Tom Waits Wikipedia
Table of Content
In 1998, Island released Beautiful Maladies, a compilation of 23 Waits tracks from his five albums with the company; he had been allowed to select the tracks himself. That year, Waits also produced and funded Weiss's album, Extremely Cool, as a favor to his old friend. Although Waits had provided a voice-over for a 1981 television advert for Butcher's Blend dog food, he hated when musicians allowed companies to use their songs in advertising; he said that "artists who take money for ads poison and pervert their songs".
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. In 1969, he gained employment as an occasional doorman for the Heritage coffeehouse, which held regular performances from folk musicians.
Early musical career: 1972–1976
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". 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. Tom also contributed a song to the Wim Wenders film, The End of Violence while, in 1998, Waits and Brennan composed the score and a song for Bunny, which won the Oscar for Best Short Film .
A few music journalists have gone so far as to suggest that Waits is a "poseur". Hoskyns regarded Waits's "persona of the skid-row boho/hobo, a young man out of time and place" as an "ongoing experiment in performance art". He added that Waits has adopted a "self-appointed role as the bard of the streets". Mick Brown, a music journalist from Sounds who interviewed Waits in the mid-1970s, noted that "he had immersed himself in this character to the point where it wasn't an act and had become an identity". Louie Lista, a friend of Waits's during the 1970s, stated that the singer's general attitude was that of "I'm an outsider, but I'll revel in being an outsider". In a similar manner to contemporaries like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, Waits is known for cutting contact with figures he worked with in his past.
Personal life
Alice entered the U.S. album chart at number 32 and Blood Money at number 33, his highest charting positions at that time. Waits described Alice as being "more metaphysical or something, maybe more water, more feminine", while Blood Money was "more earthbound, more carnival, more the slaving meat-wheel that we're all on". 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. Waits returned to Los Angeles in June, feeling demoralized about his career.
Jesse taught Spanish at a local school and was an alcoholic; Waits later related that his father was "a tough one, always an outsider". He described having a "very middle-class" upbringing and "a pretty normal childhood". This period of bold experimentation continued with Rain Dogs and Franks Wild Years which, with Swordfishtrombones, formed a landmark trilogy, one of the most accomplished musical achievements of the decade. During interviews, Waits has avoided questions about his personal life, gone off on tangents, and thrown in trivia.
Tom Waits: ACLU SoCal Auction
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". 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.
Jarmusch noted that "Tom and I have a kindred aesthetic. An interest in unambitious people, marginal people." The pair developed a friendship; Waits called Jarmusch "Dr Sullen", while Jarmusch called Waits "The Prince of Melancholy". 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 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.
tom waits Store
That year, he also appeared in the Kinka Usher film Mystery Men, a comic book spoof, where he played Dr A. Heller, an eccentric inventor living in an abandoned amusement park. In 2000, Waits produced Wicked Grin, the 2001 album of his friend John Hammond; the album contained several covers of Waits songs. Waits next appeared in Jarmusch's film Coffee and Cigarettes, where he was filmed having a conversation with the rock singer Iggy Pop.
He decided to reduce his workload so as to spend more time with his children; this isolation spawned rumours that he was seriously ill or had separated from his wife. For three years, he turned down all offers to perform gigs or appear in movies. However, he made several cameos and guest appearances on albums by musicians he admired. The English musician Gavin Bryars visited him in California and Waits added vocals for a re-release of Bryars's Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, which was then nominated for the 1993 Mercury Music Award. In Fall 1986, he took a small part in Candy Mountain, a film by Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer, as millionaire golf enthusiast Al Silk. He then starred in Hector Babenco's Ironweed, as Rudy the Kraut, a more substantial role.
That same year Tom and Kathleen wrote two songs for Barry Levinsons Liberty Heights film. A year later, in 1983, Waits signed to Island Records, then one of the worlds leading independent labels. Island rescued the now legendary Swordfishtrombones and released it with new artwork as his first album for the label. All orders made by Wednesday Dec 14th will ship in order to deliver by December 23rd in the US.
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.
It was on his 1977 tour for Foreign Affairs that he started employing props as part of his routine; one recurring prop was a megaphone through which he would shout at the audience. In 2012, Waits had a supporting role in the crime comedy film, Seven Psychopaths, written and directed by Martin McDonagh, in which he played a retired serial killer. In September 2003, Waits performed at the Healing the Divide fundraiser in New York City, and contributed a track to that year's release of the album, Tribute to the Ramones. This latter track earned him a Grammy Award nomination for "Best Vocal Rock Performance". 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.
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 .
At the June concert in El Paso, Texas, he was awarded the key to the city. Waits had also continued interacting and working with other artists he admired. He was a great fan of The Pogues and went on a Chicago pub crawl with them in 1986. The following year, he appeared as a master of ceremonies on several dates of Elvis Costello's "Wheel of Fortune" tour.
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".
Comments
Post a Comment