Franks Wild Years

Product Information

Temptation" and "Straight to the Top (Vegas)" featured in Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), and "Innocent When You Dream" featured in Smoke (1995). Steppenwolf's head was actor Gary Sinise (who would later win an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in Forrest Gump and turn in strong performances in Apollo 13, Mission to Mars, Ransom, and Of Mice and Men).

See, by running a small theatre, if I want a blue light and an oversized cocktail glass and a red clock and a midget in a wet-suit, I can have it without having to send out, tuba, trombone, banjo, accordian, electric stick and an emcee with a pencil-thin mustache and a Mexican accent. Elvis Costello included Franks Wild Years on his list of essential albums, highlighting "Hang on St. Eich (Steppenwolf's managing director, 1986): " It wasn't as dramatic as some people would like to make it out to be. Tom Waits (1999): " You have to be a little foolish to do something because a play takes a lot of energy- emotionally, financially. Elated to see that the Tom Waits albums are being reissued, one, I can retire the originals which are now too damn valuable to be playing, and two, Waits becomes available on vinyl for some for the first time.all these above are part of a bigger picture of cutting corners and abandoning quality control, at least for the european pressings made in czech republic. They had met in New York City (December, 1984) after Waits had seen "Einstein On The Beach" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Tom Waits (1985): "It actually starts out with Frank at the end of his rope, despondent, penniless, on a park bench in East St. Working for Coppola's One From The Heart must have been an excellent opportunity for Waits to witness the dynamics of acting and directing. The final offering of the cycle, Frank’s Wild Years, is in some respects the one that stands out as the most individual.In 1985 it was decided Steppenwolf Company was going to stage the play at Chicago's Briar Street Theatre. While Franks featured a 14-member cast on stage, the album is all-Waits—yet suggests a multitude of characters by virtue of his chameleon vocals.

I’m glad I forked out a fiver for it as Way Down in the Hole is great and I can play the rest of the CD if I want to get rid of guests overstaying their welcome or if I feel the need to make my ears bleed. It is a manic harmony of all the voices and characters in his head, a stylistic gumbo that evokes a time that is not our own now and wasn’t even then, 25-years ago. Subtitled “Un Operachi Romantico in Two Acts”, the album is an adaptation of a stage play Waits wrote and preformed in. Laid aside was the blunderbuss loaded with coffin nails, torn pages of Burroughs, scurvy, hookers’ names and confetti. It was a wonderful record anyway, but this version just takes all the things that were great about it to start with and gives you more direct access to all of them without losing anything in the translation.Tom’s 12 July ‘23 newsletter: The good - Universal will reissue his Island Records catalog ~ Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, Frank’s Wild Years, Bone Machine, and The Black Rider ~ on CD and on vinyl this Fall.