Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs
Studio album by Tom Waits
Released	September 1977
Recorded	July 28–August 15, 1977
Genre	Jazz
Length	41:53
Label	Asylum
Producer	Bones Howe
Professional reviews
Allmusic link Robert Christgau (B) link Rolling Stone link
Tom Waits chronology
Small Change (1976) Foreign Affairs (1977) Blue Valentine (1978)

Foreign Affairs is an album by Tom Waits, released in 1977 on Elektra Entertainment. It was produced by Bones Howe, and features Bette Midler singing a duet with Waits on "I Never Talk to Strangers".

Production

Bones Howe, the album's producer, remembers the album's original concept and production approach thus:

[Waits] talked to me about doing this other material [...] He said, "I'm going to do the demos first, and then I'm gonna let you listen to them. Then we should talk about what it should be." I listened to the material and said, "It's like a black-and-white movie." That's where the cover came from. The whole idea that it was going to be a black-and-white movie. It's the way it seemed to me when we were putting it together. Whether or not it came out that way, I don't have any idea, because there's such metamorphosis when you're working on [records]. They change and change.^[1]

Artwork

Pictured on the cover with Waits is a woman named Marchiela, who worked at the box office of The Troubadour in Los Angeles. "She was a girl who was... not a girlfriend but she thought she was a girlfriend."^[2]

For the album cover Waits wanted to convey the film-noir mood that coloured so many of the songs. Veteran Hollywood portraitist George Hurrell was hired to shoot Waits, both alone and in a clutch with a shadowy female whose ring-encrusted right hand clamped a passport to his chest. The back-cover shot of Tom was particularly good, casting him as a slicked-back hoodlum—half matinee idol, half hair-trigger psychopath. The inner sleeve depicted the soused singer clawing at the keys of his Tropicana upright.^[3]

Track listing

All tracks written by Tom Waits, except where noted.

Side One

Side Two

Personnel

• Gene Cipriano – clarinet solos on "Potter's Field"
• Jim Hughart – bass
• Shelly Manne – drums
• Bette Midler – vocals on "I Never Talk to Strangers"
• Jack Sheldon – trumpet solos
• Frank Vicari – tenor saxophone solos
• Tom Waits – piano, vocals

Notes