1968 Conqueror of American Rock - Chapter 144



Only Noblemtl

144. Jekyll & Hyde (1)

The Troubadour Club.

A 30-minute walk from the Sunset Strip takes you to Santa Monica Boulevard, where all roads meet. This club is located in the center of that road, where all roads meet.

It’s a tiny place compared to our club, but it’s one of West Hollywood’s music hot spots. It’s where Bob Dylan experimented with folk rock, where Janis Joplin drank the night before she died, and where Don Henley and Glenn Frey got drunk and decided to form the Eagles.

And then, on August 25, 1970, while we were on Radio Carolina in the UK, Elton John, a promising singer-songwriter who had flown in from England, made his successful US debut here for six nights.

The audience response to Elton John’s performance was explosive, and not long after his debut here, he jumped to number 8 on the Billboard singles chart with “Your Song.”

Like Britain’s Marquee Club, the Troubadour was a nightly hangout for aspiring stars, as well as record executives, managers, and weekly magazine reporters.

I used to go to the nearby clubs alone and watch performances secretly.

On a dusky evening, I opened the door to the Troubadour, wearing a suit and a bowler hat. The interior was dark and filled with acrid cigarette smoke. The small stage was lit up, and the people sitting in the audience were clinking glasses and watching the performance.

I sat at the bar and ordered a light Daiquiri.

A lonely piano sound could be heard through the thick smoke.

– Once upon a time you dressed so fine.

(You once dressed well.)

This song is Bob Dylan’s song, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’. But his voice is too gravelly. It’s not Bob Dylan’s voice. It’s a familiar voice that I’ve heard somewhere······.

I stared blankly at the stage.

A man wearing a hunting cap was playing the piano and singing, with a cigarette in his mouth. There was a glass of whiskey on the piano.

Yeah, that voice is definitely Tom Waits.

Tom Waits debuted in 1973. Heavily influenced by Bob Dylan, he sings about rough life at the bottom and songs based on blues and jazz. His voice was as famous as his lyrics.

Metallica’s James Hetfield later said this about him:

‘If you have Tom Waits’ songs, you don’t need alcohol or drugs.’

Anyway, the person who discovered him and gave him his debut was none other than Herb Cohen, Frank Zappa’s manager at the time. This is the person who made an unfair contract with Tom Waits and extorted money from him for nearly 10 years.

To the brash Frank Zappa, he was an angel, and to the naive Tom Waits, who knew nothing but music, he was a devil. He was a man with two faces. Even after his death in 2010, the copyright did not return to Tom, and critics later recalled it as ‘Tom Waits’s lost decade.’

He lived a life of alcohol and cigarettes, but he never hurt anyone or caused any accidents. He was also famous for being a loving husband, like Aerosmith’s Joe Perry. He even quit drinking in the early 80s and was active as a movie actor. He continued singing and acting until before I came to the past, and he was even inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.

I was a rock musician, but I really liked Tom Waits’ songs. Since I met him before his debut, I decided to give him back his ‘lost decade’.

When his song ended, the audience erupted in applause and cheers. He smiled chicly, grabbed the brim of his hat, and bowed his head slightly.

I went up to him and gave him a big tip. I think he had never received a tip this big before. Naturally, he looked shocked.

“I really enjoyed the song. If you don’t mind, I’d like to buy you a glass of whiskey.”

A huge tip and whiskey. There was no reason for him to refuse.

“Whiskey is always welcome.”

His speaking voice was the same as when he sang. I sat down at the bar with him and ordered a bottle of his favorite bourbon.

“Oh, you ordered not just one glass but a bottle. I guess you like alcohol quite a bit.”

“No, I’ll have this cocktail. Finish this and if there’s any left, take it with you or keep it.”

“Oh, then I will drink it gratefully without any hesitation, haha. I am Tom Waits.”

“I’m James Choi. Nice to meet you.”

He liked folk, blues, and jazz, and he didn’t seem to know me very well. I took out one of my company business cards and handed it to him.

“CW Entertainment? I’ve never heard of it before.”

“It’s a Korean-founded company. It was founded last year, so it’s not that big yet. They run a club called The Age of Rock on the Sunset Strip.”

“Oh, is that where the Bourbon A Go Go used to be?”

“yes that’s right.”

“Isn’t that where rock bands perform?”

“There are rock bands performing now, but they’re not really restricted by genre.”

I poured him a glass of whiskey and told him that I was working with Kings. We may not know him, but there is no American who doesn’t know Kings.

“Oh, Kings. You recently launched a music station called KMTV, right? Come to think of it, you······.”

I lifted my hat up slightly to show him my face and pulled it back down. If you watched the show, you may have seen my face on a few talk shows.

“I am the guitarist in a band called Sparkling Ripple.”

“I remember! The team that played with Jimmy at Woodstock last year!”

He slammed the table with his palm.

I put my index finger to my lips and made a gesture asking her to speak quietly.

“But how could someone so famous······.”

“I want to release your album.”

“Actually, Herb Cohen came to me a while ago and said he would let me do an album. He’s Frank Zappa’s manager.”

I almost was late.

“Did you also talk about the contract?”

“I don’t know much about that. I just told them to do whatever they wanted if they could just release an album.”

Oh my, you seem like such an innocent person.

“If you sign a contract with us, we can give you appearances at the Kings-run club, the grand theater in Las Vegas, and on KMTV. We can also explain all the terms of the contract so that you can understand them.”

I think this is enough to get over it.

“Oh, and a TV appearance in Las Vegas?”

His once hazy eyes became clearer.

* * *

After meeting Tom Waits, I returned home and it was pitch dark. Everyone was gathered in the living room, watching a movie with the lights off and eating popcorn.

“Eww!”

“Oh, surprise! What is it, you savage!”

Annie bent down and reached out both her hands to me, growling with a madman’s gaze.

“Do I still look like an anime to you? Ugh······.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“I’m not Annie. That guy is the weak, stupid guy inside me, hahaha!”

At that moment, Angela and Stella burst into laughter.

“James, Annie is watching that movie and imitating it.”

“What is that?”

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

When it came to ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’, I went to see the musical rather than the original. The guy who used to be the vocalist in Choi Gon’s band left the band after being offered the lead role in the musical. The other members all swore at him, but I still went to see the performance because of old feelings.

The movies currently being broadcast on TV are in black and white.

“James, you come and watch with me. This is the scene where you first become Hyde.”

Sister Stella briefly summarized the first part of the story.

The protagonist, Henry Jekyll, creates a drug to separate good and evil from the human body and injects it into his own body. As a result, he brings out Edward Hyde, the evil incarnation of himself.

I knew the basics, but it was new to me when I saw it in the movie. Jekyll eventually gets to the point where he can’t control Hyde. He decides to kill Hyde and commits suicide by drinking cyanide.

The overall story was similar to the musical, but there were some parts that were a little different. Still, it was the same in that it was a story about a split personality.

Not quite a split personality, but I was reminded of a two-faced Herb Cohen latching onto Tom Waits and trying to suck his blood.

And the faces of people who normally have a good appearance but then become completely different when intoxicated by drugs strangely overlapped.

* * *

After Tom Waits and I finished our contract at the company, we went to a nearby pub.

“For!”

We toasted the deal with a reduced-proof daiquiri, and he, of course, with bourbon.

“Thank you, James. Now I can sing the songs I really want to sing.”

“I’m more grateful that a musician like Tom signed with us.”

Now you don’t have to suffer for 10 years.

“James, this is a song I’m writing. What do you think?”

He unfolded a thick notebook and handed it to me.

‘The piano has been drinking (Not, me)’

(The piano is drunk, not me)

“Haha, the title itself is funny.”

This song was released 6 years later. The lyrics are a little different from what I know, so I think it’s still unfinished.

The carpet is overgrown and needs a haircut, the phone is out of cigarettes, the piano tuner is wearing a hearing aid, and the light is squinty and focuses on the wrong places. It was a witty lyric that made good use of personification and satire.

“It’s not because I’m drunk, it’s because the piano is drunk, haha.”

He took a sip of his whiskey and laughed heartily in a gravelly voice.

Tom Waits has written about 300 songs that I know of. People appear in his songs a lot. The names of the people in his songs alone are as many as 600, and the place names are as many as 400.

If you collected all his song lyrics, it would be enough to complete an epic novel. This can be seen as being greatly influenced by Bob Dylan.

There were so many different stories in his practice notebook.

“Wow, that’s really amazing. You’ve made so many songs.”

“It’s not finished yet. It’s just a practice piece, hehe.”

“You’re still so young, how did you manage to create such a large-scale work?”

“I was a hippie. I hitchhiked with my friends since I was eighteen, and we really wandered around a lot. We read a lot of books. We always had books in our bags when we traveled. We would pass the books around and discuss them. Most of my lyrics are inspired by characters or events in those novels. Classical literature in particular has a ton of techniques to use in lyrics, such as paradox, sarcasm, and humor. Folk tales and tales also contain a ton of great ideas.”

He was so excited that he was able to sign a contract and release an album that he told me all about his songwriting know-how.

Freddie Mercury got his ideas from fantasy novels he wrote, while Tom Waits found material in classics and folktales.

At that moment, I had the idea that I could write a song based on the movie, ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’, that I had recently watched with the members.