Tom Waits

Thomas Alan Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, actor and possible vampire hunter, although this is unconfirmed. He's managed to be incredibly popular while staying out of the mainstream.

Tom Waits, proud of having completed another fence to keep polar bears out of America
Tom Waits, proud of having completed another fence to keep polar bears out of America
Tom Waits: Chilling with his favourite hat.
Tom Waits: Chilling with his favourite hat.
An average night on the town for Tom.
An average night on the town for Tom.

Just The Facts

  1. Genres are rock and experimental music.
  2. Married to Kathleen Brennan and has three children.
  3. Nominated for an Academy Award for his work on, 'One from the Heart'.

Tom Waits: A life compressed into two paragraphs

Born in 1949 to a pair of schoolteachers, Tom Waits quickly taught himself to play piano because no one schools Mr Waits, no sir. He eventually played in a band called The System, but went on to create his own unique sound through constant experimentation and innovation. He signed with Asylum Records in 1972, releasing a Jazzy first record called Closing Time. His voice wasn't as instantly recognisable on this first record; actually, it was smoother than Billy Dee Williams following a particularly violent episode of Will It Blend? and Tom didn't get much widespread attention at first. Then he began opening for Frank Zappa, and that's the kind of thing that gets you attention. He soon started travelling with Zappa and other musicians with less whacky names. He released more records; The Heart of Saturday Night, Nighthawks at the Diner, and eventually Small Change, an album which reflected the constantly-drunk-angry-cynical Waits of the time. On these albums, he sang in that wonderful voice we all know and would bear children for if the laws of nature and God didn't expressly forbid it in The Big Book of Shit You Shouldn't Fuck. This means Japan will have found a way to have sex with Tom Waits' voice any day now.

To speed through the rest of the story, Tom got more and more successful, and thus, gooder and gooder. He sure got gooder and gooder, indeed. He also began to act, and like everything else he attempted in life, he fucking rocked it so hard that several faces were blown off, causing many deaths. He's appeared in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula movie as Renfield, clearly showing the world that the casting director had some kind of Flowers for Algeron break-down after casting Waits, Oldman and Hopkins, and then we had to suffer through Keanu Reeves and Winoa Ryder spewing out grating almost-accents. But I digress; Tom can most recently be seen in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, in which he plays Mr Nick: the Devil. Tom motherfucking Waits plays the DEVIL. IN A BOWELER HAT WITH A SUIT AND A LITTLE TACHE. HOLY SHIT IT'S AWESOME. And that's the story of Tom Waits.