Tom Waits

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Birthday:

7 December 1949, Pomona, California, USA

Birth Name:

Thomas Alan Waits

Height:

183 cm

Thomas Alan Waits was born in Pomona, California, to schoolteachers Alma Fern (Johnson) and Jesse Frank Waits. Described as one of the last beatniks of the contemporary music, Waits in fact has two separate careers. From 1973 (LP "Closing Time") to 1983 ("One From The Heart" soundtrack), he recorded nine LPs for Asylum Records, writing songs mainly in the manner of Tin Pan Alley, mixing them with jazz and blues. Extraordinarily, he never produced a hit, but he earned a cult following all over the world. In 1983 he signed with Island Records, and released a series of albums that stunned the music world. Beginning with "Swordfishtrombones", he introduced a whole new orchestration, which included some of the instruments invented by Harry Partch. He found a new ground for his innovations, searching in sound fields that never before were searched. This second part of his career coincided with his marriage to Kathleen Brennan, a former writer for Francis Ford Coppola (Zoetrope (1999)). His LPs "Rain Dogs" (1985), "Big Time" (soundtrack) and "The Black Rider" are today what Kurt Weill's music was once. "The Black Rider" brings music written for the show directed by Bob Wilson and staged in Germany. Show less «

Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends.

No, I don't have a drinking problem except when I can't get a drink.

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

I like to walk out of a restaurant with enough gas to open a Mobil station.

I hate Disneyland. It primes our kids for Las Vegas.

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?

All hardware items must be admired for their sonic properties: pitchforks, egg beaters, crowbars, fireplace grates, shovels, anvils, rebars ...Show more »

All hardware items must be admired for their sonic properties: pitchforks, egg beaters, crowbars, fireplace grates, shovels, anvils, rebars [the structural reinforcement rods used in poured concrete], trash cans - the list goes on and on and they're all waiting to be played. Show less «

Commercials are an unnatural use of my work ... it's like having a cow's udder sewn to the side of my face. Painful and humiliating.

I knelt at the altar of Ray Charles for years. I worked at a restaurant, and that's all there was on the jukebox.

The blues is like a planet. It's an enormous topic. You can't ignore the impact that it has had and continues to have on the whole musical c...Show more »

The blues is like a planet. It's an enormous topic. You can't ignore the impact that it has had and continues to have on the whole musical culture. It's a tree that everyone is swinging from. Without it, I don't know where I would be. It's indelible and indispensable. Show less «

I love Burroughs (William S. Burroughs). He's like a metal desk. He's like a still, and everything that comes out of him is already whiskey.

He is one of the standards by which I measure all singers. (On Harry Belafonte)

"Blind Love" is one of my first country songs. I like Merle Haggard. Most of those other guys, though, sound like they're all just drinking ...Show more »

"Blind Love" is one of my first country songs. I like Merle Haggard. Most of those other guys, though, sound like they're all just drinking tea and watching their waist and talking to their accountant. This one I think subscribes to some of that roadhouse feel. Show less «