Results tagged “Tom Waits” from Journal Live - Journal Culture Central

In the early 1980s, film director Francis Ford Coppola was so inspired by a Tom Waits song (a duet with Bette Midler) that he decided to make a film around some of his music.

The result was One From the Heart, a film designed to be a small production after the excesses of Acopolypse Now but which went on to cost $26m and bankrupted Coppola after he insisted on filming it all on sound stages to create an air of artificiality.

The film itself is at best so-so, but there's some great Tom Waits songs on it. Midler wasn't available to do the music so Crystal Gayle did the female parts instead, with Take Me Home just the most beautiful song imaginable.

(Sorry, can't find an online version of the duet, but I have found Waits singing it on a TV show!)

Not quite sure how it's taken me 127 songs to pick something by Tom Waits, but I hope this will make up for my tardiness.

Downtown Train is from Waits' 1985 album Rain Dogs, which no home should be without. (It was described by one critic as "bony and beautiful" which sounds about right.)

The video was directed by trendy Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Mondino and features the boxer Jake LaMotta, whose life was the basis of the film Raging Bull.