Tom Waits took us all out with him as he went “(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night.” That title hints at what we should expect. It doesn’t promise we’ll find what we’re seeking, which means we’re already set up for some sorrow to enter the picture.
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In many ways, the song encapsulates so much of what made Waits so unique among the singer/songwriter types of the ’70s. Aside the slickness of the sounds of his peers, he sounded rickety, broken, and astonishingly real.
Straight to the “Heart”
The music industry sometimes fears artists who are out on their own wavelength, and that description certainly applied to Tom Waits. Where other singer/songwriters might have taken their cues from Lennon-McCartney or Dylan, he was more beholden to iconoclastic literary figures like Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski.
Asylum Records, home to many of the leading lights of the ’70s singer/songwriter movement, signed Waits based on his budding reputation as a live act. They also initially tried to slot him in with their rest of their roster, as his 1973 debut album Closing Time came out sounding like the work of a folk singer.
Although artists were soon clambering to cover songs written by Waits, he wasn’t satisfied with the artistic direction the album took. For his sophomore effort, he worked with producer Bones Howe, who came from more of a jazz background. The pair were much more on the same page, and the resulting album, The Heart of Saturday Night, focused on Waits’ saloon-style piano and achieved the throwback, noirish feel to which he would return throughout the rest of the decade.
“(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night” ends the first side of that 1974 album. The second side closes out with “The Ghosts of Saturday Night (After Hours at Napoleone’s Pizza House),” suggesting Waits saw the search for that feeling as the overriding theme for the record, which solidified his reputation as a true original on the scene.
Behind the Lyrics of “(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night”
Waits’ ability to ground a story in telling details before getting to the emotions at its core is on wonderful display throughout the song. Like so many other American dreamers, his narrator sees his fate unspool through his car window: Well you gassed her up / Behind the wheel / With your arm around your sweet one / In your Oldsmobile.
The way Waits tells the tale, Saturday night’s magic lies as much in the anticipation of what might happen as it does in the actual events. You get all tinglin’ is how he describes this excited state. Such is the wonder of this particular night that any other memories might sully it: Tryin’ to wipe out every trace / All the other days.
‘Cause tonight’ll be like nothin’ / You’ve ever seen / And you’re barrelin’ down the boulevard, Waits croaks. Let’s be honest: There’s a distinct possibility this Saturday might turn out to be just like many others before it. But it’s the state of mind, that euphoria of anticipation, that matters.
When Waits tries to put a finger on what makes it special, his poetic powers shine brightest. You can hear the crack of the pool balls, and you almost have to shade your eyes at the neon buzzin’. More than anything, those familiar feelings he evokes overwhelm you: Is it the barmaid that’s smilin’ from the corner of her eye / Magic of the melancholy tear in your eye.
As we listen to the song, we are all right with Tom Waits: And you’re stumblin’ / Stumblin’ onto the heart of Saturday night. At some point, usually when they’re no longer part of our itinerary, we realize why those limitless, bittersweet evenings were so unforgettable. One listen to “(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night” takes us back there in an instant.
Photo by Richard Creamer/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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