Tom Waits
Thomas Alan Waits is an American singer, songwriter, composer and actor. His lyrics often focus on society's underworld and are delivered in his trademark deep, gravelly voice. He began in the folk scene during the 1970s, but his music since the 1980s has reflected the influence of such diverse genres as rock, jazz, Delta blues, opera, vaudeville, cabaret, funk and experimental techniques verging on industrial music.
Tom Waits was born in a middle-class family in Pomona, California then moved to Whittier in 1949, his family lived on Kentucky Avenue, a pivotal setting for his memories. Inspired by the work of Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation, he began singing on the San Diego folk circuit. He moved to Los Angeles in 1972, where he worked as a songwriter before signing a recording contract with Asylum Records. His debut album was Closing Time, and The Heart of Saturday Night and Nighthawks at the Diner followed. He toured the United States, Europe, and Japan, finding greater critical and commercial success with Small Change, Blue Valentine, and Heartattack and Vine. During that time, Waits entered the world of film, acting in Paradise Alley, where he met Kathleen Brennan.
In 1980, Waits married 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 eclectic and experimental sound influenced by Harry Partch and Captain Beefheart, as heard on the loose trilogy Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs and Franks Wild Years. In 1990, he collaborated with theater director Robert Wilson on the musical The Black Rider, the songs for which were released on the album of the same name. Waits and Wilson reunited for the musicals Alice and Woyzeck. In 2002, the songs from them were released on the albums Alice and Blood Money. Waits won Grammys for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Contemporary Folk Album for Bone Machine and Mule Variations. Waits went on to release Real Gone, the compilation Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, the live album Glitter and Doom Live and Bad as Me. Waits has not toured since 2008 and has not issued new music since 2011, though he continues to make isolated appearances guesting at concerts and special events. He also has published poetry and has continued his acting career, which began with a small part in 1978's Paradise Alley and has encompassed a range of offbeat character roles ever since.
Waits has influenced many artists and gained an international cult following. His songs have been covered by Bruce Springsteen, Tori Amos, Rod Stewart, and the Eagles and he has written songs for Johnny Cash and Norah Jones among others. In 2011, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Introducing him, Neil Young said "This next man is indescribable, and I'm here to describe him. He's sort of a performer, singer, actor, magician, spirit guide, changeling." Accepting the honor, Waits mused: "They say that I have no hits and I'm difficult to work with. And they say that like it's a bad thing!"
Biography
Childhood and adolescence: 1949–1968
Thomas Alan Waits was born on December 7, 1949, in Pomona, California. He has one older and one younger sister. His father, Jesse Frank Waits, was a Texas native of Scots-Irish descent, and his mother, Alma Fern, 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." They lived at 318 North Pickering Avenue in Whittier, California. He recalled 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, both in California. He later recalled that it was an uncle's raspy, gravelly timbre that inspired his own singing voice. In 1959, his parents separated and his father moved away from the family home, a traumatic experience for the 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, which he described as "white kids trying to get that Motown sound." He developed a love of R&B and soul singers like Ray Charles and Wilson Pickett, as well as country music and Roy Orbison. Bob Dylan later became an inspiration; Waits placed transcriptions of Dylan's lyrics on his bedroom walls.
Waits recalls: "I was fifteen and I snuck in to see Lightnin' Hopkins. Amazing show. Every time he opened his mouth he had that orchestra of gold teeth, and I was devastated... He walked through a door, and slammed the door behind him, and on the door it said, I swear to God, 'KEEP OUT. This room is for entertainers ONLY.' And I knew, at that moment, that I had to get into show business as soon as possible." He recalls: "I first saw James Brown in 1962 at an outdoor theatre in San Diego and it was indescribable... it was like putting a finger in a light socket... It was really like seeing mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Christmas." By the time he was studying at Hilltop High School in Chula Vista, California, he later said he was "kind of an amateur juvenile delinquent", interested in "malicious mischief" and breaking the law. He later said that he was a "rebel against the rebels", eschewing the hippie subculture which was growing in popularity for the 1950s Beat generation, especially Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. In 1968, at age 18, Waits dropped out of high school. He was an avid watcher of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. Another influence was the comedian Lenny Bruce.
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 worked in the forestry service as a fireman for three years and served with the U.S. Coast Guard. He enrolled at Southwestern Community College in Chula Vista to study photography, for a time considering a career in the field. He continued pursuing his musical interests, taking piano lessons. He began frequenting venues around San Diego, being drawn into the city's folk scene.
Early musical career: 1969–1976
In 1969, he was hired as an occasional doorman for the Heritage coffeehouse, which held regular performances from folk musicians. He began to sing at the Heritage; his set initially consisted largely of covers of Dylan and Red Sovine's "Phantom 309".In time, he performed his own material as well, often parodies of country songs or bittersweet ballads influenced by his relationships; these included early songs "Ol' 55" and "I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love With You". As his reputation grew, 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 in West Hollywood.
It was there, in the autumn of 1971, that Waits came to the attention of Herb Cohen, who signed him to publishing and recording contracts. The recordings which were produced under that recording agreement were eventually released in the early 1990s as The Early Years and The Early Years, Volume Two. In early 1972, after quitting his job at Napoleone's to concentrate on his songwriting career, 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 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. Buckley covered "Martha" on his album Sefronia later that year. An Eagles recording of "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, where he was the supporting act for more established artists. He supported Tom Rush at Washington D.C.'s The Cellar Door, Danny O'Keefe in Cambridge, 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, he was intimidated by Zappa himself.
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 conceptualizing the album as a sequence of songs about U.S. nightlife. The album was far more widely reviewed than Closing Time had been. Waits himself later dismissed the album 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 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 shows at the Record Plant Studio in front of a small invited audience to recreate the atmosphere of a jazz club. Again produced and engineered by Howe, it was released as Nighthawks at the Diner in October 1975. The album cover and title were inspired by Edward Hopper's Nighthawks.
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, moving into the Tropicana Motel in West Hollywood, which had an established reputation in rock music circles. Visitors noted his two-room apartment there was heavily cluttered. 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".