Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan Waitsis an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding like "it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car." With this trademark growl, his incorporation of pre-rock music styles such as blues, jazz, and vaudeville, and experimental tendencies verging on industrial music, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPop Singer
Date of Birth7 December 1949
CityPomona, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I've seen it all through the yellow windows of the evening train...
Any image I have, it's just what I do, but it comes off as being very pretentious. When you're a bit in the public astigmatism, anything you do seems like you did it so somebody would see you do it, like showing up at the right parties.
There's a beauty of show business. It's the only business you can have a career in when you're dead.
I'm usually more concerned with how things sound than how they look on the page.
I do some acting. And there's a difference between "I do some acting" and "I'm an actor."
I guess I've always lived upside down when I want things I can't have. My wife actually thinks I have a syndrome called Reality Distortion Field. It's kind of like drugs, only you can't come back from it. Reality Distortion is almost a permanent condition. Things come in and they go out: Presto, chango! To a certain extent, I did that with myself. As a kid, I did want to be an old-timer, since they were the ones with the big stories and the cool clothes. I wanted to go there. Now, I guess I want to bring that with me and go back in time.
My first big gig was an opening show for Frank Zappa, and I think that was difficult.
I've been riding on the crest of a slump lately.
The Universe is making music all the time.
The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.
Not the kind of wheel you fall asleep at.
The trick is to have a career and have a family. It's like having two dogs that hate each other and you have to take them for a walk every night.
Their memory's like a train: you can see it getting smaller as it pulls away And the things you can't remember Tell the things you can't forget that History puts a saint in every dream.
You know what I really love? The CD players in a car. How when you put the CD right up by the slot, it actually takes it out of your hand, like it's hungry. It pulls it in, and you feel like it wants more silver discs.