"This is a man who writes songs for the angels and sings them in the voice of Beelzebub. The Carny, the Sideshow, the circus freak show is a world I've always wanted to be in, and that's exactly where Tom Waits is."
Describe Tom Waits here.Okay... but how?Well, everyone seems to use the cliched phrases like "whiskey soaked," "gravelly-voiced," "barfly," "hobo," "raconteur troubadour."With that out of the way, Tom Waits is an innovative musician, generally classified as Alternative, but borrowing heavily from European and American folk music, gospel, lounge music, pop, the blues, cabaret, and occasionally country and even rap (he beatboxes on the 2004 album Real Gone and Atmosphere's When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold, and he appears on N.A.S.A's "Spacious Thoughts").His work can be divided into two periods, his jazzy, lounge singer period, lasting from the '70s to the late '80s, and the reinvented, experimental sound of his "Swordfishtrombones" album on, and his shift to a mysterious, Carnival-and-Sinister-Junkman persona. This shift was caused by his abandonment by Asylum Records and his marriage to his co-songwriter and muse Kathleen Brennan. Brennan introduced him to the music of Captain Beefheart, whose influence can be seen in "Swordfishtrombone" and later albums.He is known for his theatricality, dark and dense lyrical style, and a charming sense of humor - he's one of the few musicians that tend to get long interview sessions on late night talk shows, occasionally getting more laughs than the host. He wrote the scores of four musicals: "Franks Wild Years" [sic], written with Kathleen, and his collaborations with Robert Wilson, "The Black Rider", "Alice," "Woyzeck" (the last being released as Blood Money).He has also acted in several films, notably Coffee and Cigarettes as himself, Down By Law as a radio DJ who gets framed, Mystery Men as a Mad Scientist, Bram Stoker's Dracula as Renfield, and Wristcutters: A Love Story as Kneller, whose dog is missing. He plays Mr. Nick (the Devil) in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which also happens to be Heath Ledger's last film, and he was a bird named Virgil in Rosto A.D.'s Monster Of Nix. He also played one of the eponymous Seven Psychopaths.In 2011, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, making him either the second (after R.E.M.) or third (depending on if you count The Velvet Underground or Talking Heads) Alternative Rock artist to be inducted.References to Waits were a Running Gag on Mystery Science Theater 3000.Also, for some reason, he's the curator of The Museum Of Everything.
He provides examples of:
Album Title Drop: From Closing Time "Now it's closing time/the music's fading out."
"I'm just tired of people comparing Tom Waits with The Devil. I mean, he's a badass, but he's not Tom Waits."
Band Toon: While not a straight example, he was featured in an early music video featuring a rotoscoped version of himself and a stripper. It was called "Tom Waits For No One," and was unreleased until published on YouTube. It's the only Oscar-winning music video of all time.
Beneath the Earth: He often uses subterranean imagery, such as his songs "Underground," "Dirt in the Ground," and "Down, Down, Down." "Underground" is supposedly about Tom Waits' dream of a colony of dwarves living under a city.
Big Applesauce: Rain Dogs was written during a point where Tom was living in New York. It shows.
Circus of Fear: His songs are soaked to the bone in the imagery of the carnival, and the Devil Pegleg in The Black Rider is the leader of a twisted carnival of lost souls.
Cluster F-Bomb: "Hell Broke Luce" has a couple of F-bombs in it.
Collector of the Strange: In real life, Waits collects exotic instruments and strange bits of Americana, such as a mouse trap activated by the mouse chewing through a string (as seen in his 2012 appearance on Letterman's show).
Legend has it that Disney were on the phone when they heard about it, but not for the reason you'd think. His version is so weird that, supposedly, not even Disney recognized it as their own song.
A very strange example. Army Ants is taken from a book about insects, but the way he reads it, sounds like the ramblings of a Conspiracy Theorist.
Crapsack World: "In the Neighborhood", "Town with No Cheer", "9th and Hennepin", "Potter's Field", and "Children's Story" (which he didn't write).
Needless to say, a lot of the settings he has used are this.
Creator Couple: With Kathleen Brennan, who has contributed to his current and most critically acclaimed style.
Dance Sensation: Parodied with "The Metropolitan Glide", which - from the instructions given in the lyrics - is utterly undanceable.
Deadpan Snarker: Plenty of interviews show that he is one. His habit of telling tall tales at live shows also qualifies.
Devil but No God: a common theme in his lyrics is to play with this trope in some way, such as God's away on business, or Heart Attack and Vine's "There ain't no Devil, there's just God when he's drunk."
Early Installment Weirdness: Some people who were introduced to him during his Island Records/ANTI-Records years find his stuff from the '70s through the early '80s to be this. The early stuff is actually mostly less weird.
Either Or Title: Most of the songs on Small Change are titled this way - for instance, "Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets To The Wind In Copenhagen)".
Everything Sounds Sexier in French: Two of Tom Waits' musicals-turned-albums - Alice and The Black Rider - use frequent German words and fake accents to creepy effect. This reaches its logical conclusion with "Kommieneszuspadt" (sung by the White Rabbit), whose lack of any real meaning cleverly allows the listener to imagine something far nastier than anyone could ever write.
Fake Russian: It would seem the Russian Dance song from Black Rider musical wouldn't be worth mentioning as this (especially since Waits almost correctly utters the "one-two-three-four" in Russian there). But the thing is, Waits really doesn't like Russia and repeatedly rejected gig offers from the country, despite a massive following among Russian intellectuals; what's more, the song has been used as one of the themes for the dark and absurd movie about Russian backwater, The Truce (also despite the song not being anything like Russian in its musical style, but rather Gypsy/Balkan).
Flower Motifs: "The Briar and the Rose" most prominently, but really, this is all over The Black Rider.
And, even more disturbingly, Cookie Monster performing Hell Broke Luce.
Gallows Humor: Common, with Frank's Wild Years being the most obvious example.
Genre Busting: At least one third of his catalog falls into this category.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In-Universe in "Big in Japan", which is a send-up of such an individual — though Tom Waits is slightly more popular in Europe than he is in America.
Grotesque Gallery: Invoked with the line "My friends think I'm ugly / I've got a masculine face", from "Goin' Out West". On top of that, Waits - despite actually being a fairly handsome guy, given his age - makes a lot of really weird faces. Plus the numerous songs about circus/carnival freaks.
Hell Hotel: the music video for "God's Away on Business" looks like a hotel, but it was actually filmed at his house. By the son of Bob Dylan. While it is entirely plausible that the emus were added for the video shoot, it is equally possible that Tom Waits just lets live emus wander around his house.
Hooker with a Heart of Gold: The narrator from "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis" is definitely one.
Incredibly Lame Pun: The stories he tells during his concerts are often littered with these, as shown on the second disc of "Glitter And Doom Live:"
"I've never known a lobster to donate anything to charity. You wanna know why? They're shellfish!"
(Audience groans)
Ironic Nursery Tune: "Midnight Lullaby" riffs on "Song of Sixpence", "Jockey Full of Bourbon" features "Ladybird, Ladybird," and "Clap Hands" features "3,6,9, the Goose Drank Wine," but without any sinister intent. But a better example of this trope is his use of lullaby-like sounds on Alice and Blood Money, in "Everything You Can Think Of Is True" and "Misery Is the River of the World." Also found on Blood Money is the track "Lullaby," an original lullaby with sinister, depressing lyrics.
Here's the most disturbing cover of a Disney song ever recorded. Appropriately, the album's called Stay Awake.
Keith Richards: On Rain Dogs, offers guitar and backing vocals in "Union Square," "Big Black Mariah" and "Blind Love."
And on Bone Machine, he and Tom do a Gravel And Gravel duet on "That Feel".
Richards makes a collaborative comeback on Bad As Me, providing guitar parts for the songs "Chicago", "Satisfied", "Last Leaf" (in which he also sings backup), and "Hell Broke Luce". He's even name-dropped along with Mick Jagger in "Satisfied".
Now Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards/I will scratch where I've been itching.
Knife Throwing Act: "Circus" from his 2004 album Real Gone features a knife throwing act as part of the eponymous travelling show.
Only once, in Sheboygan, did he miss. And he took off a miniscule portion of her ear.
Lyrical Cold Open: "Walking Spanish", "Flower's Grave", "Alice" and others.
Lyrical Dissonance: "Frank's Wild Years". The song on Swordfishtrombones specifically, not the album. Generally, that voice makes touching love ballads sound like funeral songs.
Mockumentary: Several of his performance arts pieces and interviews are in this style.
No Hit Wonder: Waits is notable for performing for over 4 decades and through three label changes, but without a single #1 hit on the charts. It's not surprising that he has a cult following, though.
Not Christian Rock: References to God, the Devil, Jesus, and other religious motifs are fairly common in his lyrics (notably "Way Down in the Hole," which was even covered by the Gospel group The Blind Boys of Alabama), but whether that's a statement of faith or just the influence of Gospel/Americana style is anybody's guess. After all, this is the same man who once opined: "...there ain't no Devil/There's just God when he's drunk."
Opening Chorus: "Woyzeck" features "Misery's the River of the World." Notably, only the opener on the album, and not in the musical.
Protest Song: "The Day After Tomorrow", an anti-war song, "Road to Peace," about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and "Hell Broke Luce", about the suicide of Iraq War veteran Jeff Lucey.
Real Song Theme Tune and Thematic Theme Tune: The Wire uses "Way Down In The Hole". Each season with a different version - season 1 by The Blind Boys of Alabama, season 2 was Waits's original, season 3 was by The Neville Brothers, Season 4 was an R&B version by Domaje, and season 5's version is by Steve Earle)
Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: Waits has turned down numerous offers to use his songs in commercials, even going so far as to sue companies to prevent it, the one exception being for a charity.
Though Waits is generally considered an Unreliable Narrator, both he and others have repeatedly stressed that were it not for said lawsuits he never would have been able to pursue his career as long as he did. He wound up making far more from refusing to allow his music be used in adverts than he ever did from his modest-at-best album sales.
Stalker with a Crush: The album Alice is all about this. Some of the songs are tragic odes to a love that can never be, while others are more sinister. Reaches probably its most uncomfortable point with "Watch Her Disappear."
Stylistic Suck: "The Piano Has Been Drinking" and "I'll Take New York".
Super Fun Happy Thing of Doom: The trope name is invoked almost literally as the title of the concert album Glitter and Doom.
Suspiciously Similar Song: The similarities between "Step Right Up" and a Frito-Lay ad jingle caused a bit of a legal stir between Tom and the company.
Three Chords and the Truth: He uses a collection of vintage equipment (including a calliope!), instruments salvaged from junkyards, and has recorded album tracks outside or in barns.
Not to mention that "Hell Broke Luce" is about a real soldier that committed suicide - Jeff Lucey, who was Driven to Suicide by posttraumatic stress and hanged himself in 2004.
Homicide: Life on the Street, the drug-themed, proto-''Wire episode "Bad Medicine" opens with "Til the Money Runs Out" and ends with "Cold Cold Ground."
The book Sandman Slim has "Alice" as a song haunting the protagonist (whose murdered girlfriend was named Alice). At one point, his worst enemy makes a jukebox play it just to taunt him.
The second episode of ''Bunheads has a ballet piece set to "Picture In A Frame".
"Soldier's Things" plays during the last scene of Jarhead.
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