Turn Off Shuffle:
Concept Albums Explained
by Paul-Newell Reaves
The Heart of Saturday Night
Tom Waits
1974
Tom Waits is hitting the town tonight, held upright by a lounge piano, a stand-up bass and jazzy drums. ‘Cause the second release of his career is a boozy, gravelly-voiced pub crawl across San Diego, from the docks to the pool halls to the bus depot, ending up moon-gazing from a late night pizza joint.
And as the concept album drunkenly stumbles about the nightspots, it questions what exactly the thrill of a Saturday night is, what is the appeal, what the result, who goes looking for it, anyway— and why do so in the first place. Some of these questions are answered, some not, resulting in an album of profound longing for something just beyond reach.
The track “New Coat of Paint” kicks off the bender.
Waits engages in some hefty word play with the dueling aphorisms of the opening lyric, “Let’s put a new coat of paint on this lonesome old town,” referring to painting the town red— going out on the town, reviving that town, renewing the lives of those who live there, dressing them up for a thrill— but also implying a new coat of paint— which is not a substantial renovation, only a superficial refurbishment, nothing but an exterior paint job. Though the lyric, “You wear a dress, baby, I’ll wear a tie,” may hint at high class functions with fancy dress, the verse swiftly develops into a melancholy longing for such things. With the lines, “All our scribbled love dreams are lost or thrown away… Our love needs a transfusion, let’s shoot it full of wine,” he suggests only momentary inebriation can revitalize the lives of these characters inhabiting the album. But Waits reminds us, “Fishin’ for a good time starts with throwin’ in your line.” If you don’t go looking, you won’t find anything at all.
The question where is easily answered on the second song, “San Diego Serenade.” The ennui ramps up substantially as Waits employs an effective device of repeated parallel sentence constructions— every line begins with never, followed by an until: “I never saw the morning till I stayed up all night. I never saw the sunshine till you turned out the light. I never saw my hometown until I stayed away too long…. I never saw the white line, till I was leaving you behind… I never spoke ‘I love you’ till I cursed you in vain… I never heard the melody until I needed the song.” The lyrics have nothing at all to do with San Diego— the city isn’t mentioned once outside the song title— but a song title is all that Wait needs to establish the location of the record, and the emotional place that leads these characters to seek out a Saturday night thrill is developed.
By the third track, we find out who goes seeking Saturday nights with the characters in “Semi Suite.” It’s another melancholy song, a story of a partner of a long distance truck driver— an eighteen wheeler truck is also known as a semi-trailer. This partner is lonesome for her man, “You’ve packed and unpacked so many times you’ve lost track… but when you hear his engines, you’re looking through the window of the kitchen… You’re always gonna be there when he calls.” This state of lonesomeness and desire for what is absent develops but one of the characters populating the nightlife Waits passes through on his night on the town.
That longing is delved into on “Shiver Me Timbers,” the fourth song on the tracklist, not quite answering why, instead analyzing the mindset that sends one looking for nightlife. Although ostensibly a song about a sailor who longs to be at sea, Waits includes it on this album to address the psychological state of his characters. “I’m leaving my family, I’m leaving all my friends. My body’s at home but my heart’s in the wind… Please call my missus, gotta tell her not to cry. ‘Cause my goodbye is written by the moon in the sky. Nobody knows me, I can’t fathom my staying.”
We’re into how territory on “Diamonds On My Windshield,” with spoken-word beat poetry driven by a be-bop walking baseline. It’s a restless cruise in an automobile in the rain, “I’m pulling into town on the Interstate, and the wind bites my cheek through the wing. And it’s these late nights and this freeway flying, it always makes me sing.” This aimless driving for no particular reason seems to refer to, “throwing in your line” of the first song. This character is looking for something they can’t find, and damned if they know what it is.
But what the heart of Saturday night is soon develops in “(looking for) the Heart of Saturday Night.” We’ve got a romantic couple in this song, “Behind the wheel, with your arm around your sweet one in your Oldsmobile, barreling down the boulevard.” Boulevard would indicate that the couple is downtown in a large city, so the cover image of the album comes into play:
On the album cover, Tom Waits is indeed on a busy boulevard, surrounded by people. It’s nighttime, the neon signs are bright, in the background are car headlights, stop lights, street lights. Here we are, a Saturday night. But what is at it’s heart?
“Tell me, is it the crack of the pool balls, neon buzzing?… Is it the barmaid that’s smiling from the corner of her eye? The magic of the melancholy tear in your eye?” No, that’s not the heart, not yet.
“You comb your hair, you shave your face, trying to wipe out every trace of all the other days in the week. You know that this’ll be the Saturday you’re reaching your peak… Makes it kind of quiver down in the core, ’cause you’re dreaming of them Saturdays that came before. And now you’re stumbling, you’re stumbling onto the heart of Saturday night.” Ah, yes, now we’ve stumbled upon it. It is the combination of all Saturday nights— prior and present— that reaches its heart. The thrill of all past nights out on the town builds a mystique of the ultimate Saturday night, which will surely be tonight— as long as we keep looking for it.
Yet plenty of nighttime remains.
“Fumbling With the Blues” is almost a hit single, by Tom Waits standards, a shuffling, upbeat melody with jazzy piano and swinging clarinet. The first lyrics, “Friday left me fumbling with the blues,” make clear that Friday has already passed, this song is the result of too many nights out. “You know, the bartenders, they all know my name… And I’m a pool-shooting shimmy shyster shaking my head, when I should be living clean instead.” From this point on, the looking is over, we’ve found the heart of the party, had our fun, and now we’re dealing with the aftermath.
In “Please Call Me, Baby,” a character is praying for reunion after a fight in their romantic relationship. “We’re always at each other’s throats, you know, it drives me up the wall. Most of the time I’m just blowing off steam.” With the lyric, “You spit as you slammed out the door,” it is clear that one lover has stormed away in the heat of an argument. But the emotions are still tender ones, the characters still care for each other, “please call me, baby, wherever you are. It’s too cold to be out walking in the streets… I don’t want you catching your death of cold out walking in the rain.”
By the time we reach “Depot, Depot,” the party is long over, and the character is stuck at a bus station. “Depot, depot, what am I doing here?” This character doesn’t appear to be stranded, just lost and blackout drunk. “I can’t claim title to a single memory. You offered me a key, ’cause opportunity don’t knock, has no tongue as you cannot talk. You’re gonna shuffle when you walk, at the depot.” Yet losing oneself is clearly the goal, this is not a terrible place to be at this hour of night, as the final lyrics make clear, “I’m on a roll just like a pool ball, baby. I’m gonna be there at the roll call, baby, at the depot.”
The character keeps roving and gets pretty far away from that depot— “Drunk on the Moon” is the next track. A musical resolve to the album, the lyrics fluidly capture a state of drunkenness and nightlife, late on a Saturday night, “The moon’s a silver slipper, it’s pouring champagne stars, and Broadway’s like a serpent pulling shiny top-down cars… And I’m blinded by the neon, don’t try and change my tune. I thought I heard a saxophone, I’m drunk on the moon.”
The album ends as all nights out should end, at a pizza parlor. “The Ghosts Of Saturday Night (After Hours At Napoleone’s Pizza House)” is a mish-mash of characters all on the tail end of a Saturday night: from “a solitary sailor who spends the facts of his life like small change on strangers,” to a waitress who “wipes the wisps of dishwater blonde from her eyes,” then outside to “a steel-belted attendant with a ring and valve special” and a “town crier… crying there with nickels in his hands.” And as the characters drift away, they all are, “Leaving the town in the keeping of the one who is sweeping up the ghosts of Saturday night.”
The loneliness and longing have not necessarily been resolved, merely forgotten for a few hours— exactly as promised at the album’s beginning.
Just another Saturday night.
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