Beck’s unrestricted conversations with geniuses, Pt 1: Tom Waits

In a fervent attempt to create his own world of free discourse and unmitigated discussion, Beck Hansen, who has created some of the world’s most loved and genre-defying albums including the spastic Odelay! and sleazy sex-funk of Midnite Vultures, has created Irrelevant Topics. An interview series that sees Beck have intimate, no-holds-barred, free-form conversations with musical greats he admires, the ‘interviews’ will be published in parts regularly, in warts-and-all transcript style on his website, beck.com. The series is described as aiming to share interesting discussions between Beck and “musicians, artists, writers, etc on various subjects, without promotional pretext or editorial direction”.

The first in the series sees Beck freely converse with legendary musician and actor Tom Waits, who agreed to lend Beck “an hour of his time to talk about anything and nothing in particular”.

The compelling interview is akin to reading a dialogue transcript of a scene from Coffee and Cigarettes, the Jim Jarmush film that Tom Waits featured in alongside Iggy Pop and Jack and Meg White among others. Albeit more serious, the two discuss subjects such as the temporary nature of art and self promotion, objectivity vs subjectivity and the semantics of hierarchy. At one point they talk about how their art is affected by technology. How, when they are bereft of it, they must strip back their performance and rediscover their basic qualities.

“There’s too much of everything,” Waits says at one point. “A lot of people are afraid to explore their own peculiar taste for fear that it would be uncool.”

On how musicians’ music may be used against their will, Waits says, “Look. There were heavy metal bands whose music was being used to torture prisoners in Iraq. They played it real loud to get information. Well, they deprive you of sleep and they play these bands. And that’s all you get to listen to. It’s one particular song from this band. In the same way that they use it now in the parking lot of 7-11 when they play classical music. It keeps all the hoods away. They blast Beethoven. No one hangs out now, drinks beer in the parking lot. Changed everything.”

Read the full transcript here