"Carnival (Brunello Del Montalcino)"

'Night On Earth' soundtrack, 1991

Every Tom Waits Song is an email newsletter covering just that, in alphabetical order. Find more info here and sign up to get it sent straight to your inbox:

The Night on Earth soundtrack is the first credited appearance of drummer Mule Patterson. You can hear Mule hard at work on the instrumental “Carnival (Brunella Del Montalcino),” thumping along on a tomtom or two and tinkling some sort of chimes, before going into some marching-band snare later on.

Here’s Tom and the movie’s writer-director Jim Jarmusch discussing Mule:

JJ: Tell me about the drummer you used on the 'Night on Earth' score.
TW: Mule Patterson?
JJ: Yeah. How'd you meet Mule?
TW: Well, for a man who has not bathed ever in his life, studio work with him has started to become a problem and people just won't play with him.
JJ: He's the first drummer I've seen who shows up (with no instruments) and says, "Whaddya got?"
TW: Whaddya got. Mule "Whaddya got" Patterson.
JJ: And the gun thing kind of made me nervous.
TW: Yeah, y'know, I've talked to him, and we can't seem to reach him on that. That it's just no, y'know, you're gonna lose work.
JJ: Yeah, the loaded gun...
TW: The waving of guns around in the...studio, and you have people there...
JJ: The gun in the gym bag just kind of made me nervous.
TW: Yeah. The gun in the gym bag.
JJ: There's a couple of beers in there an a loaded .38.
TW: Yeah.
JJ: And some of those dry roasted peanuts, but in the small bags that you can't really buy, the ones that you get on the train or a plane or a bus.
TW: And that was his dinner.
JJ: That's what he had in the bag. No drumsticks.
TW: And the gun was also held together with string. There was a place where the whole handle mechanism was coming off the handle, and the hammer was loose.
JJ: I know that the grip was just electrical tape.
TW: Just tape, there was no more wood.
JJ: And also that the studio was way out in the middle of nowhere, but he didn't drive.
TW: He has no car.
JJ: Then he left.
TW: Some men fear him. Others admire him. Because he steals his promise, he'll steal his promise from being there. He'll show up, and if he doesn't like what's going on in the session, he'll walk out. He won't work it.
JJ: Right in the middle of a take?
TW: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You hope, you wanna keep him happy. That becomes the whole point of the session.

Does a name like “Mule Patterson” sound made up? Does an unwashed drummer showing up to the studio with dry roasted peanuts and a loaded gun held together by string sound like horseshit? Does this entire exchange seem like they’re making up these details as they go along?

It is, it does, and they are.

There is no Mule Patterson. “Mule Patterson” is Tom Waits. Tom played his own drums on the Night on Earth soundtrack but, for probably no reason other than it was funny, used a pseudonym in the album credits. Then he and Jarmusch built some Mule mythology (Mule variations?) in real time for that magazine story. You got to get behind the Mule…if you don’t want to get shot by an electrical-tape-and-string .38.

“Mule Patterson” would return on Blood Money, credited as performing the “pod” on “Misery Is the River of the World.”

Coming up next: Tom makes it limp a little