Том Уэйтс и Бек Хансен

Tom Waits x Beck Hansen

Tom Waits: How you doin'?

BH: Good, I'm good.

TW: Are we up and runnin'?

BH: Yeah I think so. Hey, I wanted to ask you about being from Los Angeles. You grew up there...

TW: Yeah, Whittier, La Habra, Downey, that whole area. Yeah, Los Lobos, they're from Whittier. So is Nixon. I remember Nixon's market. He had his own family market.

BH: He was? For some reason I thought he was from the Midwest.

TW: No, California, and we used to get a visit every year from the Oscar Meyer wiener mobile, which was an enormous vehicle shaped like a hot dog. The driver was a Dwarf, and the wiener mobile would broadcast music while he sang the song "I wish I was an Oscar Meyer wiener." He drew quite a crowd. Pretty exciting for a shopping center.

BH: That car is still driving around. I see it from time to time.

TW: You see the Oscar Meyer wiener mobile?

BH: I've seen it parked.

TW: They used to pass out little whistles that were about two inches long and it had three notes available. (Laughs.) Whittier lore.

BH: I was born in the McArthur park area.

TW: You remember when they drained McArthur Park, the lake?

BH: I do, yeah...

TW: They found unbelievable things: Cars, human bones, weaponry.

BH: They should have done an exhibit.

TW: I don't know why they didn't. I thought that's why they drained it.

BH: I'd always heard that when they drained the Echo Park Lake they found an amateur submarine.

TW: Oh, my God.

BH: I don't know if that was lore.

TW: You mean a homemade submarine?

BH: Yeah, I think it was older too, from the early days of "home submarine building." I don't know if that subculture still exists?

TW: That was the East Kids.

BH: There's so many different versions of the city.

TW: It is pretty international. Drive over here and you're in Russia. Here, Indonesia, the Philippines, Central America. It's pretty wild that way.

BH: I think of the city as a sort of mirage. If you look at pictures of the city a hundred years ago it's just a bunch of weeds and desert dust. Its not really supposed to be here. I was always fascinated by the city it was meant to be. I guess it was a place created by developers. It's not really like a city where some people roam around and then they find a good piece of land, and then they test it out for a while and make sure there is water so they don't die, and then they decide to make a city. I started looking at some pictures...Beverly Hills was originally supposed to be called Morocco Junction. I started thinking, if they'd gone with that name we'd be in a whole other situation. I was wondering if there were any things that you remember? It seems like it's shed its skin so many times.