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American composer Pomona, California, USA
Thomas Alan Waits
Tom Waits
Born December 7, 1949
Thomas Alan Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor.

Waits has a distinctive voice, described by the MusicHound Rock Album Guide 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." With this trademark growl, as well as his experimental tendencies and a love of pre-rock Americana styles such as blues, jazz, and Vaudeville, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona.

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 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 Tori Amos, Spanky & Our Gang, the Eagles, Bob Seger, The Ramones, Elvis Costello, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, and Rod Stewart. Possibly the most famous of the covers were Jersey Girl, performed by Bruce Springsteen, and Downtown Train, performed by 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 Short Cuts, The Two Jakes, The Fisher King, Mystery Men, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Coffee and Cigarettes, Night on Earth, At Play in the Fields of the Lord and Domino. He also had a starring role in the film Down By Law.

Waits was named at #90 on VH1's Top 100 Greatest Artists of Rock & Roll.

Early career

Born in Pomona, California to parents of Scottish, Irish, and Norwegian descent, Tom Waits was working as a doorman at the Heritage nightclub in San Diego in the early '70s, where artists of every genre performed. An avid fan of many writers and musicians, among them Bob Dylan, Lord Buckley, Hoagy Carmichael, Marty Robbins, Raymond Chandler, and Stephen Foster, Waits began developing his own idiosyncratic musical style, combining song and monologue.

He took his newly formed act to Monday nights at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, where musicians from all over stood in line all day to get the opportunity to perform on-stage that night. Shortly thereafter, in 1971, Waits began his recording career after he relocated to Los Angeles and signed to Asylum Records with Herb Cohen, who was also the manager of Frank Zappa. He was 21 years old.

After numerous abortive recording sessions, Waits's first record, the melancholic, country-tinged Closing Time, was issued in 1973. While it received warm reviews, he did not gain widespread attention until his Ol' 55 was recorded by his labelmates the Eagles in 1974 for their On the Border album.

He began touring and opening for such artists as Charlie Rich, Martha and the Vandellas and Frank Zappa. Waits gained increasing critical acclaim and a loyal cult audience with his subsequent albums.The Heart of Saturday Night, released in 1974, showed Waits's roots as a nightclub singer, with half-spoken and half-crooned ballads, often accompanied with a jazz backup band.

The 1975 album Nighthawks at the Diner, 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."*

Small Change (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 style that owed influence to Raymond Chandler and Charles Bukowski. Foreign Affairs (1977) and Blue Valentine (1978) were in a similar vein, but showed further refinement of his artistic voice. It was around this time that Waits had a high-profile romantic relationship with Rickie Lee Jones (who appears on the album cover of Blue Valentine).

It was an incredibly prolific period for Waits, establishing his reputation as a visionary songwriter. 1980 saw the release of Heartattack and Vine. 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 One From The Heart. Waits worked with singer/songwriter Crystal Gayle as his vocal foil for the album.

Waits began his acting career with his appearance in Sylvester Stallone's 1978 film Paradise Alley and later appeared in Coppola's The Outsiders. He starred in Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law in 1986, and has played supporting roles in films such as Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, Short Cuts, Mystery Men, Coffee and Cigarettes (as himself), Domino (film) and Bram Stoker's Dracula (as Dracula's insane thrall Renfield).

1980s

In August 1980, Waits married Kathleen Brennan, whom he had met on the set of One from the Heart. 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: despite having shared a manager with Beefheart in the 1970s, Waits says "I became more acquainted with him when I got married." * Waits would later describe his relationship with Brennan as a paradigm shift in his musical development.

After leaving Asylum Records for Island Records, Waits released Swordfishtrombones in 1983, a record which marked a sharp turn in Waits's output, and which gave rise to his reputation as a musical maverick. Apart from Captain Beefheart and some of Dr. John's early output, there was little precedent in popular music for Swordfishtrombones or equally idiosyncratic albums, Rain Dogs (1985) and Franks Wild Years (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." *

The instrumentation and orchestration in his later albums were often quite eclectic.* 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. Keith Richards was also recorded with Waits on many tracks from Raindogs. 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 style 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".*

His songwriting shifted as well, becoming somewhat more abstract and embracing a number of styles largely ignored in pop music, including primal blues, cabaret stylings, rhumbas, theatrical approaches in the style of Kurt Weill, tangos, early country music and European folk music, as well as the Tin Pan Alley-era songs that influenced his early output. He also recorded a few spoken word pieces influenced by Ken Nordine's "word jazz" records of the 1950s.

Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs and Franks Wild Years can retrospectively be seen as a trilogy of loose concept albums, following a sailor 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 Big Time, a surreal concert movie and soundtrack released in 1988.

1990s

In 1990 Waits collaborated with photographer Sylvia Plachy. Her book, Sylvia Plachy's Unguided Tour includes a short Tom Waits record to accompany the photographs and text.

Waits appeared on Primus' 1991 album, Sailing the Seas of Cheese 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.

1991 also saw the release of Ken Nordine's spoken word album Devout Catalyst, in which Waits makes a guest appearance on two tracks: Thousand Bing Bangs and The Movie. Jerry Garcia and David Grisman improvised music behind Nordine's spoken word. Grateful Dead Records was the label that released the album and the Dead's longtime soundman Dan Healy was instrumental in both the engineering and production of the album.

In 1991 Waits also had a featured role in the film At Play in the Fields of the Lord.

Bone Machine 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."* Bone Machine 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 Surfer Rosa), though it's unclear if Waits borrowed the term from them, or invented it independently. Once again Keith Richards of Rolling Stones fame co-wrote and records with Waits on the "That Feel," the closing track.

Waits wrote and conducted the music for Jim Jarmusch's 1993 film Night on Earth, which was released as an album. The Black Rider is the result of a theatrical collaboration between Waits, director Robert Wilson and writer William S. Burroughs.

Mule Variations was issued in 1999, and also won a Grammy, though to give an idea of how impossible it is to classify Waits' music, he was nominated simultaneously for Best Contemporary Folk Album (which he won) and Best Male Rock Vocal Performance (His previous Grammy, for Bone Machine, was awarded in the category of yet another musical style: Best Alternative Album). 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. The album was also his first and only Top 30 album to date, reaching #30. A few years later, the album's spoken-word piece "What's He Building?" would be used in the film "Enron: the Smartest Guys in the Room."

2000s

Singer John P. Hammond's Wicked Grin 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 a version of the traditional hymn "I Know I've Been Changed", which Hammond and Waits perform as a duet.

2001 also saw the release of trumpeter Dave Douglas's Witness, which includes the 25-minute track, "Mahfouz", named for Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz. Waits is featured in the song, reading an excerpt from Mahfouz's work.

In 2002, Waits simultaneously released two albums, Alice and Blood Money. 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 Woyzeck. The two albums revisit the tango, Tin Pan Alley, and spoken word influences of Swordfishtrombones, while the lyrics are both profoundly cynical and melancholy, as the titles "Misery is the River of the World" and "No One Knows I'm Gone" make clear.

Real Gone was released in 2004. While more refined than Bone Machine and perhaps more commercially viable than Alice or Blood Money, its sound is still experimental, and it is his only album thus far completely lacking in piano. Waits beatboxes on the opening track, "Top of the Hill", and most of the album's songs begin with Waits's "vocal percussion" improvisations. It is also more rock-oriented, with less blues influence than he has previously demonstrated, and it contains two explicitly political songs — a first for Waits. In the album-closing "The Day After Tomorrow" he adopts the persona of a soldier writing home that he is disillusioned with war and is thankful to be leaving. The song doesn't mention the Iraq war, and, as Tom Moon writes, "it could be the voice of a Civil War soldier singing a lonesome late-night dirge." Waits himself does describe the song as an something of an "elliptical" protest song about the Iraqi invasion, however. Thom Jurek describes "The Day After Tomorrow" as "one of the most insightful and understated anti-war songs to have been written in decades. It contains not a hint of banality or sentiment in its folksy articulation." [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:z7d5vwnwa9uk~T1.

He now lives in Sonoma County, California with his wife and children.

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. He has been quoted, "Apparently the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad — ideally naked and purring on the hood of a new car," he said in a statement. "I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor."

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 Small Change's "Step Right Up", which is, ironically, a song Waits has called "an indictment of advertising." *. Waits won the lawsuit, becoming the first artist 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. *

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 Franks Wild Years) 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 that there had been a violation of Waits's moral rights, in addition to the infringement of copyright. * 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.

Waits has also had lawsuits against offenders outside of the music industry. He was arrested in 1977 outside of Duke's Tropicana Coffee Shop in Los Angeles. Waits and a friend were trying to stop some men from bullying other patrons at the hangout. Unbeknownst to Waits and his companion, the men were plainclothed police and Waits and his friend were taken into custody and charged with disturbing the peace. Although the jury found Waits not guilty, he took the police department to court and was eventually rewarded $7,500 for his troubles.*

Discography

Major releases

Year Title Special Info
1973 Closing Time
1974 Heart of Saturday Night
1975 Nighthawks at the Diner recorded live over two nights for small audiences
1976 Small Change
1977 Foreign Affairs
1978 Blue Valentine
1980 Heartattack and Vine
1982 One From the Heart Coppola Movie Soundtrack
1983 Swordfishtrombones
1985 Rain Dogs
1987 Franks Wild Years Collaboration with partner Benoît Christie
1988 Big Time Live CD, movie, video release
1992 Night on Earth Movie soundtrack
1992 Bone Machine Won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album
1993 The Black Rider Collaboration with Wm. S. Burroughs
1999 Mule Variations Won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album
2002 Blood Money Music to the play "Woyzeck" >
2002 Alice Music to the play of the same name >
2004 Real Gone

Collections

Contributions

  • 1988 Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films: Waits performs Heigh Ho (The Dwarfs Marching Song).
  • 1990 Red, Hot and Blue: Waits performs Cole Porter's It's All Right With Me. Music video directed by Jim Jarmusch.
  • 1991 Sailing the Seas of Cheese, by Primus: Waits does character vocals on Tommy The Cat.
  • 1991 Devout Catalyst, by Ken Nordine: Waits appears on Thousand Bing Bangs and The Movie.
  • 1992 Beautiful Mess, by Thelonious Monster: Waits appears as a guest singer on Adios Lounge.
  • 1993 Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet, by Gavin Bryars: Waits appears as guest singer.
  • 1996 Dead Man Walking: Waits performs original composition Fall of Troy for the film's soundtrack.
  • 1997 All for Nothing/Nothing for All, by The Replacements: Waits appears as guest singer on Date to Church.
  • 1999 Antipop, by Primus: Waits produces the song Coattails of a Deadman and does vocals on it.
  • 1999 More Oar: A Tribute To Skip Spence by various artists: Waits covers Spence's Books of Moses.
  • 1999 Extremely Cool 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.
  • 2000 Helium, by Tin Hat Trio: Waits appears as guest singer on Helium Reprise.
  • 2000 Free the West Memphis 3 by various artists: Waits performs the Chuck E. Weiss song Rains on Me.
  • 2001 It's A Wonderful Life, by Sparklehorse: Waits does vocals on Dog Door.
  • 2002 For the Kids by various artists: Waits performs the lullaby Bend Down the Branches.
  • 2002 Don't Give Up On Me, by Solomon Burke features Waits' original song, Diamond in Your Mind.
  • 2003 We're a Happy Family: A Tribute to the Ramones by various artists: Waits covers Return of Jackie and Judy.
  • 2004 The Ride by Los Lobos: Waits does vocals on the track Kitate.
  • 2004 The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Discovered Covered by various artists: Waits covers Johnston's King Kong.
  • 2005 Blinking Lights and other Revelations by Eels: Waits screams on the track Going Fetal.

Tribute albums

Filmography

Tours

See also

External links

1949 births | Living people | American actors | American composers | American male singers | American singer-songwriters | California writers | Epitaph Records groups | American film actors | Irish-American singers | Norwegian-Americans | American pop pianists | Scottish-Americans | People from California | California musicians | Saturday Night Live musical guests | Actor-singers

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