Tom Waits - Biography

Last Editor: fgenghini				Tom Waits Biography -   Name : Tom Waits Date of birth : 7 December 1949 Place of birth : Pomona, California, USA Birth name : Thomas Alan Waits Height : 6' (1.83 m)

Tom Waits Trivia -

Close friend of Chuck E. Weiss, a fellow L.A. scenester and co-founder of The Viper Room with Johnny Depp, and frequently mentions him in lyrics and liner notes on his records. Close friends with the Coppola family including Nicolas Cage; often cast in Francis Ford Coppola movies. Frito-Lay used an unauthorized sample of his song "Step Right Up" in one of their commercials. He successfully sued for an undisclosed amount of money. Frito-Lay unsuccessfully counter-sued. Children: Kellesimone (b. 1983), Casey Xavier (b. 1985), Sullivan (b. 1993). Uses a large collection of electric megaphones to create unusual tonal effects on his recordings. One of his favorites is a 1944 vintage issued by the US Navy Bureau of Ships, manufactured by Guided Radio Corp. of New York. Shops at hardware stores for items to be used as percussion instruments. Owns obscure and custom made instruments such as a Chamberlin Music Master 600 (an analog synthesizer manufactured in the 1960s) and a photon clarinet ("[It] sounds like a keyboard lobster dying on a campfire."). He converted a 4 cubic yard metal box (intended as a debris dumpster) into a musical instrument called a "Strata Dumpster" (aka "Dumpstalele"). He cut a 2 foot hole into one side, and streched seven piano strings across it, fastening them with two welded bridges. The strings can be plucked, strummed or bowed. He describes the sound as "trainlike and huge, like trash day with a purpose." The photo on the cover of his album "Rain Dogs" includes a man who many believe to be him. It was one of a series of photos taken at the Cafe Lehmitz in Hamburg by the Swedish photographer Anders Petersen. Waits reportedly saw the photo at an exhibition, was taken by the similarity of him and the man in the photo, and asked permission from the photographer to use it as an album cover. His grandmother, Olga Johnsen, was from Oslo, Norway. Is Scottish and Irish from his father's side of the family and Norwegian from his mother's side. He has said that Bob Dylan is his favorite songwriter and his main influence for intially getting into music. Ironically, Dylan's more recent work has been said to be comparable to Wait's music. Is a good friend of Keith Richards who makes frequent appearances as a guitarist on his records.

Tom Waits Detailed Biography -

Tom Waits (born Thomas Alan Waits, on December 7, 1949 in Pomona, California), is an American composer, singer, musician and actor. Waits' recording career began in 1971, after he relocated to Los Angeles and signed with Herb Cohen, manager of Frank Zappa, among others. After numerous abortive recording sessions, his first record, the melancholic, country-tinged Closing Time (1973) received warm reviews, but he first gained national attention when his Ol' 55 was recorded by The Eagles in 1974. The Heart Of Saturday Night showed his roots as a nightclub singer, half speaking and half crooning ballads, often with a soft jazz background. The 1975 album Nighthawks at the Diner, recorded in a studio but with a small audience to capture the ambience of a live show, captures this phase of his career, including the lengthy spoken interludes between songs that punctuated his live act. Small Change (1976) featuring famed drummer Shelly Manne, was jazzier still, and songs such as The Piano Has Been Drinking and Bad Liver and a Broken Heart cemented his hard living reputation, with a lyrical style pitched somewhere between 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. 1980 saw the commencement of a long working relationship with Francis Ford Coppola, who asked him to provide music for his film One From The Heart. Waits would also act in Coppola's Rumblefish, The Outsiders, The Cotton Club and Dracula (as the insane Renfield), and work with such directors as Jim Jarmusch and Robert Altman. With his wife, he wrote and performed in Big Time, a slightly surreal concert movie. He married Kathleen Brennan in August 1980, whom he had met on the set of One From The Heart. His wife is regularly credited as co-author of many songs on his later released albums, and is often cited by Waits as a major influence on his work. After he left Asylum Records for Island Records in 1983, his music became less mainstream. His trio of albums from the mid-1980s, Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs and Frank's Wild Years, all featured eclectic instrumentation to some extent (Waits' self described Junkyard Orchestra), often marrying soul music horn sections to avant-garde percussion reminiscent of Harry Partch's, or the distorted guitar of Marc Ribot. He also gradually altered his singing style, sounding less like the late-night crooner of the 70s, instead adopting a gravelly voice reminiscent of Howling Wolf and Captain Beefheart. The last of these albums, an off-broadway musical co-written with his wife and the later collaboration with William S. Burroughs on The Black Rider both demonstrated the increasing interest in theatre, which has resulted in a somewhat successful acting career as well as soundtrack work. In the popular perception, however, he and his work remain mostly characterised by his rocky voice, his strong personality and theatrical presence on stage and the late night smoky bars humour of his texts ("I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a pre-frontal lobotomy."), Waits has been reported as having bipolar disorder. In essence, however, and despite his songs having been covered by such famous stars such Bruce Springsteen and Rod Stewart, Waits remains a cult performer, steadfastly outside the mainstream.