopped coming. Had the world’s most interesting forty year old man simply lost interest? Had he run out of ideas? Did he want to press pause before the output declined? Or, like so many previous and future middle-aged artists, had he decided to retreat in order take stock and focus his energy inward?

The answer was none of the above. During the years between 1987 and 1992, Tom Waits was quite possibly the most prolific artist in the world. He just wasn’t releasing albums. He co-wrote and produced the “cowboy opera” “The Black Rider,” collaborating with William S. Burroughs and Robert Wilson. He also acted in “The Two Jakes” “The Fisher King,” “Bram Stoker's Dracula,” and “Short Cuts” among many other films. Oh -- and he got sober.

On the heels of this uncharacteristic, but tremendously creative period, Tom Waits returned to the studio. More specifically, he returned to a cellar inside a studio that was nothing more than a cement floor and a heater. The result of his waiting and his living was “Bone Machine,” the unlikely and unexpected masterpiece we all had been waiting for.

“Bone Machine” is mostly just two musicians — Waits and bassist Larry Taylor — with other vagabonds wandering in here and there. It sounds almost exactly like a record made in the basement of a rural church in Nowhere, USA, where the foundation is permeable to the earth and heaven, where the bodies are buried and where the shadowy figures all look like murderers. And also like Jesus. The percussion on this album is so primal and elemental that I mistook it for the clatter Mitchell Froom conjured for artists like Los Lobos and Richard Thompson in the Nineties. Upon revisit, however, the metal wrench, stick and horse hooves that Waits employs do not sound like Froom’s. They sound like the drums you would play in that church basement.

As always, the upright bass and Tom’s voice are the centerpieces. But, at forty two, having accumulated all the disguises and card tricks in the book, Waits figured out the sort of recording artist he was meant to be. He’s not a jazzbo. He’s not the heir to Captain Beefheart. He’s not the shadowy foil to Bruce Springsteen. And he’s certainly not the new Dylan. No, he’s more like a poet philosopher narrating a Robert Frank photo or a Vincent Price film. On “Bone Machine,” the restless artist found the right subject, the right script and the right part. 

The album has its primitive Folk songs like “Who Are You This Time” and the completely essential “That Feel,” where Waits is joined by Keith Richards. There are the Baptist barn-burners like “Jesus Gonna Be Here,” “The Earth Died Screaming,” and “Goin’ Out West.” There are late night, back room, piano ballads like “A Little Rain” and “Whistle Down The Wind.” And there are ancient ghost stories like “Such a Scream,” “In The Colosseum” and “Murder In The Red Barn.” For such a singular voice, the range of “Bone Machine” is astonishing.

At fifty three minutes and sixteen songs, the album is both a generous gift and virtually flawless. Amazingly, it even won a Grammy for “Best Alternative Album” in 1993. And although it is likely better than any other album he made before or after, “Bone Machine” is not an outlier. It represents what happens when a middle-aged artist, sober and practiced, searches through everything he has collected over the years, with eyes and ears as clear and refined as they would ever be. This is the middle age that we all hope for. It’s the middle age that Tom Waits deserved.

by Matty Wishnow