Welcome to our collection of quotes by Tom Waits
Wikipedia Summary for Tom Waits
Thomas Alan Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, composer, and actor. His lyrics often focus on the underbelly of society and are delivered in his trademark deep, gravelly voice. He worked primarily in jazz during the 1970s, but his music since the 1980s has reflected greater influence from blues, rock, vaudeville, and experimental genres.
Waits was born and raised in a middle-class family in Pomona, California. Inspired by the work of Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation, he began singing on the San Diego folk music circuit as a teenager. He relocated to Los Angeles in 1972, where he worked as a songwriter before signing a recording contract with Asylum Records. His first albums were the jazz-oriented Closing Time (1973) and The Heart of Saturday Night (1974), which reflected his lyrical interest in nightlife, poverty, and criminality. He repeatedly toured the United States, Europe, and Japan, and attracted greater critical recognition and commercial success with Small Change (1976), Blue Valentine (1978), and Heartattack and Vine (1980). He produced the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's film One from the Heart (1981), and subsequently made cameo appearances in several Coppola films.
In 1980, Waits married Kathleen Brennan, split from his manager and record label, and moved to New York City. With Brennan's encouragement and frequent collaboration, he pursued a more experimental and eclectic musical aesthetic influenced by the work of Harry Partch and Captain Beefheart. This was reflected in a series of albums released by Island Records, including Swordfishtrombones (1983), Rain Dogs (1985), and Franks Wild Years (1987). He continued appearing in films, notably starring in Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law (1986), and also made theatrical appearances. With theatre director Robert Wilson, he produced the musicals The Black Rider and Alice, first performed in Hamburg. Having returned to California in the 1990s, his albums Bone Machine (1992), The Black Rider (1993), and Mule Variations (1999) earned him increasing critical acclaim and multiple Grammy Awards. In the late 1990s, he switched to the record label ANTI-, which released Blood Money (2002), Alice (2002), Real Gone (2004), and Bad as Me (2011).
Despite a lack of mainstream commercial success, Waits has influenced many musicians and gained an international cult following, and several biographies have been written about him. In 2015, he was ranked at No. 55 on Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2011.
I didn't really identify with the music of my own generation, but I was very curious about the music of others.
There's not much difference between what I appear to be on stage and what I am. I think people like that, that I'm not trying to pull a caper.
Sometimes words are just music themselves. Like 'Chicago' is a very musical sounding name.
You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone.
I'm usually more concerned with how things sound than how they look on the page. Some people write for the page, and that's a whole other thing. I'm going for what it sounds like right away, so it may not even look good on the page.
It ain't no sin, to take off your skin and dance around in your bones.
The only thing worse than being in the Hall of Fame is not being in the Hall of Fame.
If you are making a record, you are the one saying 'action', and you are the one saying 'cut,' and you have to be sure that the most interesting thing is not going on outside the frame.
I think this whole division between the genres has more to do with marketing than anything else. It's terrible for the culture of music.
You can never hold back spring
You can be sure
I will never stop believing
The blushing rose that will climb
Spring ahead or fall behind
Winter dreams the same dream every time
Baby you can never hold back spring.
Though every year
It's very clear
I should be used
To carrying on
But I can be found in the garden
Singing this song
When the last
Rose of summer is gone.
Inside a broken clock
Splashing the wine
With all the rain dogs
Taxi, we'd rather walk
Huddle a doorway with the Rain Dogs
For I am a Rain Dog, too.
I think that's the thing about fame or any notoriety. It's an illusion that you don't have to play by the rules anymore, the rules of life.
Don't you know there ain't no devil? There's only God when He's drunk.
Well, it's the only thing that can pick me up
It's better than a cup of gold
See, only a chocolate Jesus
Can satisfy my soul.
I like writing melody without an instrument. It's just so -- it's more like the choreography of a bee; you just go.
I like vocal word stuff. But I don't always write with an instrument, I usually write a capella. It's more like drawing in the air with your fingers. It's closest to the choreography of a bee. You're freer.
The folks who know the truth aren't talking.... The ones who don't have a clue, you can't shut them up!
I'm always looking for sounds that are pleasing at the time. The sound of a helicopter is really annoying until you're drowning, and it's there to rescue you. Then it sounds like music.
If you walk with Jesus, he's gonna save your soul. You gotta keep the devil way down in the hole. He's got the fire and the fury at his command.
Well I got a bad liver and broken heart, yeah,I drunk me a river since you tore me apart.
I made a wish on a sliver of moonlight
A sly grin and a bowl full of stars.
I didn't really want to be part of a clique or a niche. But I also was looking for my own voice, as a writer, y'know? And a world I could call my own.
I worry about a lot of things, but I don't worry about achievements. I worry primarily about whether there are nightclubs in Heaven.
You got to tell me the brave captain Why are the wicked so strong? How do the angels get to sleep When the devil leaves the porch light on?
When it's raining you can't find enough things to catch it in. When it's not you can stand out in the middle of the street in a dress and a funny hat and nothing's gonna make it rain. I go through periods -- or spells -- when I'm more receptive.
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.
New York, of course, is to be in endless surreal situations where a fifty-thousand dollar, gun-metal Mercedez pulls up into a puddle of blood, and out steps a twenty-five karat blonde transvestite with a two dollar wristwatch.
I bark my voice out through a closed throat, pretty much. It's more, perhaps, like a dog in some ways. It does have its limitations, but I'm learning different ways to keep it alive.
And when they pulled her from the wreck, you know, she still had on her shades.
I like Thelonious Monk, he's so gnarled, he's like a piece of machinery that's pulled up the bolts on the floor and gone off on its own.
You must have brought the bad weather with you
The sky's the color of lead
All you've left me is a feather
On an unmade bed.
I've never met anyone who made it with a chick because they owned a Tom Waits album. I've got all three, and it's never helped me.
Planes and Trains and Boats and Busses Characteristically Evolve a common attitude of blue Unless you have a suitcase and a ticket and a passport And the cargo that they're carrying is you.
I was born in the back seat of a Yellow Cab in a hospital loading zone and with the meter still running. I emerged needing a shave and shouted 'Time Square, and step on it!'
It's terrible for the culture of music. Like anything that is purely economic, it ignores the most important component.
I was a fireman. I lived in the fire station for about a year. The pay wasn't so good. It was kind of like being in the army, or what I imagine that would be like.
It wasn't good for my nerves, that kind of work -- a fireman. I've got high blood pressure. I get upset easily. I don't think that was a proper career alternative for me.
A foreign affair juxtaposed with a stateside
and domestically approved romantic fancy
is mysteriously attractive due to circumstances knowing
it will only be parlayed into a memory.
You can drive out nature with a pitch fork
But it always comes roaring back again.
I dunno when I started writing really. I was, like, filling out applications and stuff real early. Last name first, first name last, sex. 'occasionally' , stuff like that. Then I was writing letters, filling out forms, writing on bathroom walls.
The ship is sinking The ship is sinking There's leak, there's a leak,in the boiler room The poor, the lame, the blind Who ore the ones that we kept in charge Killers, thieves, and lawyers God's Away, God's away God's away on Business.
There's nothing that makes me laugh more than being in the situation where you're not supposed to laugh. Funerals. People crying. Breaking down. Telling you their life. I'm the worst. I'm the worst at that.
You want soldiers who, when they get to a river after a long march, don't start rooting for their canteen in their pack, but just dive right in.
Well, they'll bark you down like carneys, sell you Christmas cards in June.
If people are a little nervous about approaching you at the market, it's good. I'm not Chuckles The Clown. Or Bozo. I don't cut the ribbon at the opening of markets. I don't stand next to the mayor. Hit your baseball into my yard, and you'll never see it again.
I don't go to church on Sunday, don't get on my knees to pray, or memorize the books of the Bible, I got my own special way.
Don't plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it, you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me -- choke those little bad days. Choke 'em down to nothing.
They called it the Terminal Bar but they had no idea that like twenty years later the place'd be filling up with terminal cases.
I'm not fighting for justice. I am not fighting for freedom. I am fighting for my life and another day in the world here.
I don't know if any genuine meaningful change could ever result from a song. It's kind of like throwing peanuts at a gorilla.
I walked 500 miles just to see a halo, when I opened my eyes I was blind as can be.
I like turning on two radios at once. I like hearing things wrong… I get a lot of ideas by mishearing things.
When you're a kid and you're trying to find your own voice, it's rather daunting to hear somebody like Howlin' Wolf, because you know that you'll never achieve that.
Most changes in music, most exciting things that happen in music, occur through a miscommunication between people I thought you said this. Poetry comes out of that too.
She pulls a razor from her boot and a thousand victims fall around her feet.
I admit that I ain't no angel, I admit that I ain't no saint -- I'm selfish and I'm cruel and I'm blind. If I exorcise my devils, well my angels may leave too. When they leave they're so hard to find.
Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.
It's very hard to stop doing things you're used to doing. You almost have to dismantle yourself and scatter it all around and then put a blindfold on and put it back together so that you avoid old habits.
Most of the people I admire, they usually smell funny and don't get out much. It's true. Most of them are either dead or not feeling well.
Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don't care if they lose it; they'll just make another one.
Arithmetic arithmetock Turn the hands back on the clock How does the ocean rock the boat? How did the razor find my throat? The only strings that hold me here Are tangled up around the pier.
Break windows, smoke cigars, and stay up late. Tell 'em to do that, they'll find a little pot of gold.
I don't think that you should be perfectly candid and frank about the intimate details of your personal life with the public at large. Subsequently, it creates considerable personal problems.
Photos are profound because they have such short lives. They are more like fingerprints, dead leaves, rain puddles, or the corpses of flies.
There's a lot of intelligence in the hands.When you pick up a shovel, the hands know what to do. The same thing's true of sitting at the piano.
When you say you're doing an opera, it's like when you're a seven-year-old and say, 'I'm off to Washington, Dad.' You kind of go, 'Sure. Sure you are, son.'
The first time I started listening to Irish music, I had a very strong connection. Strangely enough, there's a great many Japanese melodies and vocal styles that sound very much like Hungarian music. You start seeing all these cross-references and comparative, independent musical cultures.
I'll be clickin' by your house about two forty-five, Sidewalk Sundae Strawberry Surprise.
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.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead.