Episode 151: Damon Linker / Tom Waits [Part 2]

Author: National Review September 29, 2025 Duration: 3:12:11

Scot and Jeff discuss the second part of Tom Waits’ career (1983-2011) with Damon Linker.

Introducing the Band:
Your hosts Scot Bertram (@ScotBertram) and Jeff Blehar (@EsotericCD) are joined by guest Damon Linker. Damon is a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, and publishes a Substack newsletter titled “Notes from the Middleground.” Follow him at @DamonLinker on Twitter.

Damon’s Music Pick: Tom Waits
We sail tonight for Singapore and we’re all as mad as hatters here. Yes, Political Beats finishes its two-part celebration of the career of Tom Waits, rejoined by doughty boatswain Damon Linker as we pilot our way to unknown musical seas.

Tom Waits had a fine career up through the year 1982, when he finished work on the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart. But we're talking about the man primarily because of what happened afterwards, when he became more than just a down-and-out jazz pianist with the voice of a Babadook. Waits met script supervisor Kathleen Brennan on the set of the film and fell in love, marrying a year later. (They remain married to this day.)

Proving herself the anti-Yoko Ono, Brennan then alchemically helped to raise Waits’s music to an entirely new level of excitement and experimentation. His lyrics ideas become weirder, and more vivid. His ballads become infinitely more heartfelt (most of them are secretly addressed to Brennan). And his arrangements become a world of their own: Tom Waits begins, in 1983, to create glorious junk sculptures out of sound, using uncharacteristic (often minimalistic) instrumentation to create music that nobody has heard before.

Through such landmarks of the 1980s and 1990s as Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, Bone Machine, and The Mule Variations, Tom Waits transcended his balladeering origin -- without ever leaving it entirely behind -- and created a body of work famous for its eccentric, compelling, and deeply influential series. Once you get past the fact that he has a voice like the sawblades of a lumber mill, entire worlds will open up to you. Click play and clap hands!

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Political Beats

There’s a side to political figures and commentators that rarely makes the headlines-the part of them that lives for music. On Political Beats, hosts Scot Bertram and Jeff Blehar sit down with guests whose lives are steeped in policy and elections, but whose personal soundtracks tell a completely different story. This isn’t a debate about current events; it’s a series of conversations that wander through record collections, formative concert experiences, and the albums that shaped their worldviews. You’ll hear politicians, strategists, and journalists drop the talking points to passionately argue over classic rock deep cuts, the genius of a particular jazz musician, or the raw energy of punk. The result is a surprisingly humanizing look at the people who shape our political discourse, revealing connections between the art they love and the work they do. Each episode of this National Review podcast feels like an informal chat among friends who share a deep, genuine enthusiasm for music’s history and its lasting impact. Tune in for a refreshing blend of cultural history and personal narrative, where the only thing on the agenda is a shared passion for the beats that move us.

Author: National Review Language: English Episodes: 100

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