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Anton Corbijn

Q. Keith Richards plays a lot of guitar on this album.

A. He has impeccable instincts about what a song needs and doesn’t need. If you’re doing an overdub he wants to hear everybody who played on it because he wants to know, “Where do I sit? I want to know everybody who’s there. Maybe I have to stand behind somebody. Maybe I have to knock somebody over and get in their place.” That kind of thing.

From Seth Colter Walls' interview with Tom Waits, posted @ Slate:

Slate: It [“Hell Broke Luce”] seems like a more pointed war song than you’ve recorded previously.

Waits: Loaded. Anyway. … I’ve been hearing that line a whole lot: “You had a good home but you left.” And so I somehow … ahhh. Keith [Richards] said that officers will hate that song, but enlisted men will love it. The army’s interested in it, as an ad for, you know, their commercials. It’s an answer to “Be all you can be.” I’m having a conversation with them about it. It’s a cautionary tale. Obviously.

Slate: Ha! Well, how was working with Keith Richards again. It had been a while, right? The last album was…

Waits: Bone Machine. Yeah, man.

Slate: I read somewhere that during the sessions for Rain Dogs you had to show him how to move when playing a particular song. Does he still need any coaching from you?

Waits: Oh man, he doesn’t require anything at all. … I didn’t really show him how to move—you can’t show him how to move. I’ve read these … that I was talking in pantomime and body language. I may have been, but I don’t remember. I was probably nervous talking to him and resorting to, you know, hand signals.

Slate: So how was it this time around?

Waits: [The] first time he brought about 200 guitars with him, you know. I said, “Oh man, this is crazy,” you know? He had a guitar valet ... he brought a butler and 200 guitars and he pulled up in a moving van. Jesus! This was a little more streamlined though.

Slate: Having Richards and Marc Ribot playing at the same time is the definition of luxury casting, I think.

Waits: Luxury casting! I like that. When you can afford to hire everything! “I want 300 emus on my lawn by 6 o’clock. And I won’t take no for an answer! And I want an 8-foot fence. You know?” And I want—yeah it can get a little absurd like that if you’re out of control on the budget. I have people watching me all the time. … Oh, that gun—my grandma’s. “.44 Smokeless Dance,” that’s the name of it. I just saw it on the barrel … I didn’t realize what it was [before].

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