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Tom Waits

Composer

“Apparently the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad - ideally naked and purring on the hood of a new car. I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor.”

 

Biography

Gravel-voiced, versatile singer/songwriter Tom Waits has composed and played music in a variety of films, ranging from Francis Ford Coppola’s One From the Heart (1982) to Jean-Luc Godard’s First Name: Carmen (1983). On or off camera, Waits has been a colorful, quirky character noted for his surreal humor. Many of his songs reflect his interest in movies with either direct references or sly musical suggestions. During the late ’70s, he became more directly involved in film, composing songs and even playing piano onscreen in Paradise Alley (1978). In the early ’80s, Waits teamed up with Coppola, first with the Greek choir-like narration for One From the Heart and then as an actor in several of his films. At first, Waits had a one-line role as Buck Merrill in The Outsiders (1983). Coppola next gave Waits a bigger part as Benny in Rumble Fish (1983), and then dressed the rangy singer in a tuxedo and cast him as the MC in The Cotton… read more

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Lights in the Dusk

30Jan12

Time waits for no man, but Tom Waits for everyone! The greatest songwriter of his generation and one of the greatest of all storytellers, endlessly evoking desolate landscapes, dustbowl desperation and carnivalesque caricatures that speak to the complexities of the human condition through the combination of words and music. His work is intensely 'cinematic' even without the necessary image track. He can conjure an image more vivid - more real - than any major filmmaker with just the sound of an old harmonium, a piano, an electric guitar or the carefully arranged horns of a Salvation Army band.

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goeienag

15Jun11

Tom Waits is Cool incarnate.

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Peter

26Apr10

Wonderful singer-songwriter.

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Forum

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10 Favourite Tom Waits Songs

19 posts by 8 people about 1 month ago

A question or two for all Tom Waits' fans!

41 posts by 23 people over 1 year ago