Tom Waits
Purchase
Tom Waits’ images are Silver Gelatin Type LE (Laser Exposed) digital prints, professionally printed on Ilford Galeire Muligrade fiber paper, and processed individually.
Two Sizes: 8 x 10 | $245 and 11×14 | $350. Prices include domestic shipping. Custom sizes are also available.
Contact Amy Archer Photography to purchase images and ask questions.
Early June 1999
The most Wait-sian and moving moment I had through these photographs of him was not when I was with Tom, but twenty-two years later, in the early evening during my small show at the Torrefazione Café in Portland, Oregon
A group of women came in, a mother with her three grown daughters. They sat quietly, drinking coffee, looking around, not talking very much. When I said hello to them, they asked me if the photographer was in the Café, and I introduced myself. They asked me when Tom Waits was coming, they’d heard he be there. I told them, I was so sorry, that must be a rumor, he was not coming. They looked away from me, or down to their hands. They left a bit later. One of the daughters came up to me as the rest walked out and thanked me for the show. She said that their sister had recently died of cancer in their mother’s home, and on what they all knew would be her last night, she asked them to play “Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night” until she died.
Late August 1977
Nighttime in Greenwich Village.
After Son of Sam had been arrested, the New York City black out resulting in thousands of fires and riots mainly in the Bronx, and the release of “Star Wars.”
I’d worked late, taken the 6 train, and walked three blocks to my apartment.
Tom Waits and Norman Savage, my boyfriend, were leaning against an Impala, smoking. I ran up to my 4th floor studio, apartment, got my Nikon F2, and took photographs in the ambient, muggy light of University Place and East 11th.
They both started posing a bit, Waits started voguing, then we went to the Cedar Tavern.
The next day, Tom, Norman, their friend “Doc” a psychiatrist, Norman’s brother Bobby, and I drove out to Coney Island because Tom and I wanted to ride the Cyclone roller coaster. They’d shut it down right when we got there because it had started to rain. We went to a nearby diner with bulbous red booths and flappy menus. We hung out for a long time drinking watery coffee. At one point, I said I was from New Jersey, and Tom asked me what the Shore was like in summer, and if the girls wore those spangly tops. I said what made the Shore in the summer besides everything else was its smell. And that girls also wore jean shorts that practically ended at the bottom of their zippers.
“Foreign Affairs” came out that September. On the back cover, it says, “Thanks to Norman Savage, David “Doc” Feuer and Bobby Savage. I’ll see you in Coney Island.”
“Jersey Girl” on “Heart Attack and Vine” came out in 1980— later Shore-ized perfectly by Bruce Springsteen. Tom wrote it for Kathleen Brennan, who became his wife and music partner. Doc’s phone number is listed upside down on the front cover. When asked why by Stephen Peebles in a 1980 interview, Tom said, “That’s not his real number. I can give it to you if you want…Actually, I put my phone number on the back of a record once and got lots of phone calls from people with real clinical problems. I never really knew what to say to them. So, I told Doc I’d put his number on there and he could handle ’em.”
We all went to his SNL show when Tom came back in December. He played “Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson).” We couldn’t find him down on the set afterwards, and eventually saw him crouched on his heels behind a black curtain, smoking a cigarette. “Sucked,” he said. We went upstairs to the after-party. Belushi, Ackroyd and Bill Murray showed up in leather around 2:00am. They stood in a pack until I heard Belushi say, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.” When Tom came back from L.A. in March, we went to strip bars in the Bowery, then took the Staten Island Ferry over and back.
The last time I saw Tom was 1999, in Eugene, Oregon, right after the release of “Mule Variations.” He entered to his band’s jazz at the back of the auditorium, silhouetted by spotlight in a bowler hat throwing confetti over his shoulders and tooting a kid’s horn. His wife and three kids were in the audience. After an extraordinary hour of music, Tom cleared the stage except for a bass and piano.
Instant, loud cheering.
Tom sat down, rippled the keys for a while, then yelled out, “What do you wanna’ hear? New or old?”
“Old,” they yelled.
“Go to hell,” he yelled, and played “Tango Till They’re Sore.”
In the second encore, his son, Casey, played the drums for “I’m Big In Japan.” When Tom left the stage for the last time, he pointed behind him and yelled, “That’s my son.”
Twenty-one years later, when I took a break from teaching in Portland, Oregon, I finally developed these negatives at Safelight, a DIY darkroom. I had a few small shows in Portland cafes.
I sent a print of each photograph to Tom at Prairie Sun Recording Studio, on a former 10-acre chicken farm in Cotai, California. A woman from the Studio called me about a week later and thanked me. I’m glad Tom has them.
Never could get over not riding that Cyclone with him.