Tom Waits and the Story Behind “I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love with You”

On this episode of Our American Stories, Tom Waits has a voice and style that feel carved out of another world, yet many people first meet his work through other artists. One of his earliest songs, “I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love with You,” is a perfect example. It drifted from Waits’ small club beginnings to the radio through bands like 10,000 Maniacs, much like “Downtown Train,” “Ol’ 55,” and other Waits originals that became hits in someone else’s hands.

In this Story of a Song, we explore how a simple tune about a missed chance at love became one of Waits’ most quietly enduring pieces.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American Stories, and now it's time for
one of our favorite segments. The story of a song
is a jingle, and today's comes from an artist who
songs are best known through cover versions by other musicians.
His Jersey Girl was performed by Bruce Springsteen. His All
fifty five was sung by the Eagles. Down There by

(00:34):
the Train by Johnny Cash. I Hope that I Don't
Fall in Love with You by ten Thousand Maniacs, the
Long Way Home by Nora Jones, I Don't Want to
Grow Up by the Ramones, and Downtown Train by Rod Stewart.
And by the way, just from the mix of those artists,
you've got to say, Wow, what range. Today's song is

(00:55):
about one man, one woman, and one tavern. No further ado.
Let's take a listen to find out more about this
one of a kind American singer songwriter.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
All our next guest is one of the most distinctive
writers and performers working today.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
He's kind of a combination poet, jazz singer, and vagrant.

Speaker 4 (01:15):
He is a mixture of Satchmo Armstrong and Humphrey Bog.

Speaker 5 (01:18):
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Tom Waits.

Speaker 4 (01:22):
Oh Ay, your.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Tom better than nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Your songs are about waitresses and bartenders and moms.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Why do you celebrate these people in song for the
same reason that a lawyer hangs out in a pool room?
Or do you find a lot of photographers at a wedding?

Speaker 4 (01:43):
You know, it's a.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Find a lot of ideas here, and there's a lot
of life going on around here. And you know, so
I'm kind of a bit of a private investigator.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:57):
You know, my dad spent a lot of time in
the bars, drink in the afternoon and really dark bars,
and so I was drawn to the dark places. I mean,
everybody needs a different climate in order to create Mine
usually comes and uh, if I'm talking to somebody in
a bar or something, I get a couple of bloggers

(02:19):
and try to stretch out in conversation and try to
open things up, and then I try to remember it
all later and then I write it down.

Speaker 7 (02:29):
There's a real romance hanging around these places. It's where
you go to meet girls, but it's also where you
go to invent yourself in strangers' eyes. These are the

(02:49):
extraordinary painter of pictures as well as a teller of stories.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Looking for the hat Saturday?

Speaker 4 (03:00):
Is it the Cracker, the Pool bows Neon both loneliness.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
It's so much at the heart of so much of
his music.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
I think it's just.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
A longing for something and being alone and how do.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
You live with that? And how do you deal with it?
Magic go to Melancottage. Here in your eyes.

Speaker 7 (03:21):
I think Waits is a poet of doomed no hopers,
people who are almost like characters from a noir novel.
They're getting their last chance at love, dumbling onto the Saturday.

Speaker 5 (03:37):
He was just a man out of time, clearly, and
he knew it, I think obviously, and he played with
it craft and young genius of someone who was coming
up with lyrics that were on a par with someone
like Johnny Mercer or Hogy Carmichael or any of the

(03:58):
songwriters that had been the backbone of the classic American songbook.

Speaker 4 (04:09):
Swam Oweing Done, Run, swam Jeans Manny.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
The Great American Songbook is something that either gets to
you or it doesn't. And it got to Tom because
there was a lot of intelligence in that in the
lyrics of those songs.

Speaker 3 (04:30):
I would go over to my friend's houses and go
into the den with their dads and find out what
they were listening. I couldn't wait to be an old man.
I was about thirteen. Now, I didn't really identify with
the music of my own generation, but I seem to
like the old Steph Coporter, Gershwin, Frank snatzra.

Speaker 6 (04:49):
What is this thing.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
Called love?

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Tom had that wonderful talent to absorb all of these
things that he saw. It's like storing up paints and
being able to dig out the colors you want when
you get ready to paint a picture. Hey, this is
what he does.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
He paints pictures and so true and one of Tom
Waits his most heartbreaking, beautiful picture songs is called I
Hope that I Don't Fall in love with You. This
tender storyteller, with a boozy baritone, while wearing a seven
dollars suit and an old man's weathered fedora hat, expresses

(05:33):
what a billion men have felt, not the least on
a lonely Saturday night. Here's I Hope that I Don't
fall in love with you.

Speaker 4 (05:42):
Now it's closing the last coll drinks. I'll have another stout. Well,

(06:04):
I turn around and look at you. You know what's
up found that's a place for your lost face because
I have a round.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
And I think.

Speaker 4 (06:21):
And I just feel love.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
And the turn in the fourth phrase, I hope that
you don't fall in love with me. After exposing all
of his fears of commitment, the narrator realizes he is
falling for this girl that he's never met, but now
must face the realization she may return the favor. You
can feel the pain of a man afraid of commitment
in this song. He fumbles and worries, and once he

(06:55):
finally gets the confidence to face her, well it's too late.
She's on and he knows he's missed his shot. And
that's the world of Tom Waits. That's the world he
inhabited in his music. I was always wanting to be
an old man, he said, listening to Sinatra when everybody
else was listening to rock and roll. The work of

(07:16):
Tom Waits, the life of Tom Waits, the story of
a song I Hope I don't fall in love with you.
This is our American Stories, Liehabib here, and I'd like
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(07:39):
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