“I got to run, to keep from hiding,

Bound, to keep on riding,

I’ve got one more, silver dollar,

But I’m not gonna let em catch me no,

Not gonna let em catch

The Midnight Rider

Oh no,

And I don’t own the clothes I’m wearing,

And the road goes on forever

I got, one more silver dollar

But I’m not gonna let em catch me no,

Not gonna let em catch

The Midnight Rider”

- The Allman Brothers ‘Midnight Rider’

I checked into the hospital sometime around eleven am. Where self is the mix of states of consciousness, I was stuck in the old half and half place of being still drunk and wretchedly hungover. Wherein, you find yourself lying to a nice Scottish nurse.

“Well I’ve fasted since about ten.”

If fasting is the one slice of pizza you’ve had in a couple of days.

“What about liquid fasting?”

She’ll ask with a slightly knowing smirk.

“Oh about four am or so.”

Four is a good number to give. Wouldn’t want to admit I drank until I passed out then woke up some forty minutes or so ago.

I’m in for injections to the lower spine. It’s a long story and an even longer explanation. I have a fairly vicious phobia of syringes you see. Not needles, I’ve too many tattoos for that, just syringes.

A part of agreeing to this proceedure is the constant battle against that phobia. The fight with yourself to overcome yourself.

If I was afraid of clowns this would be so much easier, granted, I’d probably be on the run for multiple murder charges.

Ignoring the gentle insistence of Scotty, my Glaswegian nurse, I checked myself out after suffering an allergic reaction to the painkillers they had given me. There was a plan and it had to be stuck to. Tom Waits was playing and no gods, no storm nor shotgun blasted off leg was going to prevent me from going to see the man.

Pissing sweat and moaning pain, I more dragged myself around a bookshop, back to my flat and in to the pub than actually made myself around. The plan had been laid months before and while not intricate it had to be stuck to. I’m not going to lie though, few things or journeys have pushed me as close to the edge of madness.

“I doubt I’ll ever get to see the man before he dies.”

In between the bookshop and flat, I had just enough time to phone JonnyRage and tell him; he was going to Tom Waits. The man’s words about the event were rumbling about my brain and I’d realized I’d completely forgotten to tell him about the present I’d gotten him a month or two before. Short notice an’all but I was running the numbers on doubting anyone would turn up a chance to see Tom Waits, even with only two hours notice.

“Are you okay? Sure you can do this?”

Was the beginning of my first proper exchange with Jonny since I’d arrived in the pub.

“Why?”

Rage raised an eyebrow at me as if it was obvious, his right hand raising palm up before moving in a short cutting motion that widened slightly, seriously and held; somehow reminded me of his no bullshit past as a man in charge of soldiers.

“Because you look like you’re in shock.”

Shrugging the man off and stubbing my smoke, I returned to write the letter and seal the parcel of books that was all pivotal in the plan.

The plan being – there is a Tom Waits quote I intend on getting tattooed on the side of my head. I happened to mention this to Phil the tattooist who pointed out it would be far cooler to get the man himself to write the qoute. He also promised that if Tom Waits wrote said quote on my head, he’d tattoo it for free. So, armed with a parcel loaded with two books, the explanation and request, we headed for the concert.

I’ve wrestled with the beginning of this review like the drunken version of an ancient Greek frieze of Hercules. In the end, I decided to begin with someone else’s words. Then perhaps ramble on with the pomp and circumstance of the entire venture. It’s hard not to stop, start and sideways step as you the approach the bit where you actualy have to talk about, describe what seeing Tom Waits live is like. I guess it should always feel like slightly inebriated bar talk.

The standard advice I’ve been given by the jaded and cynical is to be wary of going to see your heroes live. There stands, they say, a strong possibility you’ll be bitterly disappointed. I’ve yet to have that happen to me.

Tom Waits was playing three nights, in a specially constructed circus tent called ‘The Rat Cellar’ positioned rather neatly beside ‘Áras an Uachtaráin’, the residence of the president of Ireland.

Twin topped with blue and yellow stripes, ‘The Rat Cellar’ was the centerpiece to an odd little Tom Waits experience village. An odd place where you could buy strawberries and molten chocolate to dip them into, popcorn, gourmet burgers, a bizarre selection of fairground like sweets, Guinness, one type of beer and warm, warm white wine.

I have to say the one and only thing that bugged me about the entire set-up was the fact the bar closed down shortly before the show and did not open again. I’m sure there’s a very valid reason for this past the fact Tom quit drinking. If it was Tom, if it wasn’t, either way, it’s not cool.

Don’t act like a government; don’t enforce curfews and tell us what to do.

Barring that though, I do have to pay special thanks to the Security on the three nights. In the stumbling, hobbling, and largely ticket-less mess that was post spinal injections me. They were straight up with me, never surly and minded as best they could.

Almost transparent pale and sweating like some sort of sub-dermal racehorse. Waving a hospital band and babbling about spines and syringes, I had our taxi drive us straight up to the entrance of the venue by way of the disabled route.

With tickets like gold dust and only one in my possession. I found myself constantly eyeing security, fences, weak jaws and soft spots for certain stories, like some sort of crack MacGyver. One way or another, I was going to see Tom Waits every night he played in Dublin. If children had to die and midgets had to be set on fire as some sort of screaming hand waving decoy, so be it.

I haven’t seen many people talk about the extreme lengths Tom Waits’ people went through to prevent the touting of tickets. Let me tell you though, it was intense. It engendered a level of paranoia that I’ve only heard about. The sort of eye sweating scratching stuff Graham Greene wrote about. Like being a liberal in the black list days of Hollywood or a Jew trying to escape the Holocaust.

Those people with real tickets clutched them close to their chests with some form of identification. Though many had passports, you could tell as they approached the border control to the venue that they were beginning to worry if this was enough; maybe even beginning to doubt their passport was real.

Those people with printed out tickets looked slightly worse for wear. A sheaf of paper in their hands, they also awkwardly clutched both their credit card and some form of photo ID. Beads of worry and impatience clear across brows furrowed by the complexity of the situation.

By far the worst off, were the people who’d been bought one or two tickets by some kindly benefactor who also happened not to be attending the concert. Some clutched the receipt for the tickets, photo ID and a letter from the purchaser. Strained and stressed looking, they bore the damp look of fear sweats and when they addressed security, their eyes darted to the corners and distances for terror that on whim they’d tell them their information was false or not enough.

There was the snagging paranoia you’d left something behind. Or just forgot one small detail. The same sort of sensation you have just a handful of minutes out of a whorehouse when you’re on your way home to the wife. The same sort of feeling that leads to five am freezing cold showers just incase, just to be sure; freezing cold because if you use the hot water the motor for the pump might start running and she’ll wake up and then, then there will be questions asked. And anyway, you can’t remember what you forgot, just that the nagging is there, a slow poke at the back of your eye.

I don’t know, but for some reason, I sort of imagined that if my letter, photo ID and birth certificate didn’t work. That group of silent, menacing cholos on Tom’s payroll would appear. There would probably also be a random mariachi guitarist who wouldn’t play just stare; he was probably below average height, quite possibly in some states, legally a midget. There wouldn’t be much talking, they’d just motion toward a waiting lowrider and you’d rustle up your papers, head downcast, and follow them.

In the end, after all that, they barely checked for ID. It was all some sort of terror tactic, which was probably the same reasoning for closing the bar early.

The package, of books and a letter, was handed to a security guard who promised me he’d see it to the back stage where there would be an un-promised chance of Tom Waits getting his hands on it.

Dangerously sober, lips stinging from three fast smoked cigarettes, we took our seats.

In my mind…

As the child who had waited a hefty chunk of a lifetime for this…

I imagined the soundtrack to this wait,

As something sinister, yet spiritual – as if composed by Ennio Morricone for a western Leone never made.

At the same time as there was the nervous impatient drill of ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’.

There was the ‘The Musical Pocket Watch’, twinkling solitary toward its rise in strings before the down back toward the twinkle.

Somewhere, in-between all of this.

The lights dimmed.

The band took the stage.

Followed with a rolling lope, by Tom Waits.

We roared and we hollered and for three hours we tore our throats out and clapped our hands raw.

They, He, the band, came on to an intermingling medley of ‘Lucinda and Ain’t going down to the well no more’. From this, he, we became ‘Rain Dogs’. A neat little waltz that swam into ‘Russian Dance’, from there, we swayed through a fast shot shoot of ‘Falling Down; On the other side of the world; I’ll shoot the moon; Cemetery Polka; Get behind the mule; Cold cold ground; Singapore; Circus / Tabletop Joe; God’s away on business’;

They came thick, they came fast and they came between Tom Waits spinning the crowd upside down and right side up with stories of insects and Ebay buys. The band, with two of Tom’s sons playing for their supper, were just fantastic, matching the man beat for beat and keeping him wrapped in the blanket of noise he needed.

As the man moved toward the piano, jangled a few notes, responded to a crowd that was trying to call tunes that he may or may not have just twinkled then stopped once they’d named them.

I was spellbound.

I may never know who enjoyed ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues’ more, the crowd or Tom Waits. All I know is sublime used to be a word I used seldom for the weight of whatever it meant in the first place. Maybe it reminded me of the story of a blowjob I once got from a Mexican down the Dublin coast and maybe it reminded me of ‘A Voyage to Arcturus’. Maybe it was a lot of things. But as ‘Blues on the nickel’ sashayed into the mumbling grumbling laughing banter the man had with the crowd before a truly mind shattering rendition of ‘Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis’.

All I knew was three letters and it went something like, wow.

Somewhere.

Somewhere, in between the epileptic girl thrashing about so hard in front of us, her seat managed to rock our line of fixed seats a steady rhythm.

Somewhere, through the snippet of ‘House where nobody lives’ that he stopped as someone from the crowd named it and changed it on into the crowd participation of ‘Innocent When you dream’. Through to ‘Hoist that Rag’ and on.

Tom Waits stopped being human.

Moving like a twisted marionette that may well have been controlled by a much bigger empyreal Tom Waits standing over ‘The Rat Cellar’. He jerked and swung to one song just as he swayed and stamped to another. A mirabilis amazing; he was all things to all songs.

On his voice, unlike some people, I didn’t think he reaching. Some reporter for some Irish paper or something said something along the lines of Tom Waits having the voice of a tired old God trying to do an impression of Satan. Something like that. I’m probably doing that fucking hack more justice than I should. Trying to para-quote something you can’t remember always works. Regardless, I’ll just run with that verbose imagery, that of God wrestling with Satan’s lyrics. The man from modern myth evolved past the now and then, into the sometime and in a few minutes. A rickety, clawing grasping titan of the new, stamping as he undulates in time with the whispering and the thundering, a voice designed to put a senile god down, in a deicidal scene comfortingly reminiscent of ‘Old Yeller’.

If I thought “You Fucker” when he drew out, weaved and swung ‘Make It Rain’ until the crowd was chanting with him. Until the already pouring heavens paused for a moment, as if, straining over your shoulder to hear Tom, remembered exactly what they were and split asunder once more under his commandment of ‘Let It Rain’.

If I thought the closer of ‘Time’ was spiritual. That it felt as if we were witnessing some sort of voodoo southern rain and death cult ceremony of snakes, suspicion and faith.

Then the only thing that was running through my head, as he raised his hands, apocalypse preacher like to the roof of the tent.

Was, childishly, foolishly,

Wow…

And then the more teenage,

Holy fuck…

People around me were crying, shouting, screaming, clapping, stamping and standing.

A part of me wanted to get up roar bellow dance and move, a part of me wanted to do something other than sit awestruck, staring. But, really, all that part of me could do was rush me years back, decades or so. To sitting on my big sister’s lap as she played me Tom Waits. As it all began.

There it was, my six or seven year old self, calling long distance through time, wanting quietly to meet my older self out for coffee so we could talk about it all.

We trundled out, in rain that’d been hoodooed up Tom, a thunderous marching splash that marched us to the end of the park. JonnyRage left me to go home and I retreated back, into the city of my birth, to find my sister and drink.

It was time to pop hefty painkillers and scheme; he was playing two more in Dublin. I didn’t have tickets, but I was going.

Luckily enough and maybe somehow, there was one, just one ticket handed back that night. Seated down front, better than I had been before. The second night brought a set only vaguely similar to the night before. Treated as we were to such gems as ‘Misery is the river of the world’, ‘Chocolate Jesus’ and an almost show stopping recital of ‘9th and Hennepin’.

All this was interspaced with Waits’ banter with the crowd. When he wasn’t thanking us and showering us with praise and surprise for “having never worked together before.” He was regaling us with tall tales about Japanese ships being raised with ping-pong balls, frogs living rent-free in his stomach and a special dog food that will make dog shit glow in the dark.

I haven’t, in my lifetime, seen a man work a crowd like Tom Waits worked the crowd during those three nights in Dublin. They sang when he wanted, hushed when he motioned, laughed at all the genuinely funny bits and when he exhorted them with an ecclesiastical air, to lose control and get down right fervent. They did, hands clapping raw, bodies swaying as if they were sat in the tent of some Southern Death Cult passing out snakes and shotguns.

My jaw dropped as he growled into a surprise drop of ‘Heart Attack and Vine’ that signaled the beginning of the end. We rolled into ‘November’ and finished on a sublime ‘Hold On’

Two nights down, one left – the last and most important.

I arrived with my sister and nephew at the handicapped entrance and let them to take the last two tickets. Pain and fatigue was beginning to take its toil and as I meandered around asking security and the Ticketmaster booth about the likelihood of tickets, I was gradually beginning to give up hope on getting a ticket to the third and final night. Something that wasn’t helped by all the friends of Aiken, who somehow, mysteriously, had fudged their tickets, got the dates wrong and not attended the night they had tickets for. Yet even with all the checks in place by Tom’s people, were just told by the Ticketmaster vendor, no problem, they’d be sorted out.

I’d like to be able to put the following story down to my winning good looks and golden age Hollywood charm. But we all know that’s not true. Security remembered me and were all stand up cool, telling me, that if there was a ticket going, it would be going straight to me. I’m going to place their remembering me down to the fact that I have wildly strange eccentric hair that really can’t be missed. Also the fact that I was wearing pitch black goggle shades and had a sort of hobbling, stiff legged rolling lope commonly associated with Nazi criminal masterminds from post world war movies. Probably made me un-missable. I guess the only thing I was missing was the suspicious burn scars and glass eye.

Still though, whatever it was, my winning smile, my sparkling eyes and deft craft at conversation or my uncannily resembling to a Z-Movie mad Nazi scientist. A very kind Swedish man sold me a spare ticket for face value and in I was, off to see Tom Waits for a third and final time.

Although I find it hard to say which was musically better. The third night may well have it at a pinch and a spit. ‘Jesus Gonna Be here’ was stand out. But I may well have suffered a small sort of stroke or palsy when he played ‘The Heart of Saturday Night’. Left dribbling on myself, I barely had enough composure to soak in ‘Blue Valentines’ before finally hearing ‘God’s Away On Business’ live.

We made it rain before the first encore that began with ‘16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought Six’ and was followed with the somehow childhood affirming darkness of Tom Waits singing Disney’s ‘Heigh-Ho’. “Dirt In The Ground’ brought the first encore to a strangely melancholy end.

It almost seemed to be over – but we screamed, clapped and howled. We raised the roof and stopped the rain, and Tom came back. Almost rummaging into a surprisingly long jiving version of ‘Metropolitan Glide’ from ‘Real Gone’ that seemed to go on for a very good forever.

“The prettiest girl

In all the world

Is in a little Spanish town”

A sort of silence settled on the crowd as Tom thanked his way into the beginning of ‘Lucky Day’. It seemed longer than normal, with a repetition of chorus or something, I don’t know. I was caught up in the slight sadness of the moment, as teary-eyed people around me tugged on my sleeve to say that, this, this was a goodbye, of sorts, in Tom’s own, indomitable way. That he really was going away and that maybe one lucky day he’d be back, but it was more than likely that for Ireland, for a Dublin crowd, this would be the last time we’d see him before he died.

“I got to run, to keep from hiding…”

I didn’t want to think such morbid thoughts or even of a world without Tom Waits within it, so I smiled and nodded my way through the people sharing their experiences and lost myself in the end of the music like some ratty ragtime bathtub gin drunk swaying easy to ‘Viper Mad’.

“I’ve got one more, silver dollar…”

The aftermath is a slow and easy come down, rather like Salvia. There is no melancholy, no withdrawal that you’ve tasted the best and there may be no more peaks to fry. It’s more a sort of personal Zen sense of accomplishment and probably one you won’t talk about unless pushed. Yet in hobbling from the concert three times, in seeing the far away looks of satisfaction on peoples’ faces, talking to them and hearing their conversations, one that that I felt was shared.

“And I don’t own the clothes I’m wearing…”

Of course there was those people who didn’t enjoy the concert. Thought Tom’s voice was shot and that he was butchering his old songs. At the same time as they assured you that they were one of his biggest fans. Funny the way that happens. Those people you meet, who go to a gig, decide it doesn’t live up to their expectations of perfection, hate it, whatever else and feel the need to try and force people to see it their way. Insisting you agree with them, like a Dublin taxi driver trying to get you to agree with them that those blacks and Poles are just job stealing parasite bastards. It’s easy not to feel sorry for these people because in the end, their life view is just disappointing, in the fleeting sense. Like a wistful nod and pat on the head saying, “Aww, you missed the point, you poor, poor, poor bitch.” Which is rather like those other people who don’t like Tom Waits, who will tell you his music is the stuff for listening to in the moments before putting your head in the oven.

“And the road goes on forever…”

It was kind of like the Great Depression, you sort of had to be there to fully appreciate it. But even if you weren’t, you still know you missed something important.