Tom Waits

Thomas Alan Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American musician, composer, songwriter, and actor. His lyrics often focus on the underbelly of society and are delivered in his trademark deep, gravelly voice. He worked primarily in jazz during the 1970s, but his music since the 1980s has reflected greater influence from blues, rock, vaudeville, and experimental genres.

Waits was born and raised in a middle-class family in California. Inspired by the work of Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation, he began singing on the San Diego folk music circuit as a young man. He relocated to Los Angeles in 1972, where he worked as a songwriter before signing a recording contract with Asylum Records. His first albums were the jazz-oriented '' Closing Time'' (1973) and '' The Heart of Saturday Night'' (1974), which reflected his lyrical interest in nightlife, poverty, and criminality. He repeatedly toured the United States, Europe, and Japan, and attracted greater critical recognition and commercial success with '' Small Change'' (1976), '' Blue Valentine'' (1978), and ''Heartattack and Vine'' (1980). He produced the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's film '' One from the Heart'' (1981), and subsequently made cameo appearances in several Coppola films.

In 1980, Waits married Kathleen Brennan, split from his manager and record label, and moved to New York City. With Brennan's encouragement and frequent collaboration, he pursued a more experimental and eclectic musical aesthetic influenced by the work of Harry Partch and Captain Beefheart. This was reflected in a series of albums released by Island Records, including '' Swordfishtrombones'' (1983), '' Rain Dogs'' (1985), and '' Franks Wild Years'' (1987). He continued appearing in films, notably starring in Jim Jarmusch's ''Down by Law'' (1986), and also made theatrical appearances. With theatre director Robert Wilson, he produced the musicals '' The Black Rider'' (1990) and ''Alice'' (1992), first performed in Hamburg. Having returned to California in the 1990s, his albums '' Bone Machine'' (1992), '' The Black Rider'' (1993), and '' Mule Variations'' (1999) earned him increasing critical acclaim and multiple Grammy Awards. In the late 1990s, he switched to the record label ANTI-, which released '' Blood Money'' (2002), ''Alice'' (2002), '' Real Gone'' (2004), and '' Bad as Me'' (2011).

Despite a lack of mainstream commercial success, Waits has influenced many musicians and gained an international cult following, and several biographies have been written about him. In 2015, he was ranked at No. 55 on ''Rolling Stone'' " 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.

Biography

Childhood and adolescence: 1949–1971

Thomas Alan Waits was born on December 7, 1949, in Pomona, California. He has one older sister and one younger sister. His father, Jesse Frank Waits, was a Texas native of Scots-Irish descent, while his mother, Alma Fern (née Johnson), hailed from Oregon and had Norwegian ancestry. Alma, a regular church-goer, managed the household. Jesse taught Spanish at a local school and was an alcoholic; Waits later related that his father was "a tough one, always an outsider". The family lived at 318 North Pickering Avenue in Whittier, California. He described having a "very middle-class" upbringing and "a pretty normal childhood". He attended Jordan Elementary School, where he was bullied. There, he learned to play the bugle and guitar. His father taught him to play the ukulele.

During the summers, he visited maternal relatives in Gridley and Marysville. He later recalled that it was an uncle's raspy, gravelly voice that inspired the manner in which he later sang. In 1959, his parents separated and his father moved away from the family home, which was a traumatic experience for 10-year-old Waits. Alma took her children and relocated to Chula Vista, a middle-class suburb of San Diego. Jesse visited the family there, taking his children on trips to Tijuana. In nearby Southeast San Diego, Waits attended O'Farrell Community School, where he fronted a school band, the Systems, later describing the group as "white kids trying to get that Motown sound". He developed a love of R&B and soul singers like Ray Charles, James Brown, and Wilson Pickett, as well as country music and Roy Orbison. Bob Dylan later became a strong influence, with Waits placing transcriptions of Dylan's lyrics on his bedroom walls. He was an avid watcher of ''The Alfred Hitchcock Hour'' and ''The Twilight Zone''.

By the time he was studying at Hilltop High School, he later related, he was "kind of an amateur juvenile delinquent", interested in "malicious mischief" and breaking the law. He later described himself as a "rebel against the rebels", for he eschewed the hippie subculture which was growing in popularity and was instead inspired by the 1950s Beat generation, having a love of Beat writers like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. In 1968, at age 18, he dropped out of high school.

Waits worked at Napoleone's pizza restaurant in National City, California, and both there and at a local diner developed an interest in the lives of the patrons, writing down phrases and snippets of dialogue he overheard. He said he worked in the forestry service as a fireman for three years and served with the Coast Guard. He enrolled at Chula Vista's Southwestern Community College to study photography, for a time considering a career in the field. He continued pursuing his musical interests, taking piano lessons. He began frequenting folk music venues around San Diego, becoming drawn into the city's folk music scene.

In 1969, he gained employment as an occasional doorman for the Heritage coffeehouse, which held regular performances from folk musicians.Montadon, Mac, "Timeline and Discography" in ''Innocent When You Dream'', p. 385 He also began to sing at the Heritage; his set initially consisted largely of covers of Dylan and Red Sovine's "Big Joe and Phantom 309".

In time, he performed his own material as well, often parodies of country songs or bittersweet ballads influenced by his relationships with girlfriends; these included early songs " Ol' 55" and "I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love With You". As his reputation spread, he played at other San Diego venues, supporting acts like Tim Buckley, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, and his friend Jack Tempchin. Aware that San Diego offered little opportunity for career progression, Waits began traveling into Los Angeles to play at the Troubadour.

Early musical career: 1972–1976

In the autumn of 1971, at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, Waits came to the attention of Herb Cohen, who signed him to a publishing contract and a recording contract. The recordings that were produced under that recording agreement were eventually released in the early 1990s as The Early Years, Volume One and The Early Years, Volume Two. Quitting his job at Napoleone's to concentrate on his songwriting career, in early 1972 Waits moved to an apartment in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, a poor neighborhood known for its Hispanic and bohemian communities.
He continued performing at the Troubadour and there met David Geffen, who gave Waits a recording contract with his Asylum Records. Jerry Yester was chosen to produce his first album, with the recording sessions taking place in Hollywood's Sunset Sound studios. The resulting album, '' Closing Time'', was released in March 1973, although it attracted little attention and did not sell well. Biographer Barney Hoskyns noted that ''Closing Time'' was "broadly in step with the singer-songwriter school of the early 1970s"; Waits had wanted to create a piano-led jazz album although Yester had pushed its sound in a more folk-oriented direction. An Eagles recording of its opening track, "Ol' 55", on their album ''On the Border'', brought Waits further money and recognition, although he regarded their version as "a little antiseptic".

To promote his debut, Waits and a three-piece band embarked on a U.S. tour, largely on the East Coast, where he was the supporting act for more established artists. As part of this, he supported Tom Rush at Washington D.C.'s The Cellar Door, Danny O'Keefe at Massachusetts's Club Passim, Charlie Rich at New York City's Max's Kansas City, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas in East Lansing, Michigan, and John P. Hammond in San Francisco.
Waits returned to Los Angeles in June, feeling demoralized about his career. That month, he was the cover star of free music magazine, ''Music World''. He began composing songs for his second album, and attended the Venice Poetry Workshop to try out this new material in front of an audience. Although Waits was eager to record this new material, Cohen instead convinced him to take over as a support act for Frank Zappa's the Mothers of Invention after previous support act Kathy Dalton pulled out due to the hostility from Zappa's fans. Waits joined Zappa's tour in Ontario, but like Dalton found the audiences hostile; while on stage he was jeered at and pelted with fruit. Although he liked the Mothers of Invention's band members, he found Zappa himself intimidating.

Waits moved from Silver Lake to Echo Park, spending much of his time in downtown Los Angeles. In early 1974, he continued to perform around the West Coast, getting as far as Denver. For Waits's second album, Geffen wanted a more jazz-oriented producer, selecting Bones Howe for the job. Howe recounts his first encounter with the young artist: "I told him I thought his music and lyrics had a Kerouac quality to them, and he was blown away that I knew who Jack Kerouac was. I told him I also played jazz drums and he went wild. Then I told him that when I was working for Norman Granz, Norman had found these tapes of Kerouac reading his poetry from The Beat Generation in a hotel room. I told Waits I'd make him a copy. That sealed it." Recording sessions for '' The Heart of Saturday Night'' took place at Wally Heider's Studio 3 on Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood in April and May, with Waits conceptualising the album as a sequence of songs about U.S. nightlife. The album was far more widely reviewed than ''Closing Time'' had been, reflecting Waits's growing notability on the American music scene. Waits himself was later dismissive of the album, describing it as "very ill-formed, but I was trying".

After recording ''The Heart of Saturday Night'', Waits reluctantly agreed to tour with Zappa again, but once more faced strong audience hostility. The kudos of having supported Zappa's tour nevertheless bolstered his image in the music industry and helped his career. In October 1974, he first performed as the headline act before touring the East Coast; in New York City he met and befriended the singer Bette Midler, with whom he had a sporadic affair. Back in Los Angeles, Cohen suggested Waits produce a live album. To this end, he performed two live shows at the Record Plant Studio in front of an audience. Again produced and engineered by Howe (as all his future Asylum releases would be), the recording was released as '' Nighthawks at the Diner'' in October 1975.

He followed this with a week's residency at the Reno Sweeney nightclub, an off-Broadway–style club in New York City. In December he appeared on the PBS concert show '' Soundstage''. From March to May 1976, he toured the U.S., telling interviewers that the experience was tough and that he was drinking too much alcohol. In May, he embarked on his first tour of Europe, performing in London, Amsterdam, Brussels, and Copenhagen. On his return to Los Angeles, he joined his friend Chuck E. Weiss by moving into the Tropicana motel in West Hollywood, a place that already had an established reputation in rock music circles. Visitors noted his two-room apartment there was heavily cluttered. He was living in what biographer Hoskyns later called a "pastiche of poverty"; Waits told the ''Los Angeles Times'' that "You almost have to create situations in order to write about them, so I live in a constant state of self-imposed poverty".

''Small Change'' and ''Foreign Affairs'': 1976–1978

In July 1976, he recorded the album '' Small Change'', again produced by Howe. In later years, he described it as a seminal episode in his development as a songwriter, describing it as the point when he became "completely confident in the craft". On release, the album was critically well received and was his first release to break into the Billboard Top 100 Album List, peaking at number 89. Later, biographer Patrick Humphries called ''Small Change'' Waits's "masterpiece". He received growing press attention, being profiled in ''Newsweek'', ''Time'', '' Vogue'', and ''The New Yorker''; he had begun to accrue a cult following. He went on tour to promote the new album, backed by the Nocturnal Emissions ( Frank Vicari, Chip White and Fitz Jenkins). In reference to his song "Pasties and a G-String", a female stripper came onstage during his performances. He began 1977 by touring Japan for the first time.

Back in Los Angeles, he encountered various problems. One female fan, recently escaped from a mental health institution in Illinois, began stalking him and lurking outside his Tropicana apartment. In May 1977, Waits and close friend Chuck E. Weiss were arrested for fighting with police officers in a coffee shop. They were charged with two counts of disturbing the peace but were acquitted after the defense produced eight witnesses who refuted the police officers' account of the incident. In response, Waits sued the Los Angeles Police Department and five years later was awarded $7,500 in damages.

In July and August 1977, he recorded his fourth studio album, ''Foreign Affairs''; Bob Alcivar had been employed as its arranger. The album included "I Never Talk to Strangers", a duet with Midler, with whom he was still in an intermittent relationship. She appeared with him at the Troubadour to sing the song; the next day he repaid the favor by performing at a gay rights benefit at the Hollywood Bowl that Midler was involved with. ''Foreign Affairs'' was not as well received by critics as its predecessor, and unlike ''Small Change'' failed to make the Billboard Top 100 album chart. That year, he began a relationship with the singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones; their work and styles influenced each other. In October 1977, he returned to touring with the Nocturnal Emissions; it was on this tour that he first began using props onstage, in this case a street lamp. Again, he found the tour exhausting. In March 1978, he embarked on his second tour of Japan.

During these years, Waits sought to broaden his career beyond music by involving himself in other projects. Waits became friends with the actor and director Sylvester Stallone and made his first cinematic appearance as a cameo part in Stallone's '' Paradise Alley'' (1978); Waits appeared as a drunk piano player. With Paul Hampton, Waits also began writing a movie musical, although this project never came to fruition. Another of the projects he began at this time was a book about entertainers of the past whom he admired.

''Blue Valentine'' and ''Heartattack and Vine'': 1978–1980

In July 1978, Waits began the recording sessions for his album '' Blue Valentine''. Part way through the sessions, he replaced his musicians in order to create a less jazz-oriented sound; for the album, he switched from a piano to an electric guitar as his main instrument. For the album's back cover, Waits used a picture of himself and Jones leaning against his car, a 1964 Ford Thunderbird, taken by Elliot Gilbert. From the album, Waits's first single was released, a performance of " Somewhere", from the musical "West Side Story", but it failed to chart. For his ''Blue Valentine'' tour, Waits assembled a new band; he also had a gas station built for use as a set during his performances. His support act on the tour was Leon Redbone. In April, he embarked on a European tour, there making television appearances and press interviews; in Austria he was the subject of a short documentary. From there, he flew to Australia for his first tour of that country before returning to Los Angeles in May.

Waits was dissatisfied with Elektra-Asylum, whom he felt had lost interest in him as an artist in favor of their more commercially successful acts like the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Carly Simon, and Queen. Jones's musical career was taking off; after an appearance on ''Saturday Night Live'', her single "Chuck E.'s In Love" reached number 4 in the singles chart, straining her relationship with Waits. Their relationship was further damaged by Jones's heroin addiction. Waits joined Jones for the first leg of her European tour, but then ended his relationship with her. Her grief at the breakup was channelled into the 1981 album ''Pirates''. In September, Waits moved to Crenshaw Boulevard to be closer to his father, before deciding to relocate to New York City. He initially lived in the Chelsea Hotel before renting an apartment on West 26th Street. On arriving in the city, he told a reporter that he "just needed a new urban landscape. I've always wanted to live here. It's a good working atmosphere for me". In the city, he contemplated writing a Broadway musical to be based on Thornton Wilder's ''Our Town''.

The film director Francis Ford Coppola then asked Waits to return to Los Angeles to write a soundtrack for his forthcoming film, '' One from the Heart'', which was to be set in Las Vegas. Waits was excited, but conflicted, by the prospect; Coppola wanted him to create music akin to his early work, a genre that he was trying to leave behind, and thus he characterized the project as an artistic "step backwards" for him. He nevertheless returned to Los Angeles to work on the soundtrack in a room set aside for the purpose in Coppola's Hollywood studios. This style of working was new to Waits; he later recalled that he was "so insecure when I started ... I was sweating buckets". Waits was nominated for the 1982 Academy Award for Original Music Score.

Waits still contractually owed Elektra-Asylum a further album, so took a break from Coppola's project to write an album that he initially called ''White Spades''. He recorded the album in June; it was released in September as ''Heartattack and Vine''. The album was more guitar-based and had—according to Humphries—"a harder, R&B edge"—than any of its predecessors. It again broke into the Top 100 Album Chart, peaking at number 96. Reviews were generally good. Hoskyns called it "one of Waits's pinnacle achievements" as an album. One of its tracks, " Jersey Girl", was subsequently recorded by Bruce Springsteen. Waits was grateful, both for the revenue that the cover brought him and because he felt appreciated by a songwriter whom he admired.

''Swordfishtrombones'' and New York City: 1980–1984

While on the set of ''One from the Heart'', Waits met Kathleen Brennan, a young Irish-American woman working as an assistant story editor; Waits later described encountering her as "love at first sight". They were engaged to be married within a week. In August 1980, they married at a 24-hour wedding chapel on Manchester Boulevard in Watts before honeymooning in Tralee, a town in County Kerry, Ireland, where Brennan had family. Returning to Los Angeles, the couple moved into a Union Avenue apartment. Hoskyns noted that with Brennan, "Waits had found the stabilizing, nurturing companion he'd always wanted", and that she brought him "a sense of emotional security he had never known" before. At the same time, many of his old friends felt cut off after his marriage. Brennan shunned the media and refused all interview requests.

Recording of Waits's ''One from the Heart'' soundtrack began in October 1980 and continued until September 1981. A number of the tracks were recorded as duets with Crystal Gayle; Waits had initially planned to duet with Midler but she proved unavailable. The film was released in 1982, to largely poor reviews. Waits makes a small cameo in it, playing a trumpet in a crowd scene. Waits's soundtrack album, also titled '' One from the Heart'', was released by Columbia Records in 1982. Waits had had his own misgivings about the album, thinking it over-produced.
Humphries thought that working with Coppola was an important move in Waits's career: it "led directly to Waits moving from cult (i.e. largely unknown) artiste to center-stage."

Newly married and with his Elektra-Asylum contract completed, Waits decided that it was time to artistically reinvent himself. He wanted to move away from using Howe as his producer, although the two parted on good terms. With Brennan's help, he began the process of firing Cohen as his manager, with he and Brennan taking on managerial responsibilities themselves. He came to believe that Cohen had been swindling him out of much of his earnings, later relating that "I thought I was a millionaire and it turned out I had, like, twenty bucks." Waits credited Brennan with introducing him to much new music, most notably the work of Captain Beefheart, a key influence on the direction in which he wanted to take his music. He later noted that "once you've heard Beefheart it's hard to wash him out of your clothes. It stains, like coffee or blood." He also came under the influence of Harry Partch, a composer who created his own instruments out of everyday materials. Waits began to use images rather than moods or characters as the basis for his songs.

Waits wrote the songs which would be included on the album '' Swordfishtrombones'' during a two-week trip to Ireland. He recorded it at Sunset Sound studios and produced the album himself; Brennan often attended the sessions and gave him advice. ''Swordfishtrombones'' abandoned the jazz sound characteristic of his earlier work; it was his first album not to feature a saxophone. When the album was finished, he took it to Asylum, but they declined to release it. Waits wanted to leave the label; in his view, "They liked dropping my name in terms of me being a 'prestige' artist, but when it came down to it they didn't invest a whole lot in me in terms of faith".

Chris Blackwell of Island Records learned of Waits's dissatisfaction and approached him, offering to release ''Swordfishtrombones''; Island had a reputation for signing more experimental acts, such as King Crimson, Roxy Music, and Sparks. Waits did not tour to promote the album, partly because Brennan was pregnant. Although not enthusiastic regarding the new trend for music videos, he appeared in one for the song "In the Neighborhood", co-directed by Haskell Wexler and Michael A. Russ. Russ also designed the ''Swordfishtrombones'' album cover, featuring an image of Waits with Lee Kolima, a circus strongman, and Angelo Rossito, a dwarf. According to David Smay, ''Swordfishtrombones'' was "the record where Tom Waits radically reinvented himself and reshaped the musical landscape." The album was critically well received; the '' New Musical Express'' named it album of the year.

In 1983, Waits appeared in three more Coppola films: in '' Rumble Fish'' he played Benny, a philosopher running a billboard store, in '' The Outsiders'' he was Buck Merrill, a one-line role, and in '' The Cotton Club'' he again made a cameo appearance, this time as the eponymous club's maître'd. He later stated that "Coppola is actually the only film director in Hollywood that has a conscience ... most of them are egomaniacs and money-grabbing bastards". In September, Brennan gave birth to their daughter, Kellesimone. Waits was determined to keep his family life separate from his public image and to spend as much time as possible with his daughter. With Brennan and their child, Waits moved to New York City to be closer to Brennan's parents and Island's U.S. office. They settled into a loft apartment near Union Square.

Waits found New York City life frustrating, although it allowed him to meet many new musicians and artists. He befriended John Lurie of The Lounge Lizards, and the duo began sharing a music studio in the Westbeth artist-community building in Greenwich Village. He began networking in the city's arts scene, and, at a party Jean-Michel Basquiat held for Lurie, he met the filmmaker Jim Jarmusch.

''Rain Dogs'' and ''Franks Wild Years'': 1985–1988

Waits recorded his eighth studio album, '' Rain Dogs'', at the RCA Studios in mid 1985. Waits called the album "kind of an interaction between Appalachia and Nigeria". Keith Richards played on several tracks; Richards later acknowledged Waits's encouragement of his first solo album, '' Talk is Cheap''. Filmmaker Jean-Baptiste Mondino directed a music video of the ''Rain Dogs'' track "Downtown Train". The song was subsequently covered by Patty Smyth in 1987, and later by Rod Stewart, where it reached the top five in 1990. In 1985, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine named Waits its "Songwriter of the Year", and in 2003 it would rank ''Rain Dogs'' among the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In September 1985, his son Casey was born. Waits assembled a band and went on tour, kicking it off in Scotland in October before proceeding around Europe and then the US. He changed the setlist for each performance; most of the songs chosen were from his two Island albums.

Returning to the U.S., he travelled to New Orleans

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