When it comes to musical legends with San Diego roots, there are perhaps none more legendary than Tom Waits. The enigmatic troubadour moved with his mother to Chula Vista when he was 10, eventually attending O’Farrell and Hilltop High. Even in his school days, he was drawn to music, starting a band with his friends called the Systems while attending O’Farrell. By the early 70s, after a brief foray studying photography at Southwestern College, Waits was working at Napoleone’s Pizza House in National City while honing his musical chops. Here’s a fun collection of the many times Waits has talked about Napoleone’s – which is still around. – including when he claimed to have the full menu tattooed on his stomach.
But while his career may be extraordinary, this next part isn’t. In a story that’s been repeated for decades since, Waits knew San Diego didn’t offer many opportunities to make it as a musician. So, in 1972 he quit his job at Napoleone’s and moved to the City of Angels. The next year, he released his debut album, “Closing Time.”
Tom Waits, “The Ghosts of Saturday Night (After Hours at Napoleone’s Pizza House)”: Waits’ penchant for detached storytelling focused on the everyman that uses brief snippets of everyday life to paint vivid portraits is on full display on “The Ghosts of Saturday Night (After Hours at Napoleone’s Pizza House).” The melancholic piano tune, whose focus slowly shifts like a panning camera, is the closing track on Waits’ second album “The Heart of Saturday Night,” which was released 50 years ago today. It’s a cigarette smoke-stained ode to those last weary souls awake as the “early dawn cracks out a carpet of diamonds,” leaving the “town in the keeping of the one who is sweeping up the ghosts of Saturday night.”
Like what you hear? Go listen to everything Waits has ever released. You won’t be disappointed.
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