Thirty-Eight years of Tom Waits

“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy" were the words slurred by Mr Tom Waits on the “Fernwood Tonight” Show back in 1977 after playing his classic “The Piano has been Drinking”. This live performance reflected his alcohol-induced state and alcohol-induced musical style.  Even while trashed, Tom Waits still managed to entertain and charm the audience with his ingenious song-writing and dry wit. Three decades on and with his seventeenth studio album out, Tom Waits is still going strong and is still as innovative and as influential as ever.  

 Waits is described as one of the last beatniks of contemporary music. Extraordinarily, he never produced a major hit but has earned a cult following all over the world. Waits has a distinctive voice has been described 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 fusion of blues, jazz, rockabilly and vaudeville blending with his own experimental tendencies, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona over the last thirty-eight years

He taught himself how to play the piano at a neighbour's house and then learned the guitar on a Gibson when he was a teenager. A fan of Bob Dylan, Ray Charles, Louis Armstrong, Howlin' Wolf, and Charles Bukowski, Waits began developing his own idiosyncratic musical style. His first LP – Closing Time was released in 1973, an experimental mix of folk and jazz. This is the soundtrack written by and for the lonely drifter. Waits then toured with the legendary Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention where he later made a name for himself. Waits then went on a creative streak and released an album annually until 1978 - The Heart of Saturday Night (1974); Nighthawks at the Diner (1975); Small Change (1976); Foreign Affairs (1977); and Blue Valentine 1978.

In 1983, Waits took a new musical direction with Swordfishtrombones, where he steers away from the piano and string orchestra arrangements of the late 1970s, replacing them with strange instrumentation and a more abstract song-writing approach.

Probably Waits’ crowing jewel would be Rain Dogs, released in 1985. Rain Dogs exhibits Waits at his most experimental phase; fusing jazz, blues, rockabilly and folk in this album and he even tries his hand at country music with the song "Blind Love". Rain Dogs was ranked #21 on the Rolling Stone list of the "100 greatest albums of the 1980s." In 2003, the album was ranked #397 on the magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". 

Another triumph for Waits has to be Bone Machine, released in 1992 which features his classic song “Going Out West”. The album is often noted for its dark lyrical themes of death and murder, and for its rough, stripped-down, percussion-heavy, blues-rock style. Waits won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album for it and features guest appearances by Keith Richards and Les Claypool from Primus.

Waits took a more folky approach with the album Mule Variations, winning a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album and was nominated for Best Male Rock Performance for the track "Hold On".