01	Heartattack And Vine						04:50
	02	In Shades						04:25
	03	Saving All My Love For You						03:41
	04	Downtown						04:45
	05	Jersey Girl						05:11
	06	'Til The Money Runs Out						04:25
	07	On The Nickel						06:19
	08	Mr Siegal						05:14
	09	Ruby's Arms						05:35

Heartattack And Vine, 1980
(P) & c 1980 Elektra Entertainment 295 for the US
and WEA International Inc. for the world outside the US.
c 1980 Fifth Floor Music, Inc. (ASCAP)
Asylum 6E-295. Asylum K52252.

Tom Waits: vocals, electric guitar, electric rhythm guitar, piano (all songs written by Tom Waits)
Larry Taylor: bass ("Heartattack And Vine", "In Shades", "Downtown", "'Til The Money Runs Out", "Mr. Siegal")
"Big John" Thomassie: drums ("Heartattack And Vine", "In Shades", "Downtown", "Jersey Girl", "'Til The Money Runs Out", "Mr. Siegal")
Plas Johnson: tenor and baritone saxes ("Heartattack And Vine")
Roland Bautista: electric lead guitar ("In Shades", "Downtown", "Mr. Siegal"), 12-string guitar ("Jersey Girl", "Ruby's Arms"), electric guitar ("'Til The Money Runs Out")
Ronnie Barron: Hammond organ ("In Shades", "Downtown", "'Til The Money Runs Out"), piano ("Mr. Siegal")
Jim Hughart: bass ("Saving All My Love For You")
Victor Feldman: chimes , percission ("Saving All My Love For You"), keyboard glock and percussion ("Jersey Girl")
Bob Alcivar: strings/ orchestra arranger and conductor ("Saving All My Love For You", "On The Nickel")
Greg Cohen: bass ("Jersey Girl", "Ruby's Arms")
Jerry Yester: orchestra arranger, conductor ("Jersey Girl", "Ruby's Arms")
Michael Lang: piano ("On The Nickel")
Bones Howe: engineer, production and sound
Geoff Howe: second engineer
Ron Coro: art direction/ design
Norm Ung: art direction/ design
Greg Gorman: front cover photography




HEARTATTACK AND VINE

Year Of Release: 1980
Record rating = 9
Overall rating = 12

Transition album, one foot in the gorgeous balladeering, one foot in dry creepy delirium.
Best song: HEARTATTACK AND VINE

Track listing: 1) Heartattack And Vine; 2) In Shades; 3) Saving All My Love For You; 4) Downtown; 5) Jersey Girl; 6) 'Til The Money Runs Out; 7) On The Nickel; 8) Mr Siegal; 9) Ruby's Arms.

If some unhappy Tom fan happened to miss this album in 1980 and jumped from Blue Valentine directly to the Swordfishtrombones period, I'd bet my last ten cents he sure would have had a heart attack - no vine, though. But this here record actually sounds like a preparation camp for the Change, a natural taster of weirder things to come, yet with a lot of links to Tom's sentimental past anyway. Bet you anything, though, that the effect from the title track that opens the album made many a diehard Waits fan spring out of the chair. 'Heartattack And Vine' is essentially just another blues rant from Tom. Nothing else. BUT... it's actually radically different from everything he did before. Picking up his guitar, Tom squeezes out a horrible tone, drier than the driest Mexican sauce, distorted and ear-destructive, and pretty shiver-sending at that. He doesn't even play much - just isolated minimalistic sequences of notes. Then he makes a pause, and from somewhere deep out of the depths of your speakers comes a menacing 'hwrrrrrgggghh....' as if an ogre is slowly troddling out of his cave. Nice start, eh? And then, when Tom actually starts singing, he does it with such a wallop of aggression and hot passionate delirium that you'll have to check out your windowglass. I don't even pay attention to the lyrics, despite them featuring one of the greatest lines ever written - 'don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk'. All I care for is this atmosphere. Sorta like Dire Straits with Mark Knopfler totally off his rocker and changing his melancholy minimalistic mood for a hyped up aggressive minimalistic mood.
And then there's 'In Shades', presented by 'The Tom Waits Band'. What the hell is THAT shit? Was it really recorded live, as there's a joyful fuzz 'n' buzz of a busy restaurant in the distance? Maybe it was, Tom is such a kidder, after all. But what's up with the tune itself? It's not generic blues. It doesn't sound that much different from the melody of 'Heartattack And Vine', though. It's pretty hypnotic, too - what with Roland Bautista's perfect sharp lead lines and Ronnie Barron's steady Hammond riff underpinnning it all. And the false drum ending. It's really stupid: just an instrumental bluesy tune, but I've yet to hear something else like this.
From then on, the album is equally divided between more of these dry-hot bluesy rants that make your hair stand on end, and Waits' traditional soft side - ballads, ballads and ballads. Yet, unlike Blue Valentine, this here record simply doesn't contain bad songs; even the more corny-sounding ones have great classy hooks. 'Jersey Girl', for instance. You probably know 'Jersey Girl'. You probably heard 'Jersey Girl'. You maybe heard Bruce Springsteen doing 'Jersey Girl'. Maybe you didn't? Wanna know why the Boss covered 'Jersey Girl'? 'Cuz it's so dang FITTING his style. A romantic working-class epic. Most Springsteen-like song Tom ever did, yeah, and the Boss felt that deep in his, er, whatever he hides under that Fender. Anyway, this isn't supposed to be Springsteen-bashing - on the contrary, the Boss has great taste, because this is a cool song, with one of Tom's most memorable vocal melodies in the chorus. It ain't much, it's just 'sha-la la la la la I'm in love with the Jersey girl', but it's dang moving, and dang catchy, and I give it both of my thumbs up.
For the lyrics, check out 'On The Nickel', though - one of Tom's best ballads as well. Yes, it's done in classic Hollywood style, but it ain't really a Hollywood song, it's no 'Somewhere', it's just a beautiful love song with lyrics I can't decipher for the life of me, well, not that I'm really trying that much. I have better things to do than work as a Waits decoder. The two other ballads are nice, if not as spectacular, and the three other rockers are all pretty much 'Heartattack And Vine' clones, but what clones. 'Mr Siegal' alone is worth the entire Southern rock genre, and I'll say that... well, no, I am exaggerating, I probably would not trade my entire Skynyrd catalog for that one. Just everything these guys did after the plane crash. A Lynyrd Skynyrd without Ronnie Van Zant, blah. Oh wait, I actually said something good about that stage of the band in some of my reviews, dang, this site is so big now I can't really be held responsible for everything. Just remember that sometimes when I write something in my review, I may mean exactly the opposite. I hope this will provide you with a clearer and more distinctive understanding of the site's scope, purpose, and overall value. Not that I'm selling it any time soon...
...at least, I have to end the Heartattack And Vine review before that. Well, if you've heard 'Heartattack And Vine', 'Jersey Girl', and 'On The Nickel', you pretty much heard all the rest, but if you DID hear them and have a deeply-feeling emotionally-artistic nature, you'll yearn for more and end up buying the album. Despite what I said about 'transitional', essentially it's still pretty normal. You could call Tom demented on hearing these songs, of course, but you could also call him a successful atmosphere imitator of distinguished bluesmen, which doesn't exactly hit the bullseye, but at least such a conception will ease the pain. If you do feel pain when you listen to Tom's later stuff, which you shouldn't, you goddamn close-minded wanker.