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Tom Waits: Black Rider

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: Island Records
Released: 1993.11.02
Time:
 55:28
Category: Progressive Rock
Producer(s): Tom Waits
Rating: ***....... (3/10)
Media type: CD
Web address: www.anti.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2002.05.03
Price in €: 10,99



 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Lucky Day [Overture] (T.Waits) - 2:26
[2] The Black Rider (T.Waits) - 3:20
[3] November (T.Waits) - 2:50
[4] Just the Right Bullets (T.Waits) - 3:35
[5] Black Box Theme (T.Waits) - 2:45
[6] 'Tain't No Sin (Donaldson/Leslie) - 2:35
[7] Flash Pan Hunter (Intro) (T.Waits) - 1:11
[8] That's the Way (W.S.Burroughs/T.Waits) - 1:11
[9] The Briar and the Rose (T.Waits) - 3:50
[10] Russian Dance (T.Waits) - 3:10
[11] Gospel Train [Orchestra] (T.Waits) - 2:35
[12] I'll Shoot the Moon (T.Waits) - 3:50
[13] Flash Pan Hunter (W.S.Burroughs/T.Waits) - 3:05
[14] Crossroads (W.S.Burroughs/T.Waits) - 2:45
[15] Gospel Train (T.Waits) - 4:40
[16] Interlude (G.Cohen) - 0:30
[17] Oily Night (T.Waits) - 4:25
[18] Lucky Day (T.Waits) - 3:45
[19] The Last Rose of Summer (T.Waits) - 2:10
[20] Carnival (T.Waits) - 1:30

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


TOM WAITS - Organ, Synthesizer, Piano, Calliope, Conga, Marimba, Vocals, Whistle, Producer

MATTHEW BRUBECK - Cello
DON NEELY - Saw
RALPH CARNEY - Bass Clarinet, Saxophone
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS - Vocals
GREG COHEN - Banjo, Bass, Percussion, Accordion, Bass Clarinet, Viola
JOE GORE - Banjo
NICK PHELPS - French Horn
KEVIN PORTER - Trombone
FRANCIS THUMM - Organ
KENNY WOLLESEN - Percussion
HANS-JORN BRAUDENBERG - Organ
LINDA DELUCA - Viola
VOLKER HEMKEN - Clarinet
CHRISTOPH MOINIAN - French Horn
LARRY RHODES - Bassoon
STEFAN SCHAFER - Bass
HENNING STOLL - Bassoon, Viola
BILL DOUGLASS - Bass

TCHAD BLAKE - Engineer
GERD BESSLER - Engineer

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


1993 CD Island CID 8021/518 559-2
1993 LP Island 314
1993 CS Island 518559

These songs were based on the play 'Black Rider' with Robert Wilson and William S. Burroughs. Some songs were recorded and worked on before the play was performed originally in March 1990 and some about four years later in California (using the same styles and techniques).



Black Rider Liner Notes

When I was first approached by Robert Wilson and the Thalia Theatre of Hamburg to be involved with The Black Rider, I was intrigued, flattered and scared. The time commitment was extensive and the distance I would have to travel back and forth was a problem, but after a meeting at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, I was convinced this was to be an exciting challenge and the opportunity to work with Robert Wilson and William Burroughs was something I couldn't pass up. I had seen only one Wilson production, "Einstein On The Beach" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and had been pulled into a dream of such impact and beauty, I was unable to fully return to waking for weeks. Wilson's stage images had allowed me to look through windows into a dusting beauty that changed my eyes and my ears permanently. Wilson is an inventor on a journey of discovery into the deepest parts of the forest of the mind and spirit and his process of working is innocent and respectful. His workshops in stage one demand from all involved to enter his world and place as much value on the things you bring to it as the things you leave behind. I was nervous about our compatability as his process seems so developed and was in a new country as was working in Hamburg, Germany, the Rainey Streets, church bells and the train station. Surprisingly for me our differences became our strength. Each morning I would bring to rehearsal the songs and music I had worked on the night before at Gerd Bessler's Studio. I had chosen Greg Cohen to collaborate with me on arrangements and shaping the music, selecting an orchestra, collecting sounds and recording crude tapes the night before. Greg is a multi-instrumentalist who I've had the pleasure of working with on the road and in the studio for fifteen years or more. Gerd Bessler's Music Factory was where most of the ideas for the score were born. Gerd Bessler is an extraordinary musician and sound engineer and his experience and background with The Thalia Theatre were invaluable to the work. It was his inexhaustible energy and commitment to spontaneity and adventure at his Music Factory and together we came up with fresh material each night to bring to rehearsal in the morning. Greg Cohen was a fearless collaborator, and helped me grow musically and had an endless supply of ideas with (long hours, cold coffee, hard rolls and no place to lie down). Gerd and Greg and I were the core of the music department in the early stages and we fashioned together tapes in this crude fashion, never imagining they would be released, which gave us all an innocence and a freedom to abandon conventional recording techniques and work under the gun to have something finished to bring to Wilson's carnival each morning. Although included in this collection are other recordings of the material done in California four years later, the spirit of recording in this fashion with Greg Cohen and Gerd Bessler in Hamburg was the cornerstone of the feeling of the songs. Having Wilson's theatre images to be inspired by for writing and arranging was invaluable to the process and a song- writers dram. The Black Rider Orchestra (The Devil's Rhubato Band) were Hans-Jö rn Brandenenburg, Volker Hemken, Henning Stoll, Christoph Moinian, Dieter Fischer, Jo Bauer, Frank Wulff and Stefan Schä fer. They were all from different backgrounds: some came from a strict classical world, others were discovered playing in the train station and my crude way of working took some getting used to for them and I had to learn a language to communicate with them and still keep the spontaneity alive. They are heard on a few of the songs in this collection. But recording more with them proved to be difficult with time and distance. They were all heroic in their commitment and contribution and became the pit band I've always dreamed of. In California, perhaps four years later, I formed another orchestra built on the same principles as The Devil's Rhubato Band, same instrumentation to replant the seeds from Hamburg. They are featured on many of the songs: "Lucky Day", "Russian Dance", "Shoot The Moon", "Oily Night", "Gospel Train (Orch)", "Flash Pan Hunter", "The Right Bullets" and "Black Box". The group that was formed in California were all musicians from San Francisco, although we began working from charts, slowly I began to realize that to effectively continue we needed a more crude approach and soon abandoned much of the score and worked from tapes and intuition. All of the players in the "Rhubato West" group were eager to "Frankenstein" the music into something like a beautiful train wreck. We recorded in a cold shed with bad light and no breaks, in order to inject the music with new life. "Gospel Train (Orchestra)" was recorded after a frustrating day of discipline, the piece was barked out like a garage band with the whole orchestra aping like a train going to Hell, it was a thrilling moment for all of us and even the bassoonist wanted to hear the play back. They all are fearless, willing and eager musicians. Together with The Hamburg Orchestra, the group in California and the original recordings done with Greg Cohen and Gerd Bessler, we were trying to find a music that could dream its way into the forest of Wilson's images and be absurd, terrifying and fragile. Three things I hope come across in this collection of songs. The actors in The Thalia Theatre production of The Black Rider were of a caliber I had never seen in my experience; fearless, tireless, insane and capable of going to deep profound places under sometimes difficult circumstances (cold coffee, hard rolls, no place to lay down), they took the songs and brought them to life and the songs brought them to life. I had never worked as a composer who was to remain outside of the performance and teaching them the songs was an education as well as them. They were like old children and amazed me with their willingness and the power of the imagination this collection is me singing but inside each performance are things I learned from their interpretations. William Burroughs, was as solid as a metal desk and his text was the branch this bundle would swing from. His cut up text and open process of finding a language for this story became a river of words for me to draw from in the lyrics for the songs. He brought a wisdom and a voice to the piece that is woven throughout. Somehow this odd collection of people resulted in an exciting piece of theatre that became an enormous success in Hamburg at the Thalia, and has travelled throughout the world and is still running today and it was a privilege to be a part of it.

Tom Waits
Los Angeles, Sept. 1993



THE BLACK RIDER
Black Rider Story Line
Once upon a time there was an old forester who lived with his wife and his daughter. And when it came time for his daughter to marry he chose for her a hunter, for he was getting old and wanted to maintain his legacy. But his daughter was in love with another and sadly he was not a huntsman, he was a clerk and the father would not approve of this union. But the daughter was determined to marry the man she loved so she said to him, "if you can prove your marksmanship as a hunter, my father will allow us to marry".

And so the clerk went out to the forest and he took his rifle and he missed everything he aimed at and only brought back a vulture.

The father disapproved and it seemed hopeless, but the clerk was determined to triumph. So the next time he went to the forest the devil appeared to him and offered him a handful of magic bullets, and with these bullets he could hit all the game he aimed at even with his eyes closed. But the devil warned him that "some of these bullets are for thee and some are for me". And as the wedding day approached, the clerk began to get nervous as there was a shooting contest and he was afraid he needed more magic bullets. Although warned that "the devil's bargain is a fool's bargain". He went to the crossroads and the devil appeared as before and gave him one more magic bullet. On the day of their wedding, the clerk took aim at a wooden dove, and with the devil looking on, the bullet circled the crowd of guests and hit its mark not the wooden dove. But the bride, his only love and the clerk ended up in an insane asylum stark raving mad and joined all the other lunatics in the devil's carnival.

At the end of November, Robert Wilson had two productions opening almost simultaneously on opposite sides of the Atlantic: a revival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music of, "The Black Rider," the product of his collaboration with Tom Waits, William Burroughts, and the history of German Expressionism, and a new staging at the Opera Bastille, in Paris, of "Madame Butterfly." Six of his productions, including the "Butterfly" are scheduled for next season at the Bastille, and works for Florence and with Phillip Glass are in progress. Hip, hop; hip, hop. This may be normal life for your average stage director, but the whole point about Mr. Wilson used to be that he was not your average stage director. His attempt to make himself into just that---to adapt himself to a pattern of routine and overwork---is presenting a bizarre spectacle of artistic suicide, because what happens when you do too much is that you do too little. Shows get put on, as this "Black Rider" was put on, slackly, without people in the audience being able to feel---as if the force were drilling through their heads---the intense pressure of the director's eyes to vivify each gesture, each move, each shift of an item of decor. For the moment, we've lost what used to distinguish Mr. Wilson's stage vision. I miss the length, too. And why the rush? To give us a restaging of "The Addams Family," and a stage version of Puccinni's melodrama. "parts about "Madame Butterfly" deleted here"

"The Black Rider" was a different kind of disappointment. In recent years, Mr. Wilson's hectic activity has been divided largely between staging operas in Paris and working with theatre companies in Germany: the Schaubuhne of Berlin and the Thalia Theatre of Hamburg. It was for the Thalia company that he put together "The Black Rider" nearly four years ago, and, more recently, "Alic," also with music and lyrics by Tom Waits. As has become the way of things, Mr. Wilson's productions come to this country only after they've been seen in Europe---and seen widely in the case of "The Black Rider," which the Thalia took to Vienna and Paris, and which the company recorded for Austrian televison. So belatedness may have been partly responsible for the weak effect of the piece at BAM. Vampires? That was 1992.

But I don't think that's the whole dismal story. The thing just didn't seem a very interesting piece. I'm not sure why anyone should have decided, other than for very morbid reasons, that William Burroughs would be the person to rewrite the tale of a young man tricked by the Devil's gift of magic bullets into the shooting of his bride on their wedding day---the tale behind Weber's "Der Freischutz." The lyrics had some wit, wonder and oddity when they tried---as in Mr. Burrough's "That's the way the potato mashes/That's the way the pan flashes/That's the way the market crashes," and so on through other spendidly boneheaded rhymes, or Mr. Waits' striking lines, "November has tied me/To an old dead tree/Get word to April/To rescue me"---but mostly, they didn't try. As for Mr. Waits' music, it's all in the graze and grizzle of his voice. Listening to his recording of the songs, you'd think you were hearing from the next Kurt Weill; as delivered by the Thalia actors, the score sounded like a stickwork of nursery rhymes. It needed, too, a band that could do what Mr. Waits found that the Californian players on his recording could do: "'Frankentein' the music into something like a beautiful train wreck." (The railway imagery goes on, in the recording, in the lumbering weight of the rhythms and the metal-on-metal grate of the sound---qualities that were replaced in the Brooklyn performance by looseness and insipidity.)

The best musical moments at BAM---also the funniest---were those intoned by the reocorded voice of Mr. Burroughs. That was the way the pan flashed. And it flashed only fitfully too, in the stage presentation. One scene recalled the focused bizarreness of Mr. Wison's earlier days: the feeling of people onstage being thoroghly absorbed in what they're doing, and completely unfussed to be doing it in public, for an audience that can't but find it inscrutable---In this key scene of precision mystery, the heroine awoke in a room filled with the bloody carcasses of indistinguishable quadrupeds, with, to the rear, two people dressed as incarnations of Horus, and in front, a lady in an evening gown slowly crossing the stage while making animal noises.

Whoever was responsible for the amplification of those noises---and for the projection and transformation of other vocal sounds throughout the piece---is some kind of genius: Mr. Wilson has the knack of attracting them. Ms. Parmeggiani was again the costume designer, turning her fancy this time toward "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" rather than toward the Noh theatre, but with equally effective results. The problems weren't in the technicalities and the accoutrements, and they weren't essentially in the performances: the actors may have been deficient as clowns and siners, but they offered fiercely clean projection, startling grimaces, and a magnificent collection of muscular dysfunctions. No, what crippled the piece was what had, though so differently, crippled the "Madame Butterfly" production: a central lack of seriousness, a vaunting of style.

In "The Black Rider," there was no subject that the production was betraying or ignoring, but maybe for that reason, Mr. Wilson's betrayal of his own achievements and potentialities was the more melancholy to observe. Items from his previous productions---moving beams and boxes of light, colored spots used to illuminate specific actors or objects, scenes mimed in slow motion (as the whole climactic scene of the marriage-murder was), framework furniture---were dealt onto the stage like cards from a pack of tricks and deceits, their magic mocked by the slickness with which they could be pulled out again. The scene I described above, of meat, gods and a moving lady, wasn't much more than a rehash, seemingly calculated to make Mr. Wilson's admirers, me among them, fill up its vacancy with hope and memory.

For the moment, memory is all we have. Only the odd blurry photograph and library videotape appear to survive to represent Mr. Wilson's great works of the early seventies. The videotape of the prologue to the fourth act of "Deafman Glance" was made in 1981, more than a decade after the original piece, and it's a glacial entombment. But hope can persist. In a recent interview in a French magazine, Mr. Wilson gave a hint of being jaded with international success, and of wanting to devote more time to his projects with students in Water Mill, on Long Island. We'll see.

Paul Griffiths - January 10, 1994
The New Yorker January 10, 1994 pp. 76-80



Germany has had a problem with its artistic expressions. The second world war created damaging associations. In a recent article, German musician Blixa Bargeld of the band Einsterzend Neaubauten said "That culture which existed before the war is rightly forbidden to us, because of what it lead to--or at best, did not prevent. The point I am trying to make is that the German tradition is gone. We hate our culture and our language. We cannot redeem that tradition." William Burroughs, Tom Waits, and Robert Wilson have tapped into that tradition, pulled out two centuries worth of art, and created the opera "The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets". First premiered in Germany in 1990 by the Thalia Theater of Hamburg, Germany, "The Black Rider" draws initially from the story "Der Freischutz", written by August Apel and Friedrich Laun in 1810, based on a 17th century ghost story about a young couple in love and to win over the fiancee's heart, the young man must prove himself as a capable marksmen. A feat the clerk can only succeed with the help of some magic bullets, crafted and tested by the devil himself. Within several years "Der Freischuts" was turned into an opera by the romantic German composer Baron Karl Maria Von Weber.

The recent version, which was first performed in the states at the Brooklyn Academy of Music during Thanksgiving day weekend, was started when Robert Wilson discovered the story and wanted to do an adaptation of it. Robert Wilson started out as a choreographer, painter and set designer. In his work, though, these jobs are really one and the same, because either the people in most of his performances seem like mobile props (especially when they are physically involved with the set, carrying large puppets and such) or his actual sets and use of lights become the center of action. Wilson's works are often long and very slow moving, but his visuals work very well with music. Usually he comes up with the base idea, maybe some sketches and the musicians and he build from that idea. He has worked with artists ranging from David Byrne to Hans Peter Kuhn. His most famous opera Einstein on the Beach, with music by Philip Glass. This five hour piece, which premiered in 1976, turned musical theater and opera on their heads and gave rise to other works that would seem not to fit in the genre of opera, such as The Cave by Steve Reich and Beryl Kerot, Njinga the Queen King by Ione and Pauline Oliveros,(last minute note..someone on post-classical brought Oliveros up and i forgot to mention this) and The Black Rider itself. To provide music and lyrics for The Black Rider, Robert Wilson picked Tom Waits who had done the music to the Jim Jarmusch films Down By Law and Mystery Train. This time he didn't just add music to the visuals, but created much of the story with his lyrics. To flesh it out, Wilson and Waits invited author William Burroughs to write the libretto, adding humor, autobiographical in jokes, and helping along the analogy of the magic bullets and drugs.

Using Der Freischuts as a starting point, they created an opera that draws from German culture throughout. When, in the prologue, the character of Pegleg presents the Company, they each walk out with a distinct musical phrasing and physical gesture. These gestures and musical passages act sort of like Wagnerian leit motifs as they appear throughout the performance. This modern type of musical theater doesn't always stress a linear narrative, or the importance of any one thing over the other. This is shown in scenes where the characters' movements, somewhere between dance and elaborate slapstick; through the set and settings, which frame and become part of the picture; and the music, which isn't stressed as being the main attraction. These features have often been referred to as modern examples of Wagner's gesamtkunstwerk. The performance makes constant references to German Romantic Operas, from Weber to Wagner, not only in the themes and techniques, but also in musical quotes. The opera mixes this with aspects of the performance borrowed from later German art, though seemingly only pre-war. The jagged bizarre sets, dream sequences, stark lighting and chiaroscuro make-up on the actors reminds one immediately of German Expressionism and Surrealism. The set and the make up may have been borrowed from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the classic German silent film. When, after the introductions, Pegleg walks across the stage, dressed all in black, with tails on his jacket and slicked back hair and white make up and sings "Come on along with the Black Rider, we'll have a gay old time," you can see Joel Gray, the master of ceremonies of the play Cabaret introducing his dancing girls to a club full of people ignoring the Nazi's eminent rise to power.

The Black Rider was a fascinating event. Considering the unorthodoxy of Tom Waits songs and orchestration for the small ensemble of assorted instruments ranging from metal saw to e-mu emax sampler. The music sounded like a cabaret being presented in a southern juke parlor. The singing ranged form the aforementioned cabaret to operatic. The texts, the story and the action were a puzzle, the pieces being the actions of the main characters, their dreams, fragments of even older fairy tales and seemingly unrelated monologues. This made the first couple of scenes a little difficult to follow, but constant referral to the synopsis provided, helped quite a bit. (The play was mostly in German except for random words). Luckily, the opera had supertitles, a large rectangular screen above the stage that provided the audience with the translated dialogue, which was obviously helpful but sometimes distracting from the action. The sets were mostly abstract, using colorful lights and neon lights shining on and surrounded by harsh (i have no idea what belonged here, make up your own sequitor) magical bullets that lead straight to the Devil's work ("just like marywanna leads to heroin," in Burroughs' words). The humor in this dark tale comes from its ironies and absurd situations. When Wilhelm, the young lover, goes out hunting with the magic bullets and is successful, he fills the house of his lover, Käthchen, with literally dozens of bloody dead animal carcasses. When Käthchen's father, Bertram, sees the bloody mess, he's so happy with Wilhelm that he's willing to let Käthchen marry him and at this point the three of them, Bertram, his wife and Käthchen's maid all put themselves in the skin of the carcasses and sing a merry song while dancing. Later, Käthchen's uncle speaks a lengthy monologue in English about Earnest Hemmingway's selling of the rights to "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" to a Hollywood producer. This movie deal is seen as a faustian bargain. Wilhelm made a pact with the devil to get his magic bullets (at a neon crossroads, no less) and this won the acceptance of his new father's love, but of course, also caused tragedy.

Robert Wilson's abstract staging and character directions are impossible to date. There are no "historic" buildings in the Black Rider, just squares and lights. The costumes were the same, belonging to no period one would recognize. The brilliant music, which mixes cabaret with jug band blues, and the text, which makes references to the twentieth century even though the story seems considerably older, gives "The Black Rider" a timeless quality, covering timeless themes, mainly dependence, whether on drugs, on other people's acceptance, magic bullets, or the devil. These themes are presented beautifully through the careful synchronization of music, text, movement, and space.

SDS0564@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu - February 18, 1994
Preliminary "review" of The Black Rider for the Oberlin College Review



Written with William S. Burroughs and Robert Wilson, Tom Waits' version of their operetta is an intriguing mess that tends to be too scattered to be truly effective.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All-Music Guide, © 1992 - 2002 AEC One Stop Group, Inc.



Summoned to Hamburg, Germany, to write music for a live stage production of Robert Wilson's The Black Rider, musical mastermind Waits took to the task at hand with gusto, assembling an eclectic crew of musicians to become "the pit band [he'd] always dreamed of." Several years later Waits assembled another "orchestra" in San Francisco to record many of the songs he'd written for the live production. Those tracks are found here, alongside a few rough gems from sessions in Hamburg. You'll find some musical matter familiar to Waits fans: accordions, carnivals, violas, banjos, the devil (a key figure in The Black Rider), a singing saw, bassoons, and trombones. Waits's many voices tell the rather disjointed story with a variety of musical styling, and the assembled whole is pretty much a sum of its parts (but at least they're interesting parts): a touch of Day of the Dead, a whiff of carny, a nod to Brecht, a dash of film noir, and the scent of narcosis (William Burroughs makes an appearance here). Not easy listening, by any means, but a feast for the ears.

Lorry Fleming, Amazon.com



What the Critics Say...

Rolling Stone (3/10/94, p.64) - 4 Stars - Very Good - "...Waits' work has grown consistently stronger, more ambitious and less self-conscious...."

Spin (1/94, p.74) - Highly Recommended - "...Tom Waits has suddenly emerged to become the hardest-working epiglottis in show business....nothing like a pinch of hobo logic to spice up a successful marriage of high opera and low fidelity..."

Q Magazine (12/93, p.116) - 3 Stars - Good - "...[BLACK RIDER] is eclectic, bleak, funny, plain barmy in places and, at a couple of exquisite moments, as touching as anything Tom Waits has recorded..."

New Musical Express (11/13/93, p.29) - 8 - Excellent - "...with records as challenging, tuneful and blackly comic as THE BLACK RIDER, Tom Waits threatens to come as close as anyone since Brecht to piecing together a cross-cultural jigsaw that doesn't fall apart..."

Melody Maker (11/13/93, p.32) - "...Roll up for ringside seats and prepare to be amazed, astounded and bedevilled. For this ringmaster has no living equal...."

Entertainment Weekly (11/12/93, p.64) - "...[THE BLACK RIDER] showcases [Tom Wait's] penchant for disturbing mood music and grotesque sentiment..." - Rating: B

Stereo Review (3/94, p.98) - Performance: Harrowing / Recording: Good - "...Waits mines instrumental sounds like the pipeline to the netherworld itself...his vocals sound drawn across broken glass and rusty nails, and filtered through bubbling blood...."



Den Faden, den Barden-Rauhbein Tom Waits bei der Theaterinszenierung von Robert Wilson am Hamburger Thalia- Theater aufnahm,spinnt er als "Black Rider" vollends aus: in zwanzig Songs und musikalischen Versatzstücken, die ohne weiteres aus einer Weill-Brechtschen Produktion stammen könnten. Die grummelnde Stimme quengelt steinerweichend zum Akkordeon,quetscht sich zwischen chansoneske Orchestertöne,geleitet von Baßklarinette und Viola. Das ist bei aller Güte selbst für die Waits-Gemeinde schwer verdauliche Kost.

© Audio



20 Titel - Songs und Instrumentals - schrieb Tom Waits für das Bühnenstück "The Black Rider" von Robert Wilson und William S. Burroughs, das im März 1990 am Hamburger Thalia-Theater uraufgeführt wurde. Aufgenommen seinerzeit in Hamburg und zum Teil später in San Francisco, kommt die Musik in Waits-typischer Manier provokativ ungeschliffen daher, mal polternd perkussiv ("Russian Dance"), dann sanft und voller Poesie ("The Briar And The Rose"). Wieder einmal entzieht sich Waits jeglicher Kategorisierung, nicht zu überhören sind jedoch Anleihen bei Kurt Weill sowie der Kabarettmusik der 30er Jahre - insbesondere im Titelsong, den Waits genüßlich mit einem deutschen "R" phrasiert.

© Stereoplay



"The Black Rider" is a German fairy tale too nasty to read before bed, about a man who makes a deal with the devil and goes insane. When director Robert Wilson wanted to adapt "The Black Rider" into an opera, he wisely chose a librettist and a composer who have spent their careers telling that kind of story: William Burroughs and Tom Waits. After the production won raves in Berlin, Waits returned to California, got together his own orchestra, and reinterpreted the opera himself, even bringing in Burroughs to sing a track. As rendered by Burroughs, the world of The Black Rider is smoky, sinister, and obsessed with addiction-kind of a North European Interzone. Waits avant-sounding orchestra conveys the mood accurately; its skillful noise-tinged instrumentals and creative percussion make everything sound like a saloon on a rainy night. Waits himself is in good form, stretching his standard persona to evoke a million different types of villainy. There is the clubfooted lounge romance of "I'll Shoot The Moon," the satanic skulk of "Just The Right Bullets," and doom and resignation to spare. Luckily, there are also some waltz-paced numbers in the "Sweet Old World" vein. As always, these give one the feeling of being sung to sleep by a monster-the Cookie Monster, in fact.

© 1978-1999 College Media, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.



When Tom Waits released Swordfishtrombones back in 1983, he hit upon a breakthrough: Not only did he realize he could make whatever raucous din he wanted and get away with it, but he also took the first steps towards the audio verité that's made his current music come to life as a series of little sound paintings. His music has gotten darker and the shadows have grown longer with each release, and it was only a matter of time before something as menacing and chilling as The Black Rider worked its way into his canon. It's as if one dark night, after all the years spent in dim bars and flophouses, fraternizing with the cast of downtrodden characters that populate his songs, he met up with a well dressed gentleman who finally offered him a deal he couldn't refuse. The commission: The Black Rider, the "soundtrack" album for the Robert Wilson-directed opera (with a libretto by none other than William S. Burroughs), which premiered in Hamburg in 1990. Although Waits himself did not appear in the original opera, this album features him performing his songs, accompanied (and often nearly drowned out) by such instrumental curiosities as singing saws, train whistles, log drums, duck calls, and contra bassoons. Everything Waits has done in the last decade has been pointing towards his work's wider recognition, striving towards the level of achievement of a Kurt Weill or Marcel Duchamp of this century; as The Black Rider gallops off into the forest, Waits reaches ever nearer to that goal.

© 1978-1999 College Media, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.



An unsettling German fairytale becomes an unsettling LP and stage production courtesy of Tom Waits, William S. Burroughs and Robert Wilson. Underworldly, nightmarish and harrowing, The Black Rider vaults Waits (whose 1992 Bone Machine finished in our Top 25 of `92 and picked up a Grammy to boot) into the company of this century's finest artist/composers.

© 1978-2002 College Media, Inc., Inc. All Rights Reserved.



Just when it seemed that Los Angeles' premier bar casualty could not get any weirder, on his 15th album, Tom Waits teams up with beat writer William Burroughs (who turns up on one song) to score a 19th-century opera. The 20 tracks, written for director Robert Wilson's re-vision of The Black Rider, back the twisted Faustian tale with dark and wickedly funny melodies. (Onstage, the songs are performed by actors, though it's hard to imagine these sick numbers done by anyone other than Waits.)

From his first gutter-folk album (Closing Time, from 1973) to last year's experimental masterpiece, Bone Machine, Waits' work has grown consistently stronger, more ambitious and less self-conscious. The Black Rider continues that tradition. Its songs offer the morbid excitement of a ride on a decrepit old Tilt-a-Whirl.

The rich, dizzying tunes incorporate graveyard fright noises, bizarre piano sounds and creepy sci-fi whistles into traditional, orchestrated Fiddler on the Roof-style melodies. A clanking, tin-can beat lurches through the material like a frantic Ichabod Crane, while disturbing violin and contorted blasts of French horn trudge along like drunken, determined sailors.

Waits' wrenching, lounge-loser vocals hawk in ragged, carney-style tones; love songs consist of lines like "I want to build/A nest in your hair." Burroughs' voice hobbles through on his one track like a crotchety passerby – "T'ain't no sin to take off your skin/And dance around in your bones," he moans in a sexier moment – while in others the evil chatter and whining of anonymous tormented souls exude a hysterically pathetic quality.

Although this odd, operatic collaboration with Burroughs and Wilson does not completely fit in with the whiskey-and-bar-stool concept of Waits' previous albums, it does continue his intriguing expansion into more surreal realms. His dervishlike approach to The Black Rider makes you gawk like a freakshow spectator in fear, fascination and delight.

LORRAINE ALI - RS 677
© Copyright 2002 RollingStone.com



The songs and incidental tunes by Tom Waits on The Black Rider were commissioned for a musical drama of that name based on an old German legend, to be staged by director Robert Wilson (who’d previously worked with Philip Glass). It had a script by William Burroughs, and all three collaborated in the production. In performance (by the German theater company which commissioned it, and recently at the Brooklyn Academy of Music), the songs are distributed among a cast of twelve, backed by an eight-piece orchestra. The versions here are by Waits, except for the odd vocal by Burroughs (and I mean odd—his crooning/moaning on the old chestnut “T’aint No Sin” is spooky), and were mostly recorded with different musicians some four years after he wrote them.

Given the direction of his work in the ’80s, it was a logical step for Waits to take up such a project; much of his work, especially Frank’s Wild Years, had a narrative link between the songs. Perhaps he also sensed stagnation ahead and was looking for a new approach, like the way he reinvented himself on Swordfishtrombones after his earlier beatnik/bum period ran out of steam.

It didn’t work; most of the songs on The Black Rider are as disappointing as those on his last album, 1992’s Bone Machine. For similar reasons: on far too many songs, pompously cryptic or pseudo-philosophical lyrics try to get by on inadequate musical legs, or hitch a lift on someone else’s worn-out wheels. The title song has a pump organ straight from the prewar German movie of Brecht and Weill’s Threepenny Opera, dramatic conceits out of David “I’m So Weird” Lynch, and Waits imitating Joel Grey’s German-accented MC in Cabaret. It’s followed by “November,” which serves up the language and cadences of a Leonard Cohen song in Waits’s usual croak, as if he’s about to throw up, or expire.

I should admit I’ve never been a great fan of Waits; he always seemed like a phony to me. How seriously could you take his sub-Bukowski barstool act, so obviously a put-on, especially the vocal wheeze (unlike, say, Randy Newman’s perfectly fine mumble)? His ’80s albums had a broader focus and were occasionally fascinating, though they still relied too much on overstylized boho blues. There was always a song or two on which vocal mannerisms and hokey musical props were dropped and a melody developed its potential (“Downtown Train”), but artificially distressed formulaic riffs and arbitrary rattles and clankings increasingly took the place of real musical effort, disastrously so on Bone Machine.

Some of the songs here are better than that. The mournful “The Briar and the Rose” is quietly thrilling; it’s one of Waits’s stronger vocal outings and melodies (though characteristically not wholly original-sounding); and the organ, viola, double-bass, and clarinet accompaniment (by German musicians from the original performances) works perfectly. Another ballad, “I’ll Shoot the Moon,” with a later American fascimile of the original orchestra, is just as effective. “Crossroads” (with lyrics by Burroughs) is delivered by Waits in a voice that almost parodies the old guy’s marvellous narrative whine, and works both as song and dramatic narrative. True, WSB’s words show up Waits’s more limited talents as a lyricist; though Burroughs has flirted with phoniness himself, he knows real bleakness, and can summon it up with clear-eyed, unsentimental power.

Overall, though, there’s a lot of uncompelling material here. Maybe it’s unfair to judge it as a regular Tom Waits album—the songs were written for a particular function, to be performed by different vocalists. Certainly, I’d rather hear them done that way. But The Black Rider is offered as a Tom Waits album, and while it’s not a flat-out bad Tom Waits album, it’s hardly a great one.

Steve Connell - January 1, 1994
Puncture
 

 L y r i c s


LUCKY DAY OVERTURE

Ladies and gentlemen
Harry's Harbour Bizarre is proud to present
Under the Big Top tonight
Human Oddities
That's right
You'll see the Three Headed Baby
You'll see Hitler's brain
See Lea Graff the German midget who sat in J.F. Morgan's lap

You'll see Priscilla Bajano
The monkey woman
Jo Jo the dog face boy
I'm Milton Malone, the human skeleton

See Grace McDaniel's
The mule faced woman
And she's the homeliest woman in the world

Under the Big Top tonight
Never before seen
And if you have a heart condition, please be warned

Don't forget to visit our snack bar at Charleston Grotto
Al lsales are final
Void where prohibited by law

You'll see Sealo the seal boy who has flippers for arms
You'll see Johnny Eck, the man born without a body
He walks on his hands
He has his own orchestra and is an excellent pianist

See Gerd Bessler, the human pincusion
And don't forget, it's ladies' night at Harvy's Harbour Bizarre
You'll see Ko Ko the bird girl
Mortando, the human fountain

Step a little
A little closer ladies and gentlemen and don't be shy
Dig deep in your pockets

You'll see Radion, the human torso
Deep from the jungles of Africa
Ladies and gentlemen, Harry's Harbour Bizarre
Ladies and gentlemen


THE BLACK RIDER

Come on along with the Black Rider
We'll have a gay old time
Lay down in the web of the black spider
I'll drink your blood like wine

So come on in
It ain't no sin
Take off your skin
And dance around your bones

So come along with the Black Rider
We'll have a gay old time

Anchors away with the Black Rider
I'll drink your blood like wine
I'll drop you off in Harlem with the Black Rider
Out where the bullets shine

And when you're done
You cock your gun
The blood will run
Like ribbons in your hair

So come along wit hthe Black Rider
We'll have a gay old time

Come on along with the Black Rider
I've got just the thing for thee
Come on along with the Black Rider
I want your company

I'll have the veal
A lovely meal
That's how I feel
May I use your skull for a bowl

Come on along with the Black Rider
We'll have a gay old time


NOVEMBER

No shadow
No stars
No moon
No care
November
It only believes
In a pile of dead leaves
And a moon
That's the color of bone

No prayers for November
To linger longer
Stick your spoon in the wall
We'll slaughter them all

November has tied me
To an old dead tree
Get word to April
To rescue me
November's cold chain

Made of wet boots and rain
And shiny black ravens
On chimney smoke lanes
November seems odd
You're my firing squad
November

With my hair slicked back
With carrion shellac
With the blood from a pheasant
And the bone from a hare

Tied to the branches
Of a roebuck stag
Left to wave in the timber
Like a buck shot flag

Go away you rainsnout
Go away, blow your brains out
November


JUST THE RIGHT BULLETS

There is a light in the forest
There is a face in the tree
I'll pull you out of the chorus
And the first one's always free

You can never go hunting
With just a flintlock and a hound
You won't go home with a bunting
If you blow a hundred rounds

It takes much more than wild courage
Or you'll hit just the tattered clouds
You must have just the right bullets
And the first one's always free

You must be careful in the forest
Broken glass and rusty nails
If you're to bring back something for us
I have bullets for sale

Why be a fool when you can chase away
Your blind and your gloom
I have blessed each one of these bullets
And they shine just like a spoon

To have sixty silver wishes
Is a small price to pay
They'll be your private little fishes
And they'll never swim away

I just want you to be happy
That's my only wish
I'll fix your wagon and your musket
And the spoon will have his dish

And I shudder at the thought of your
Poor empty hunter's pouch
So I'll keep the wind from your barrel
And bless the roof of your house


BLACK BOX THEME

Instrumental


T'AIN'T NO SIN

When you hear sweet syncopation
And the music softly moans
T'ain't no sin to take off your skin
And dance around in your bones

When it gets too hot for comfot
And you can't get an ice cream cone
T'ain't no sin to take off your skin
And dance around your bones

Just like those bamboo babies
Down in the South Sea tropic zone
T'ain't no sin to take off your skin
And dance around your bones


FLASH PAN HUNTER/INTRO

Instrumental


THAT'S THE WAY

That's the way the stomach rumbles
That's the way the bee bumbles
That's the way the needle pricks
That's the way the glue sticks
That's the way the potato mashes
That's the way the pan flashes
That's the way the market crashes
That's the way the whip lashes
That's the way the teeth knashes
That's the way the gravy stains
That's the way the moon wanes


THE BRIAR AND THE ROSE

I fell asleep down by the stream
And there I had the strangest dream
And down by Brennan's Glenn there grows
A briar and a rose

There's a tree in the forest
But I don't know where
I built a nest out of your hair
And climbing up into the air
A briar and a rose

I don't know how long it has been
But I was born in Brennan's Glenn
And near the end of spring there grows
A briar and a rose

Picked the rose one early morn
I pricked my finger on a thorn
It had grown so high
It's winding wove the briar around the rose

I tried to tear them both apart
I felt a bullet in my heart
And all dressed up in springs and clothes
The briar and the rose

And when I'm buried in my grave
Tell me so I will know
Your tears will fall
To make love grow
The briar and the rose


RUSSIAN DANCE

Instrumental


GOSPEL TRAIN/ORCHESTRA

Instrumental


I'LL SHOOT THE MOON

I'll shoot the moon
Right out of the sky
For you baby
I'll be the pennies
On your eyes
For you baby

I want to take you
Out to the fair
Here's a red rose
Ribbon for your hair

I'll shoot the moon
Right out of the sky
For you baby
I'll shoot the moon
For you

A vulture circles
Over your head
For you baby
I'll be the flowers
After you're dead
For you baby

I want to build
A nest in your hair
I want to kiss you
And never be there

I'll shoot the moon
Right out of the sky
For you baby
I'll shoot the moon
For you


FLASH PAN HUNTER

The flash pan hunter sways with the wind
His rifle is the sound of the morning
Each sulfurous bullet way have it's own wit
Each cartridge comes with a warning
Beware of elaborate telescopic meats
They will find their way back to the forest

CHORUS
For Wilhelm can't wait
To be Peg Leg's crown
As the briar is strangling
The rose back down

His back shall be my slender new branch
It will sway and bend in the breeze
As the devil does his polka
Wit ha hatchet in his hand
As a sniper in the branches of the trees
As the vulture flutters down
As the snake sheds his dove
Wilhelm's cutting off his fingers
So they'll fit into his glove

CHORUS


CROSSROADS

Now, George was a good straight boy to begin with, but there was bad blood
In him; someway he got into the magic bullets and that leads straight to
Devil's work, just like marijuana leads to heroin; you think yo ucan take
Them bullets or leave 'em, do you?
Just save a few for your bad days

Well, now, we all have those bad days when you can't shoot for shit.

The more of them magics you use, the more bad days you have without them
So it comes down finally to all your days being bad without the bullets
It's magics or nothing
Time to stop chippying around and kidding yourself,
Kid, you're hooked, heavy as lead

And that's where old George found himself
Out there at the crossroads
Molding the Devil's bullets
Now a man figures it's his bullets, so it will
Hit what he wants to hit
But it don't always work that way

You see, some bullets is special for a single aim
A certain stag, or a certain person
And no matter where you are, that's where the bullet will end up
And in the moment of aiming, the gun turns into a dowser's wand
And point where the bullet wants to go

(George Schmid was moving in a series of convulsive spasms, like someone
with an epileptic fit, with his face distorted and his eyes wild like a
lassoed horse bracing his legs. But something kept pulling him on. And now
he is picking up the skulls and making the circle.)

I guess old George didn't rightly know what he's getting himself into
The fit was on him and it carried him right to the crossroads


GOSPEL TRAIN

Come on people
Got to get on board
Train is leavin'
And there's room for one more
God, don't listen to the devil
He got ways to move you
This train don't carry no smokers
This train...

Well, come on people
'Cause it's startin' to rain
Get on board, it's the gospel train
Don't listen to the devil
Don't listen to the devil
Satan will fool you
Satan will fool you
I said Satan will fool you
Well, this train don't carry no smokers
This train
This train
Wooo
Wooo

Come on people: get on board
Train is leavin'
ANd there's room for one more
Just trust in the Lord
Wooo
Woooo
Woooo

Listen to me
Come on people
'Cause it's starting to rain
Get on board
Ride the gospel train
Don't listen to the devil
He got ways to move you


INTERLUDE

Instrumental


OILY NIGHT

Oily night (repeated)


LUCKY DAY

The prettiest girl
In all the world
Is in a little Spanish town
But I left her for a Bonnie lass
And I told her
I'd see her around
But that Bonnie lass
And her heart of glass
Would not hold a candle

To bumming around
So don't cry for me
For I'm going away
And I'll be back some lucky day

Tell the boys back home
I'm doing just fine
I left my troubles and woe
So sing about me
For I can't come home
I've many more miles to go

Why, there's Miss Kelsey
You taught dance at our school
And old Johnny O'Toole
I'll still beat you at pool
So don't cry for me
For I'm going away
And I'll be back some lucky day

Now when I was a boy
My daddy sat me on his knee
And he told me
He told me many things
And he said sone
There's a lot of things in this world
You're gonna have no use for
ANd when you get blue
And you've lost all your dreams
There's nothin' like a campfire
And a can of beans

Why, there's Miss Kelsey
She taught dance at our school
And old Johnny O'Toole
I'll still beat you at pool
So don't cry for me
For I'm going away
And I'll be back some lucky day


THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER

I love the way
The tattered clouds
Go wind across the sky

As summer goes
And leave me
With a tear in my eye

I'm taking out my winter clothes
My garden knows what's wrong
The petals of my favorite rose
Be in the shadows dark and long

Through every year
It's very clear
I should be used
To carrying on
But I can't be found
In the garden
Singing this song

When the last
Rose of summer is gone


CARNIVAL

Instrumental

 M P 3   S a m p l e s


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