Tom Waits Biography Quotes 10 Report mistakes

Tom Waits
Thomas Alan Waits was born on December 7, 1949, in Pomona, California, and came of age in Southern California towns including Whittier and the San Diego area. He learned early to set stories to melody, finding a voice that mixed barroom blues, vaudeville, jazz phrasing, and beat storytelling. By the late 1960s and early 1970s he was performing in coffeehouses and clubs, developing a nocturnal repertoire at the piano and a stage persona that embraced roadside characters, hard-lived romance, and black humor. His break arrived after steady work on the Los Angeles circuit, including the Troubadour, which led to a contract with Asylum Records.

1970s: Songs of the Late Night
Waits introduced himself on Closing Time (1973), a gentler, piano-rooted debut that already contained songs other artists would carry to wider audiences, most famously the Eagles with Ol' 55. He quickly deepened his palette with The Heart of Saturday Night (1974) and the live-in-the-studio set Nighthawks at the Diner (1975), where he fused smoky monologues, jazz combos, and beat poetry. Producer Bones Howe became a key ally across several records, helping capture the late-night grain of Small Change (1976), Foreign Affairs (1977), and Blue Valentine (1978). Across these albums he wrote ballads like Tom Traubert's Blues and character pieces filled with cinematic detail. Along the way he collaborated with Bette Midler on I Never Talk to Strangers, and his songs began to attract interpreters from different corners of popular music.

Early 1980s: Transition and Partnership
The early 1980s proved pivotal. Waits contributed songs to Francis Ford Coppola's film One from the Heart (1982), recording a full soundtrack in duet with Crystal Gayle. Around this period he married Kathleen Brennan (1980), a writer and producer who became his closest creative partner. Brennan encouraged him to leave behind the lounge-jazz scaffolding of his youth and build a rawer, more percussive, and theatrical sound. That reinvention took shape on Swordfishtrombones (1983), Rain Dogs (1985), and Frank's Wild Years (1987), released through Island Records. Guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist Greg Cohen, and a rotating cast of unconventional players formed a junkyard orchestra, while guests like Keith Richards added wiry guitar and harmony. The songs grew more carnivalesque and percussive, with marimbas, pump organs, and found objects clattering around tales of drifters, soldiers, and saints of the back alley.

Stage and Screen
Waits continued acting alongside his recording career, becoming a vivid on-screen presence for directors drawn to outsiders and dreamers. He appeared in Coppola films including Rumble Fish and The Cotton Club and later portrayed Renfield in Bram Stoker's Dracula. With Jim Jarmusch he starred in Down by Law and turned up memorably in Coffee and Cigarettes; he also composed the score for Jarmusch's Night on Earth. His theatrical ambitions expanded through collaborations with director Robert Wilson, with Kathleen Brennan as primary co-writer. Together they created The Black Rider (with texts by William S. Burroughs), Alice, and Woyzeck, projects that eventually yielded studio albums, reinforcing the porous border between his theater work and his records.

1990s and 2000s: Recognition and Range
The 1990s brought darker textures and renewed acclaim. Bone Machine (1992) scraped rhythms from metal, wood, and breath, earning a Grammy Award and deepening his reputation for restless invention. Waits also released a concert film and live album, Big Time, which showcased his shape-shifting stagecraft. The late 1990s saw a move to the Anti- imprint and the release of Mule Variations (1999), an earthy, emotionally generous record that won another Grammy and broadened his audience without smoothing away the burrs. Across Real Gone (2004), the twin releases Alice and Blood Money (2002), and the expansive Orphans collection (2006), he worked closely with Brennan as co-producer and co-writer, often bringing back longtime players like Ribot and Cohen while inviting new collaborators into the fold. His live shows, later documented on Glitter and Doom Live, underscored his status as a singular bandleader who could make a theater feel like a street corner and a street corner feel like a dream.

Voice, Craft, and Influence
Waits is recognized for a gravelly, elastic voice that can rasp like a busted muffler or hush to a lullaby, and for writing that threads gallows humor through compassion. Critics often point to affinities with Brecht and Weill, New Orleans r&b, field hollers, and beat literature, but the blend is his own. His songs have traveled far in other hands: Bruce Springsteen made Jersey Girl a live staple; Rod Stewart turned Downtown Train into a global hit; the Eagles helped introduce him to radio listeners with Ol' 55. In turn, musicians across rock, folk, and experimental scenes have cited him as a model for building a world out of timbre, character, and rhythm.

Principles and Privacy
Away from the stage, Waits has guarded his artistic autonomy with uncommon tenacity. He and Brennan have repeatedly resisted commercial exploitation of his voice and likeness, taking legal action when advertisers employed sound-alike imitations. Their partnership anchors both his art and his life; together they have raised a family, kept a low public profile, and chosen when and how to release work. That careful stewardship has reinforced a mystique: present when he has something new to offer, absent when he does not.

Later Work and Legacy
In the 2010s Waits released Bad as Me (2011), a compact, hard-hitting record that reconnected him with Keith Richards and gathered praise for its economy and fire. He made selected film appearances, including a striking turn in the Coen brothers anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Honors accumulated, notably his 2011 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but the core of his legacy remains the records and performances created with Brennan and a circle of recurring collaborators. Across decades, labels, and mediums, Tom Waits has sustained an idiosyncratic American songbook, one populated by castoffs and romantics, scored for battered horns and homemade drums, and animated by a humane, sly intelligence that continues to influence artists and reward listeners who return to the work and find it newly alive.

Our collection contains 10 quotes who is written by Tom, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Puns & Wordplay - Sarcastic - Failure - Fake Friends.

Other people realated to Tom: Johnny Cash (Musician), Jim Jarmusch (Director), David Geffen (Businessman), Don Van Vliet (Artist), Gavin Bryars (Composer), Rickie Lee Jones (Musician), Solomon Burke (Musician), Dan Hicks (Musician), John Lurie (Actor), Les Claypool (Musician)