"Adios Lounge"
'Beautiful Mess' (Thelonious Monster album), 1992
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Two entries into this thing and I've already broken my own rule. Some of you spelling sleuths out there might notice that, alphabetically, "Adios Lounge" actually comes before "After You Die." But starting this Tom Waits songs project with a song by someone not named Tom Waits seemed questionable. So I swapped ‘em. Make like Tom with Frito-Lay and sue me.
"Adios Lounge" is in fact a song by L.A.'s Red Hot Chili Peppers-adjacent alt-rock band Thelonious Monster. It features keyboard legend Al Kooper and mandolin great Sam Bush. But it really features Tom Waits.
Prominently.
Even if you barely knew Tom’s music - hell, even if you'd only ever read one of those "swallowed a carton of razor blades" descriptions of his voice - you could probably identify the chorus’s hoarse bellow. Honestly, you might be able to guess Waits is coming before he even sings a note. Here's how the song starts, in the verse sung by Thelonious Monster frontman Bob Forrest:
I know an old-timer
Just a nickel-and-dimer
At the bar down the Adios Lounge
And for whiskey and smokes
Recites poems and jokes
But he's not just your average clown
And he's entertaining nightly
Down the Adios Lounge
If someone asked you to guess which special guest was about to pop up to portray said old-timer, Tom would be an obvious choice. Him or Donald Fagen.
When Tom roars in, he sounds less like he's already perched on the barstool and more like he's kicking down the saloon door. It's the best guest slot I've heard him do (though I reserve the right to change my opinion, since I haven't head them all yet). The sloshed-scoundrel vocals almost feel like a Tom Waits cliché, but he puts so much passion into it - and the hook is so catchy - that it works.
The members of Thelonious Monster, though, seemed divided on the song. In 1993, Forrest (who later went on to fame as Dr. Drew's sidekick on Celebrity Rehab) told The Independent, “I met Tom Waits a few times and I wanted him to do a really old-style song…and he did it.” But in 2013, the band’s drummer Pete Weiss told an interviewer "The thing with Tom Waits, are you fucking kidding me. That's Mr Bojangles part 2. ‘Adios Lounge.’ What a hunk of fucking shit."
It wouldn't be the first time those two particular band members disagreed. Before Forrest got sober (hence Celebrity Rehab), he and Weiss would fight onstage regularly. So regularly, in fact, that Tom himself knew about it. Here’s a story Weiss told the Troubled Men podcast:
Bob had gone to see Keith Richards and the X-Pensive Winos at the Palladium. And Bob's a massive Tom Waits fan. So he's sitting there peeing in the bathroom, and he looks to his left and, oh my god it's Tom Waits! So Bob goes, ‘Oh my god!’ Because Bob is such a sycophant. ‘Oh my god, Tom Waits, you're my favorite!’ And Tom Waits says, ‘Calm down Bob.’ And Bob does a, ‘Huh?? You know my name?’ ‘Yeah you're that kid Bob from Thelonious Monster, right?… My wife just loves you guys, seen you guys a bunch. Tell me one thing, when you and that drummer fight onstage, is that shtick? Is that part of the act?’ And Bob goes, ‘No.’ And [Tom] goes, ‘Ahh, I knew it! I love that stuff.’
That said, neither Forrest nor Weiss nor Waits actually wrote "Adios Lounge." An obscure father-son duo named George and Bob Kuhn did. Judging from their Discogs credits, it appears to be the only song they ever wrote (or ever got someone to record, at least). More power to 'em. It's like hitting a home run at your first at-bat and then immediately retiring from the game of baseball.