News The joke that sparked Keith Richards and Tom Waits’ friendship
The musical collaboration between Keith Richards and Tom Waits has endured for almost four decades. It wasn’t until both artists had firmly established themselves – Richards with The Rolling Stones and Waits navigating the singer-songwriter movement of the 1970s – that they joined forces.
The mutual appreciation for traditional American musical genres eventually united Richards and Waits for the first time on Waits’ seminal 1985 album, Rain Dogs. “There was something in there that I thought he would understand,” Waits later explained, adding: “I picked out a couple of songs that I thought he would understand, and he did. He’s got a great voice, and he’s just a great spirit in the studio. He’s very spontaneous, he moves like some kind of animal.”
Waits swiftly reciprocated by lending his vocals as a backing vocalist on The Rolling Stones’ Dirty Work album the following year. The bond between Richards and Waits endured, leading to their collaboration on the co-written and duet track ‘That Feel’ from Waits’ 1992 album, Bone Machine. In 2011, Richards played a role in four songs on Waits’ 17th studio album, Bad As Me. Even after all those years, Richards maintained a profound connection with Waits’ music.
The foundation of their musical connection is rooted in a sincere and warm personal rapport. Richards characterises Waits as “a real rhythm man”, and in his characteristically idiosyncratic manner, Waits compares him to “a frying pan made from one piece of metal. He can heat it up really high and it won’t crack, it just changes colour.”
However, the very first rendezvous seemingly came to fruition due to a lighthearted joke suggested by Waits. “I said, ‘What about Keith Richards?’” Waits later recalled, putting forward Richards’ name as a potential collaborator on Rain Dogs. “I was just joking, but somebody went ahead and called him, and he said, ‘Yeah’. I said, ‘Now we’re really in trouble…’”
Richards then entered the New York studio, indulged in some Cutty Sark, and contributed to ‘Blind Love’, ‘Union Square’, and ‘Big Black Mariah’. Waits’ usual explanation was that the guitarist was settling a financial debt. However, the pair went on to develop a genuine, mutual connection as a result of realising their own shared passions for music and sonic exploration.
“Musically, what I noticed about Keith, is he’s really big on detail,” Waits added in the 2015 Netflix documentary Keith Richards: Under the Influence. “And you have to be if you’re an archaeologist. You insist on locality data, you know? Not only where something came from but what are the principles and properties of it. He’s like a London cabbie that has the knowledge; only he has that in music.”
