And Muriel, how many times I’ve left this town, to hide from your memory, and it haunts me
Foreign Affairs is an album by Tom Waits, released in 1977 on Elektra Entertainment.
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Tom Waits (introducing Muriel, London, 1981): “This is a song about an American television personality named Ernie Kovacs who was very popular in the late 50’s. He had his own show and he had a beautiful wife, Edie Adams, (here in a high pitched goofy voice he sings): “And you may ask yourself, how did you get that beautiful wife? How did you get that beautiful car?” Ernie was very fond of Edie, they were very close for many years. They went to a party in Beverley Hills one night. Edie took the Rolls and Ernie took the Corvair. That’s just the way they had things worked out, and on Ernie’s way home, he’d had a few cocktails, and he wrapped himself around a telephone pole there on Santa Monica and La Cienega, he’s history now. Edie used to do advertisements for Muriel Cigars, it’s a real cheap 10 cent cigar in the States and so this is about a guy in the lounge who’s smoking a cigar and remembering - remember with me now.”
(…)
Larry Goldstein (about I never Talk to Strangers, 1978): “One of the few people with whom he can work is Bette Midler. “I met her, now let me see, a couple of years ago at the bottom Line (a nightclub) in New York,” he said, “and we got along famously. I admire her a great deal. And you know…I’ll kick anybody’s ass who knocks her. I wrote a couple of tunes for her.” (Shiver Me Timbers among them.) The two stayed close friends and then one day Bette dropped by the studio during the recording of Foreign Affairs just to say hello. The topic of duets arose, and she asked Waits to try and write one for them. So Tom went home and went to work and came back the next day with a brand new song, to be recorded that day, I Never Talk To Strangers, which has become the most popular song on the album. When I asked him about the possibility of more collaboration between the two, Waits was intentionally vague and mysterious. “We might work something out,” he said.
In 1980 this song prompted Francis Ford Coppola to contact Waits on working together on the soundtrack for One From The Heart.
Tom Waits (1981): “When I was in New York back in April of 1980, Francis was there auditioning people he wanted to be involved with the film. Somebody had sent him my records and Francis liked the song I Never Talk to Strangers, a duet I’d done with Bette Midler. He liked the relationship between the singers, a conversation between a guy and a girl in a bar. That was the impetus for him contacting me and asking me if I was interested in writing music for his film.”
