Rediscovered
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Tom Waits
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Then there’s the variety of musical styles Tom
Waits has explored, often on the same album. Folk songs, sea shanty style drinking songs,
and songs a skeleton might howl from the graveyard are but a few…sometimes even
combined in one song, but always with picturesque lyrics, regardless of style, as in
"Grapefruit Moon" and "Jockey Full of Bourbon."
So who is this guy, anyway?
Tom Waits was born Thomas Alan Waits in Pomona, California on December 7, 1949—the
eighth anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. His school teacher parents divorced
when he was ten, causing Tom, his two sisters, and parents to
move around to various cities in Southern California. He learned to play piano at a
neighbor’s house--some accounts say he taught himself--and later learned to play
guitar. An admirer of Bob Dylan’s music, a young Tom Waits even hung some of
Dylan’s lyrics on the walls of his room. |
After graduating high
school, Waits lived in San Diego for a time. He worked as a doorman at a club and then as
a dishwasher at a pizza joint, commuting to L.A. each week to perform at Troubadour’s
Hoot Night open mics--which were known at the time as an excellent way to get noticed by
label execs. In 1971, Tom Waits moved to the infamous Tropicana Motel in Hollywood. He
continued to frequent the Troubadour and was discovered by manager Herb Cohen. A prolific
songwriter from 1971 to 73, Waits was signed to Asylum Records and in 1973 released his
first album, "Closing Time." (In 1971 he also recorded material that Herb Cohen
would later release in the early 90’s as The Early Years Volumes 1 and 2.) Next
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