Standing at the Depot: Tom Waits’ Lyrical Obsession With Trains

It’s been suggested that the term “rock and roll” traces back to railroad workers singing to keep rhythm as they drilled into the rock, “rocking” spikes back and forth to clear debris, and “rolling” them to improve the drill’s bite. The Robert Johnson legend tells of a musician who sold his soul at a train station crossroads in the 1920s for the guitar skills that birthed Mississippi blues.

None of this is lost on Tom Waits. A voice of the downtrodden, Waits’ sound has evolved over the years from folk ballads of the down-and-out to the desperate cries of the downright demented. Inspired by beat poets, his music intertwines a lust for life with the loneliness of those on society’s fringes. For Waits, trains symbolize transition, escape, heartbreak, and a longing for simpler times.

Those simpler times date back to when he was a child, traveling with his family. “When I was a kid and we went on a car trip, it seemed like we had to stop and wait for a train to go by every two miles,” Waits told The Guardian in a 2006 interview. “Seemed like there were train crossings everywhere, nothing but train crossings.’

The Lyrics

“Diamonds on My Windshield,” from the album The Heart of Saturday Night (1974), finds Waits summoning the power of a steel train for a homecoming into the city: Pulling into town on the interstate. Pulling a steel train in the rain.  

On “Whistling Past the Graveyard,” from Blue Valentine (1978), his protagonist skips town by jumping a boxcar: I come in on a night train with an arm full of boxcars, on the wings of a magpie across a hooligan night.  

“Down, Down, Down,” from Swordfish Trombones (1983), finds Frank, the anti-hero of Waits’ three-album tale of one man’s descent into madness, riding a train into hell: He went down down down, and the devil called him by name. He went down down down hangin’ onto the back of a train. 

Rain Dogs (1985) finds Waits diving into the metaphor deep. From “Time”: And they all pretend they’re orphans, and their memory’s like a train. You can see it getting smaller as it pulls away. From “Blind Love”: They say if you get far enough away, you’ll be on your way back home. Well, I’m at the station, and I can’t get on the train. And from “Downtown Train”: Downtown train’s a fool. For all those Brooklyn Girls who try so hard to break out their little worlds.

On Frank’s Wild Years (1988), Waits uses the train to carry even more weight. From “Yesterday’s Here”: I’m going to New York City, I’m leaving on a train. And if you want to stick around, wait til I come back again.  From “Train Song”: It was a train that took me away from here, but a train can’t bring me home. 

Finally, “Clang, Boom, Steam,” from Real Gone (2004), doesn’t require much analysis: Well my baby’s so fine, even her car looks good from behind. But the train that took my baby, it went clang, boom, steam.

All Aboard

While we’ve handpicked a few of the most impactful, Waits references trains in more than 30 recorded songs. Not only do his words transport the listener to the depot, but so does his music. Songs that sound like trains pulling in and out of a station, such as “16 Shells from a 30.6” and “Jockey Full of Bourbon,” beckon the listener to come on board for a journey through heartache and loss, to hope and new beginnings. As Waits grumbles at the end of “Ninth & Hennepin”, I’ve seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train.

Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images