Tom Waits is an intellectual with the habits of a tramp

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Tom Waits is the original American singer-songwriter, composer and actor with a distinctive and recognizable husky voice. In his performances he uses elements of theatrical buffoonery and vaudeville. As a composer, he was nominated for an Oscar for the film "From the Heart". Multiple Grammy Award Winner. Works at the intersection of various musical styles - from folk and blues to industrial and jazz. In his monologue songs, Waits speaks with a great deal of grotesqueness about ordinary people, about their difficulties and joys.

Youth

Wates was born on December 7, 1949 in the city of Pomona, located near Los Angeles, in a large family, where in addition to Tom there were two more girls, one younger than him, the other older. His father and mother worked as school teachers, the family lived modestly, his parents worked hard, and the boy was left to himself. Tom's father abused alcoholand 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 the ukulele.

When his parents divorced, and Tom was 10 years old at the time, the 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 dropped out of high school and set out on his own, working as a doorman, a bartender, and a pizza salesman. The young man did not forget about music - he took piano lessons and participated in the musical life of the city. His musical tastes at that time were formed first under the influence of Bob Dylan and Louis Armstrong, and then under the influence of beatniks. 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 trendy and very popular club for aspiring musicians. Tom began to move in musical circles, met a 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 curb the ardor of the novice musician. Tom continued to work at his own pace, which he adhered to for many years. From 1973 to 2000 hereleased about one album every two years, or even once a year.

All Tom Waits albums are distinguished by an enchanting variety of music and an enviable constancy of semantic atmosphere. For forty years, in each of his twenty albums, Waits reaches out to the little man and discovers the inner world of the marginalized and the marginalized.

Tom Waits is one of the few musicians who gives fans real joy. Along with Canadian Leonard Cohen and Australian Nick Cave, Waits is unpredictable, his music is varied and unexpected, and his lyrics are intelligent and virtuoso.

Cinema

In 1978, Tom Waits began his film career. For films, 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 of Coppola's. In August 1980 they got married. Since that time, Katlin has become a co-author of some songs and enriches Tom's work with new ideas. Then, in the eighties, Waits goes headlong into the avant-garde and begins his experiments with new and unexpected instruments.

Style

The image of Tom Waits is the best that can be said about his work. On stage, he is an unshaven, worn-out man with a constant cigarette in his mouth, a lover of taverns and women, a wonderfula storyteller and wise adviser who knows all about the passions and concerns of the average person. His behavior during concerts is similar to the antics of a city madman or to the audacious tricks of a tramp in torn trousers and worn out boots. The songs of Tom Waits are not songs in the usual sense of the word, they are some strange fusion of singing, recitative, mumbling, incantations, unusual sounds, broken rhythm and bright confessional lyrics.

Wates 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 all talented people the bright individual path of a poet and musician.

Tom Waits spent his whole life doing the music he wanted, not looking back at fashion, currents or trends. In the era of stadiums, he sang quiet jazz ballads about love and the inhabitants of the city bottom, in the era of the desperate arbitrariness of pop music, he experimented with art house and radical avant-garde. He was and remains an original and self-sufficient musician, actively opposing the ordinary and mediocrity.