Comprehensive information and links about Tom Waits

Tom Waits (born December 7, 1949 in Pomona, CaliforniaTom Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor.

Waits has a very distinctive voice, described by the as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months and then taken outside and run over with a car." (Waits's voice was also described in one court decision as follows: "Waits has a raspy, gravelly singing voice, described by one fan as ‘like how you'd sound if you drank a quart of bourbon, smoked a pack of cigarettes and swallowed a pack of razor blades. . . . Late at night. After not sleeping for three days.’" Waits v. Frito-Lay, Inc., 978 F.2d 1093 (1992 9th Cir.)) With this trademark growl, as well as his experimental tendencies and a love of pre-rock Americana called Waits "at once a throwback and a visionary." [1]

Lyrically, Waits's songs are known for atmospheric portrayals of bizarre, seedy characters and places, although he has also shown a penchant for more conventional and touching ballads. He has a devoted cult following and has influenced subsequent songwriters, despite having little radio or music video support. His songs are best known to the general public in the form of cover versions by more visible artists, such as Eagles, The Ramones, Bruce Springsteen, and Rod Stewart. Although Waits's albums have met with mixed commercial success in his native United States, they have occasionally achieved gold album sales status in other countries.

Waits has also worked as a composer for movies and musical plays and as a supporting actor in films, including

Early career

Born in Pomona, California to parents of Scottish, Irish, and Norwegian descent, Tom Waits began his recording career in 1971, after he relocated to Los Angeles and signed with Herb Cohen, who was also the manager of Frank Zappa.

After numerous abortive recording sessions, Waits's first record, the melancholic, country-tinged , was issued in 1973. While it received warm reviews, he did not gain widespread attention until his , released in 1974, showed Waits's roots as a nightclub singer, with half-spoken and half-crooned ballads, often accompanied with a jazz background.

The 1975 album , recorded in a studio with a small audience to capture the ambiance of a live show, captures this phase of his career, including the lengthy spoken interludes between songs that punctuated his live act. Regarding his music of this era, Waits reported that "I wasn't thrilled by Blue Cheer, so I found an alternative, even if it was Bing Crosby."[2]

(1976), featuring famed drummer Shelly Manne, was more jazz influenced, and songs such as "The Piano Has Been Drinking" and "Bad Liver and a Broken Heart" cemented Waits's hard-living reputation, with a lyrical (1978) were in a similar vein, but showed further refinement of his artistic voice. It was around this time that Waits had a famous romantic relationship with Rickie Lee Jones.

1980 saw the release of . Though not entirely unprecedented, the album's gritty rhythm and blues sound was different for Waits, and foreshadowed the major changes in his music that would follow several years later. The same year, he began a long working relationship with Francis Ford Coppola, who asked Waits to provide music for his film songwriter Crystal Gayle as his vocal foil for the album.

Waits began his acting career with his appearance in Sylvester Stallone's 1978 film (as Dracula's insane thrall Renfield).

In August 1980, Waits married Kathleen Brennan, whom he had met on the set of . Brennan is regularly credited as co-author of many songs on his later albums, and Waits often cites her as a major influence on his work. She introduced him to the music of Captain Beefheart, which Waits later described as a paradigm shift in his musical development.

Waits now lives in Sebastopol, California with his wife and children.

in 1983, a record which marked a sharp turn in Waits's output, and which cemented his reputation as a visionary who remained steadfastly outside the mainstream. In many ways, Waits had carved out his own musical genre.

Apart from Captain Beefheart and some of Dr. John's early output, there was little precedent in popular music for (1987).

Waits had earlier played either piano or guitar, but he began tiring of these instruments, saying, "Your hands are like dogs, going to the same places they've been. You have to be careful when playing is no longer in the mind but in the fingers, going to happy places. You have to break them of their habits or you don't explore, you only play what is confident and pleasing. I'm learning to break those habits by playing instruments I know absolutely nothing about, like a bassoon or a waterphone." [3]

The instrumentation and orchestration in his later albums were often quite eclectic.[4] Waits's self-described "Junkyard Orchestra" included wheezing pump organs, clattering percussion (sometimes reminiscent of the music of Harry Partch), bleary horn sections (often featuring Ralph Carney, and taking their cues from brass bands or soul music), nearly atonal guitar (perhaps best typified by Marc Ribot's contributions) and obsolete instruments. Waits is particularly fond of a damaged, unpredictable chamberlin; recent albums have featured the little-used stroh violin.

Along with a new instrumental approach, Waits gradually altered his singing to sound less like the late-night crooner of the 70s, instead adopting a number of techniques: a gravelly sound reminiscent of Howlin' Wolf and Captain Beefheart, a booming, feral bark, or a strained, nearly shrieking falsetto Waits jokingly describes as his Prince voice. Tom Moon describes Waits's voice as a "broad-spectrum assault weapon".[5]

His songwriting shifted as well, becoming somewhat more abstract and embracing a number of s largely ignored in pop music, including primal blues (he's fond of the Fat Possum record label), cabaret stylings, rhumbas, theatrical approaches in the of Kurt Weill, tangos, early country music, European folk music and Tin Pan Alley-era songs. He undertook a few nearly-spoken word pieces influenced by Ken Nordine's "word jazz" records of the 1950s. All of these different techniques are filtered through Waits's unique lens, however, and so rarely seem like a pastiche.

were a trilogy of loose concept albums, following the sailor Frank McBride as he leaves the familiar comfort of home, sees the world, and returns. The last of these albums was also adapted as an off-Broadway musical, which Waits co-wrote with Brennan — and starred in, in a successful run at Chicago's famed Steppenwolf Theater. This was the first of several theatre collaborations Waits would undertake. With his wife, Waits also wrote and performed in includes a short Tom Waits record to accompany the photographs and text.

Waits appeared on Primus' 1991 album, as the voice of "Tommy the Cat", which exposed him to a new audience in alternative rock. This was the first of several collaborations between Waits and the group; Les Claypool (Primus' singer, songwriter and bassist) would appear on several subsequent Waits releases.

In 1991 Waits also had a featured role in the film was released in 1992. The stark record featured a great deal of percussion and guitar (with little piano or sax), marking another change in Waits's sound. Critic Steve Huey calls it "perhaps Tom Waits' most cohesive album ... a morbid, sinister nightmare, one that applied the quirks of his experimental '80s classics to stunningly evocative -- and often harrowing -- effect ... Waits' most affecting and powerful recording, even if it isn't his most accessible."[6] was awarded a Grammy, and the Ramones later recorded a version of the album's memorable single, "I Don't Wanna Grow Up." The Pixies had earlier written a song called "Bone Machine" (from ), though it's unclear if Waits borrowed the term from them, or invented it independently.

Waits wrote and conducted the music for Jim Jarmusch's 1993 film is the result of a theatrical collaboration between Waits, director Robert Wilson and writer William S. Burroughs.

was issued in 1999, and also won a Grammy. It was Waits's first release for Anti Records, and his first to feature a turntablist, though, predictably, the instrument is used in an offbeat manner.

was issued in 2001. Hammond and Waits are close friends, and the album is a collection of cover songs, originally written by Waits, who appears on most songs (playing guitar, piano or offering backing vocals). There is also the traditional "I Know I've Been Changed", which Hammond and Waits perform as a duet.

2001 also saw the release of trumpeter Dave Douglas's , reading an excerpt from a work by Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz.

In 2002, Waits simultaneously released two albums, . Both were the fruits of theatrical collaborations with Wilson. The former was originally intended as a musical play about Lewis Carroll, and the latter was an interpretation of Georg Büchner's unfinished , its sound is mostly rough and experimental, and his only album (thus far) completely lacking in piano. Waits beatboxes on the opening track, , and most of the album's songs began as Waits's tape-recorded "vocal percussion" improvisations. It is also more rock-oriented, with less blues influence. In a first for Waits, he offers an explicitly political song: the album-closing takes on the persona of a soldier writing home that he is disillusioned with the war and is thankful to be leaving. The song doesn't mention the Iraq war, and, as Moon writes, "it could be the voice of a Civil War soldier singing a lonesome late-night dirge." Waits does describe the song as an "elliptical" protest song about the Iraqi invasion, however. Thom Jurek describes as "one of the most insightful and understated antiwar songs to have been written in decades. It contains not a hint of banality or sentiment in its folksy articulation." [7]. The album's second song,

Lawsuits

Waits has steadfastly refused to allow the use of his songs in commercials and has criticized other artists who do. ("If Michael Jackson wants to work for Pepsi, why doesn't he just get himself a suit and an office in their headquarters and be done with it.") He has filed several lawsuits against advertisers who used his material without permission.

This may be part of a wariness regarding large corporations. Waits has often switched to smaller independent record companies over the years: he signed to Asylum Records before they were bought out by Elektra Records and Warner Bros.. During his time with Island Records, that label expanded from a small company to a music industry giant; he then signed to Anti Records, a division of Epitaph Records.

Waits's first lawsuit was filed in 1988 against Frito Lay, and resulted in a US$2.6 million judgement in his favor. Frito Lay had approached Waits to use one of his songs in an advertisement. Waits declined the offer, and Frito Lay hired a Waits soundalike to sing a jingle similar to s "Step Right Up", which is, ironically, a song Waits has called "an indictment of advertising." [8] ("Step Right Up" concludes with the lyric "The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away"). Waits won the lawsuit, becoming the first celebrity to successfully sue a company for using an impersonator without permission.

In 1993, Levi's used Screamin' Jay Hawkins's version of Waits's "Heartattack and Vine" in a commercial. Waits sued, and Levi's agreed to cease all use of the song, and offered a full page apology in Billboard Magazine. [9]

In 2000, Waits found himself in a situation similar to his earlier one with Frito-Lay: Audi approached him, asking to use "Innocent When You Dream" (from ) for a commercial broadcast in Spain. Waits declined, but the commercial ultimately featured music very similar to that song. Waits undertook legal action, and a Spanish court recognized there had been a violation of Waits's moral rights, in addition to the infringement of copyright [10]. The production company, Tandem Campany Guasch, was ordered to pay compensation to Waits through his Spanish publisher.

In 2005, Waits sued Adam Opel AG, claiming that, after having failed to sign him to sing in their Scandinavian commercials, they had hired a sound-alike singer.

The Sons of Lee Marvin

Tom Waits has claimed on several occasions to be a member of the secret society, "The Sons of Lee Marvin", a group founded by Jarmusch in which all members bear a physical resemblance to actor Lee Marvin.

1990 "Red, Hot and Blue": Waits performs Cole Porter's "It's All Right With Me". Music video directed by Jim Jarmusch. by Chuck E. Weiss: Waits appears as a guest vocalist and guitarist. Waits also co-produced the album and executive produced the album with Kathleen Brennan.. Also appears, in a shared role with Nick Cave, as an animated piano-playing pirate singing "A Little Drop Of Poison".Rowlf, the gravelly-voiced, piano-playing dog of the Muppets; Tom Waits served as an inspiration for the character