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In a contest of most Tom Waits-ian song title, “Earth Died Screaming” would rank high (though I’d still give the edge to “Misery’s the River of the World”). Turns out he didn’t come up with that title though himself. He borrowed it. “There's an old science fiction movie called The Earth Die[s] Screaming,” he explained in the Bone Machine press kit. “I’ve never seen the movie, I just heard the title. but I could work with that.”
The lyrics, about it raining mackerel and trout and all, were inspired by the Bible’s apocalyptic final book, Revelations. He spoke about the song’s origins for a promo CD given out to college radio stations. Here’s the full audio, with an excerpted and edited-down quote below.
I haven't written a song like that really before. It is a warning, like the end is near. The guys that I used to always love on downtown LA, Fifth and Main, with the briefcase with the speaker in it and the crummy little amplifier in it, going back and forth on a little wire screaming about the end of the world. I used to just stop and listen to those guys. To keep a crowd on a corner, now that is where you cut your teeth as a public speaker, on a busy corner at like 5:00 on a Friday afternoon, and you're talking about Jesus. Those were thrilling moments for me.
Les Claypool plays bass, there’s some guitar buried there, and the Chamberlin synthesizer you can hear at the end, but the primary instrument—after Tom’s demonic howl, that is—is that distinctive percussion. It turns out that’s the sound of Tom and his bandmates whacking a bunch of sticks on the concrete outside. He explained in a radio interview: “We have a pygmy percussion unit on there called the Boners that we formed during the making of it and we recorded outside. Took the microphone outside onto the dirt and put it up and had everybody play sticks on the sidewalk cause we couldn't get the same sound in the studio.”
It’s a fun one to hear Tom perform live, since he obviously can’t recreate that particular recording situation. So he gives the song more of a grunge-rock arrangement. No “Boners” whacking sticks on concrete, but much more insanely distorted guitar. The sound in this video is great, even if the image is pretty blurry until halfway through.
I love this Substack. If I remember correctly, that song is the first track on Bone Machine—I brought it home one day and some of my friends said, what have you got there? I said it was the new Tom Waits CD. They had never heard Tom Waits before so I put it on.
It cleared the room.
Very nice entry! Not one to pick at nits, but still, when citing sources it’s advantageous to ensure accuracy. The title of John the Evangelist’s final entry in the New Testament is “The Book of Revelation.” It’s also known as the “Book of the Apocalypse”, or the “Apocalypse of John.”