Tom Waits Calls This Classic Rock Band “As Exciting as Watching Paint Dry”
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A Rough Voice in a Smooth World
Tom Waits has always been known for saying exactly what he thinks. In his long career, he built a reputation for making music that felt raw, strange, and completely his own. Albums like Rain Dogs and Bone Machine showed how different he was from most other artists at the time. But just as much as he loved music, he also wasn’t shy about saying when he didn’t like something.
When Waits first started out, he wasn’t yet the growling figure people later remembered. Early in his career, he was more of a quiet storyteller, usually sitting behind a piano and singing about lost love, loneliness, and strange nights in city bars. His voice was rough, but the stories came through clearly in songs that felt personal and honest.
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The Lonely Roads of ‘Ol 55’
One of the most loved tracks from his early albums is ‘Ol 55’. It’s a song about a car ride, but the deeper story feels much heavier. Waits turns a simple drive into something filled with feeling, using his scratchy voice to give the song a tired, emotional edge. It’s the kind of song that feels like it belongs to someone who has lived a lot of life already.
At the same time Waits was starting out, the Eagles were becoming one of the most popular bands in California. Don Henley and Glenn Frey had already made hits like ‘Take It Easy’ and were becoming famous for their smooth sound and catchy harmonies. When they recorded their On the Border album, they decided to cover ‘Ol 55’ and give it their own style.
Waits Wasn’t Impressed
Even though the Eagles’ version of ‘Ol 55’ reached more people and helped bring attention to Waits’s music, he wasn’t happy about the result. In an interview, he made his feelings very clear. “I don’t like The Eagles. They’re about as exciting as watching paint dry. Their albums are good for keeping the dust off your turntable, and that’s about all.”
He also didn’t care much for how they performed the song itself. “I frankly was not that particularly crazy about their rendition of it,” Waits said. “The song is about five years old; it’s one of the first songs I wrote, so I felt like it was kind of flattering that somebody wanted to do your song, but at the same time, I thought their version was a little antiseptic.”
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Different Streets in the Same City
For Waits, music wasn’t supposed to be clean and perfect. His world was always more worn down, full of late nights and broken people. His version of ‘Ol 55’ sounds like it was made for those quiet moments when everything is falling apart. The Eagles’ version, on the other hand, feels polished and made for radio play.
That difference shows how rock music was changing in the 1970s. The Eagles were singing about California with bright voices and clear guitars, but Waits was writing about the darker corners of that same world. He wasn’t trying to make hits. He was trying to tell stories that sounded like the real thing.
Two Roads, One Song
Even if Waits didn’t like their version, the Eagles still chose his song. That meant something. It showed that even in a world full of soft sounds and clean production, there was still space for the rougher side of music. And even though ‘Ol 55’ was never a big part of the Eagles’ live shows, their recording helped shine a small light on Waits’s talent.
Later in his career, Waits would go on to work with other big names like Keith Richards, continuing to make the kind of music only he could create. But his feelings about the Eagles covering his song never really changed. He saw their version as too smooth, too shiny, and too far away from what he felt music should be.
