Tom Waits is an original American performer, composer and actor, the owner of a peculiar and recognizable hoarse voice. In his performances he uses elements of a theatrical buffoonery and vaudeville. As a composer, he was nominated for an Academy Award for the film From the Heart. Multiple Grammy Award Winner. Works at the junction of various musical styles - from folk and blues to industrial and jazz. In his monologue songs, Waits speaks with a great deal of grotesque about ordinary people, about their difficulties and joys.
Youth
Waits was born on December 7, 1949 in the city of Pomona, located near Los Angeles, in a large family, where besides Tom there were two more girls, one younger than him, the other older. Father and mother worked as school teachers, the family lived modestly, parents worked hard, and the boy was left to his own devices. Tom's father abused alcohol and was a very tough person, but, as Waits himself recalls, it was his father who instilled in him a love of music and taught him to play ukulele.
When the parents divorced, and Tom at that time was 10 years old, his mother and children moved to National City, a city located near the Mexican border. At the new school, Tom took up music seriously and began to sing in an ensemble playing rhythm and blues.
At 18, Tom left high school and went on a free swim, working as a doorman, then a bartender, then a pizza seller. The young man did not forget about music - he took piano lessons and participated in the musical life of the city. His musical preferences at that time were formed first under the influence of Bob Dylan and Louis Armstrong, and then under the influence of hipsters. A fan of Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs Tom Waits remained for life. In those years, he began to think about solo work and developed his own style of performance.
Music
After serving in the army, Tom Waits moved to Los Angeles and got a job at the Troubadour Nightclub. It was a fashionable and very popular club among beginner musicians. Tom began to spin in musical circles, met with the producer and soon signed his first contract.
In 1973, after a series of concerts where he performed as an opening act, he recorded his first album, Closing Time. This album did not sell very well, which did not calm the ardor of a novice musician. Tom continued to work at his own pace, which he adhered to for many years. From 1973 to 2000, he released about one album in two years, or even once a year.
All Tom Waits' albums are distinguished by the enchanting variety of music and the enviable constancy of the semantic atmosphere. For forty years, in each of his twenty albums, Waits turns to a small man and opens up the inner world of marginals and people left on the sidelines of life.
Tom Waits is one of the few musicians to give fans real joy. Along with Canadian Leonard Cohen and Australian Nick Cave Waits, he’s unpredictable, his music is diverse and unexpected, and the lyrics are intelligent and virtuoso.
Cinema
In 1978, Tom Waits began his cinematic career. For cinema, he wrote music and occasionally starred in small roles. In total, Tom starred in 33 films. He has worked with such venerable directors as Francis Ford Coppola, Jim Jarmusch and Terry Gilliam.
In 1980, Tom Waits proposed to screenwriter Kathleen Brennan, whom he met on the set at Coppola. In August 1980, they got married. Since that time, Kathleen becomes a co-author of some songs and enriches Tom's work with new ideas. Then, in the eighties, Waits with the head goes to the vanguard and begins his experiments with new and unexpected tools.
Style
The image of Tom Waits is the best that can say about his work. On stage, he is an unshaven, grated man with a constant cigarette in his mouth, a lover of taverns and women, a wonderful storyteller and a wise adviser who knows everything about the passions and concerns of the average person. His behavior during concerts is similar to the tricks of a city lunatic or the daring tricks of a tramp in torn portals and worn boots. The songs of Tom Waits are not songs in the usual sense of the word, this is some kind of strange alloy of singing, recitative, muttering, spells, unusual sounds, torn rhythm and bright confessional texts.
Waits is considered a cult musician in modern America and is an example of true non-conformism and integrity in creativity. As a guiding spirit, he shows to all talented people the bright individual path of the poet and musician.
Tom Waits has been playing all his life the music he wanted, without looking back at fashion, or at trends, or at trends. In the era of stadiums, he sang quiet jazz ballads about love and the inhabitants of the city bottom, in an era of desperate arbitrariness of pop music, he engaged in experiments with an art house and a radical avant-garde. He was and remains an original and self-sufficient musician, actively opposing ordinaryness and mediocrity.