Foreign Affairs | ||||
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![]() | ||||
Studio album by | ||||
Released | September 13, 1977 | |||
Recorded | July 28–August 15, 1977 | |||
Studio | Wally Heider's Studio 3 (Hollywood) | |||
Length | 41:53 | |||
Label | Asylum | |||
Producer | Bones Howe | |||
Tom Waits chronology | ||||
|
Foreign Affairs is the fifth studio album by singer and songwriter Tom Waits, released on September 13, 1977, on Asylum Records. [1] It was produced by Bones Howe, and featured Bette Midler singing a duet with Waits on "I Never Talk to Strangers".
Bones Howe, the album's producer and engineer, remembers the album's original concept and production approach thus:
"[Waits] talked to me about doing this other material [...] He said, 'I'm going to do the demos first, and then I'm gonna let you listen to them. Then we should talk about what it should be.' I listened to the material and said, 'It's like a black-and-white movie.' That's where the cover came from. The whole idea that it was going to be a black-and-white movie. It's the way it seemed to me when we were putting it together. Whether or not it came out that way, I don't have any idea, because there's such metamorphosis when you're working on [records]. They change and change." [2]
Pictured on the cover with Waits is a Native American woman named Marsheila Cockrell, who worked at the box office of The Troubadour in Los Angeles. "She was a girl who was... not a girlfriend but she thought she was a girlfriend." [3]
"For the album cover Waits wanted to convey the film-noir mood that coloured so many of the songs. Veteran Hollywood portraitist George Hurrell was hired to shoot Waits, both alone and in a clutch with a shadowy female whose ring-encrusted right hand clamped a passport to his chest. The back-cover shot of Tom was particularly good, casting him as a slicked-back hoodlum—half matinee idol, half hair-trigger psychopath. The inner sleeve depicted the soused singer clawing at the keys of his Tropicana upright." [3]
Review scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Christgau's Record Guide | B [5] |
Classic Rock | 6/10 [6] |
Mojo | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Pitchfork | 7.8/10 [8] |
Q | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Rolling Stone Album Guide | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Spin Alternative Record Guide | 5/10 [11] |
Uncut | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Village Voice critic Robert Christgau gave a mixed review of Foreign Affairs. He appreciated the Bette Midler duet "I Never Talk to Strangers", "Jack & Neal"'s combination of poetry and jazz, the "mumbled monologue" of "Barber Shop", and the title track, which he described as " Anglophile", but lamented "Potter's Field" for its theatrical music and narrative following "a high-rolling nightstick". He critiqued the album further in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981):
"With his genre sleaze and metaphorical melodrama, Waits is a downwardly mobile escapist who believes that Everyman is a wino and Everywoman an all-night waitress who turns tricks when things get rough. The problem isn't the subjects themselves, but that for all his self-conscious unpretentiousness he inflates them. Which I guess is all we can expect of a schoolteacher's son who's been searching for his own world since he was old enough to think." [5]
All tracks written by Tom Waits, except where noted.
Side one
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
---|---|---|---|
1. | "Cinny's Waltz" (Instrumental) | 2:17 | |
2. | "Muriel" | 3:33 | |
3. | "I Never Talk to Strangers" | 3:38 | |
4. | " Medley: Jack & Neal/ California, Here I Come" | "California, Here I Come" by Joseph Meyer, Al Jolson and Buddy De Sylva | 5:01 |
5. | "A Sight for Sore Eyes" | 4:40 |
Side two
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
---|---|---|---|
1. | "Potter's Field" | Words: Waits - Music: Bob Alcivar | 8:40 |
2. | "Burma-Shave" | 6:34 | |
3. | "Barber Shop" | 3:54 | |
4. | "Foreign Affair" | 3:46 |
Foreign Affairs | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | ||||
Studio album by | ||||
Released | September 13, 1977 | |||
Recorded | July 28–August 15, 1977 | |||
Studio | Wally Heider's Studio 3 (Hollywood) | |||
Length | 41:53 | |||
Label | Asylum | |||
Producer | Bones Howe | |||
Tom Waits chronology | ||||
|
Foreign Affairs is the fifth studio album by singer and songwriter Tom Waits, released on September 13, 1977, on Asylum Records. [1] It was produced by Bones Howe, and featured Bette Midler singing a duet with Waits on "I Never Talk to Strangers".
Bones Howe, the album's producer and engineer, remembers the album's original concept and production approach thus:
"[Waits] talked to me about doing this other material [...] He said, 'I'm going to do the demos first, and then I'm gonna let you listen to them. Then we should talk about what it should be.' I listened to the material and said, 'It's like a black-and-white movie.' That's where the cover came from. The whole idea that it was going to be a black-and-white movie. It's the way it seemed to me when we were putting it together. Whether or not it came out that way, I don't have any idea, because there's such metamorphosis when you're working on [records]. They change and change." [2]
Pictured on the cover with Waits is a Native American woman named Marsheila Cockrell, who worked at the box office of The Troubadour in Los Angeles. "She was a girl who was... not a girlfriend but she thought she was a girlfriend." [3]
"For the album cover Waits wanted to convey the film-noir mood that coloured so many of the songs. Veteran Hollywood portraitist George Hurrell was hired to shoot Waits, both alone and in a clutch with a shadowy female whose ring-encrusted right hand clamped a passport to his chest. The back-cover shot of Tom was particularly good, casting him as a slicked-back hoodlum—half matinee idol, half hair-trigger psychopath. The inner sleeve depicted the soused singer clawing at the keys of his Tropicana upright." [3]
Review scores | |
---|---|
Source | Rating |
AllMusic | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Christgau's Record Guide | B [5] |
Classic Rock | 6/10 [6] |
Mojo | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Pitchfork | 7.8/10 [8] |
Q | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
The Rolling Stone Album Guide | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Spin Alternative Record Guide | 5/10 [11] |
Uncut | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Village Voice critic Robert Christgau gave a mixed review of Foreign Affairs. He appreciated the Bette Midler duet "I Never Talk to Strangers", "Jack & Neal"'s combination of poetry and jazz, the "mumbled monologue" of "Barber Shop", and the title track, which he described as " Anglophile", but lamented "Potter's Field" for its theatrical music and narrative following "a high-rolling nightstick". He critiqued the album further in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981):
"With his genre sleaze and metaphorical melodrama, Waits is a downwardly mobile escapist who believes that Everyman is a wino and Everywoman an all-night waitress who turns tricks when things get rough. The problem isn't the subjects themselves, but that for all his self-conscious unpretentiousness he inflates them. Which I guess is all we can expect of a schoolteacher's son who's been searching for his own world since he was old enough to think." [5]
All tracks written by Tom Waits, except where noted.
Side one
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
---|---|---|---|
1. | "Cinny's Waltz" (Instrumental) | 2:17 | |
2. | "Muriel" | 3:33 | |
3. | "I Never Talk to Strangers" | 3:38 | |
4. | " Medley: Jack & Neal/ California, Here I Come" | "California, Here I Come" by Joseph Meyer, Al Jolson and Buddy De Sylva | 5:01 |
5. | "A Sight for Sore Eyes" | 4:40 |
Side two
No. | Title | Writer(s) | Length |
---|---|---|---|
1. | "Potter's Field" | Words: Waits - Music: Bob Alcivar | 8:40 |
2. | "Burma-Shave" | 6:34 | |
3. | "Barber Shop" | 3:54 | |
4. | "Foreign Affair" | 3:46 |