He started his career in the early 1970s as a singer in spit 'n' sawdust bars. Initially, he was deeply influenced by the beat generation, novelists like Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, and poets like Allen Ginsberg and Charles Bukowski. Waits is often compared to Charles Bukowski, being similar both in content and lifestyle
Waits was unable to make a living from his music in the 70s because his classical bar music, based in pre-rock, and Americana, blues, and Vaudeville styles were not popular. Waits's voice back then was soft, warm and clear.
Waits subsequently developed a devoted cult following and has influenced subsequent songwriters, despite having little radio or music video support. In fact, his songs are perhaps best known to the general public in the form of cover versions of more visible artists, such as the Eagles, Bruce Springsteen and Rod Stewart.
Although Waits’s albums have met with mixed commercial success in his native United States, they have occasionally achieved gold album sales status in other countries.
Lyrically, Waits's songs are known for atmospheric portrayals of seedy characters and places; he sings about the losers on the streets: alcoholics, junkies, prostitutes and social outcasts, although he also includes more conventional and touching ballads in his repertoire.
While opening for Frank Zappa, the audience catcalled and refused to listen to him; he was an unsuitable match with Zappa's avantgarde style.
Countless cigarettes, gallons of alcohol and many all night parties eventually left their trace in his face and voice.
His more recent gravelly voice can be first heard on Small Change. This distinctive voice turned out to be his trademark. It is described by the Music Hound Rock Album Guide 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". Small Change with its sentimental ballads, its bar-jazz attitude and Film Noir-oriented stories turned out to be his biggest commercial success in the 1970s.
Waits subsequently developed a more unique style. His songs have grown more abrasive since then, and the arrangements have turned more surreal and experimental with every new record. His life brings him to new visions, as indicated by the direction taken in his "Alice" release.
While composing the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's One From The Heart Waits met Kathleen Brennan, his bride-to-be. They married in 1980 and she helped him quit drinking and smoking. Since their marriage they have been working together on his albums as co-producers and co-writers. It is hard to say which part belongs to her and which to him, but it's easy to see that they make a perfect team. Additionally, his eldest son Casey can be heard on turntables and percussion on Waits's album "Real Gone".
One of Waits's greatest successes was the album "Swordfishtrombones", released in 1983. It struck with his critics and fans alike. He achieved a new level of song writing and left former conventions (and his earlier career) behind. All songs, whether ballads, jive or jazz are played in a completely different way. It seems that Waits had taken the musical archetypes of these styles and made them his own. All tracks are in the quintessential Waits style. They have a striking rawness and listenability and they set the stage for his success and his future career.
The Bad As Me Songfacts reports that 36 years after the release of Waits' first album, Closing Time in 1973, Bad As Me became Waits's first ever top 10 album in the US when it debuted at #6 with 63,000 sales.
In the late 1980s Waits discovered an outlet for his creativity in composing musicals. His first Musical was named "The Black Rider", and is based on "Der Freischütz" by Carl Maria von Weber. It was co-produced by Robert Wilson and the lyrics come from William S. Burroughs. The story is slightly reminiscent of Kurt Weil's and Berthold Brecht's "Three Penny Opera" and the 1930s. The debut performance of the play was in 1990 at the Thalia Theater, Hamburg and has been played by various theatre groups since then.
Waits was also responsible for two other musicals, which later became albums released simultaneously in 2002. One was the musical "Blood Money," which covers the "Woyczek" theme of Georg Büchner. This one is one of the darkest works from Waits. The other musical is based on Lewis Carroll's classic children's novel, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". "Alice" is very romantic, dreamy and soft, and contains one of Waits most romantic songs. Even though they were released at the same time, the bootlegs of the "Alice" musical were long before traded between fans and were just rearranged and re-mastered for the official release.
Besides many film contributions as composer – the Internet Movie Database imdb.com lists 47 appearances of Waits as composer and 38 soundtracks containing songs by Waits - he also is an actor with a total of 25 appearances, ranging from some mini-roles as a trumpeter in "Heart of Saturday Night" and the R. M. Renfield in "Bram Stoker's Dracula" to the major role of Zack in Jim Jarmusch's "Down by Law". He recently appeared in Roberto Benigni's "The Tiger and the Snow", playing You Can Never Hold Back Spring at Benigni's wedding dream. Even more recently, Waits played Mr.Nick (the Devil) in Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus".
In addition to a number of concert videos, he also appeared in the critically-acclaimed concert feature film "Big Time" (1990).
Waits has always refused to allow the use of his songs in commercials. He has filed several lawsuits against advertisers for using his material without permission. Waits also successfully sued an advertiser for using a work that was stylistically similar to his work, after he had declined to sell them the rights to his song. He has been quoted as saying, "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."
After You Die
Tom Waits Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Like a skinned hand bleeding
Like a tramp choir crying
Like a camp fire dying
Like a big dog breeding
Like a pig hog feeding
Like a top hat tipping
Like a tin horn glowing
Like a gin storm blowing
Like a neck tie flapping
Like a rich guy clapping
Like a big fool crawling
Like a rig tool falling
Like a back door squeaking
Like a crack whore tweaking
What is it like?
What is it like after we die?
Like a string that´s brocken
Like a thing that´s smoking
Like a blue flame burning
Like a new brain learning
Like more cold coffee
Like a poor old softie
Like a declining graveyard
Like a shining brave star
Like a child that´s fainting
Like a wild ass painting
What is it like?
What is it like after we die
The lyrics to Tom Waits's song "After You Die" presents a series of vivid and disparate images, each followed by the question "What is it like after we die?" The song seems to suggest that the experience of death is both natural and mysterious, both mundane and profound. The opening lines compare the experience of dying to a range of everyday occurrences, from a tin can being opened to a big dog breeding. The repetition of "Like a" at the beginning of each line creates a hypnotic effect, lulling the listener into a contemplative state.
As the song progresses, the images become more abstract and otherworldly. The reference to a "blue flame burning" suggests the presence of otherworldly energy or power, while the mention of a "declining graveyard" contradicts this by evoking an image of decay and loss. The lyric "Like a child that's fainting" is particularly interesting, as it suggests a sense of vulnerability and innocence in the face of death. The line "Like a wild ass painting" is similarly enigmatic, evoking a sense of freedom and creativity.
Overall, the lyrics of "After You Die" are both haunting and thought-provoking. They encourage the listener to confront their own mortality and to consider what might happen after we pass away.
Line by Line Meaning
Like a tin can feeding
After you die, it's like a hollow vessel consuming perpetually without gaining any satisfaction or life.
Like a skinned hand bleeding
After you die, it's like surviving wounds that seem impossible to heal despite the life they tend to take away; like a never healing future.
Like a tramp choir crying
After you die, it's like the voiceless weeping in grief over their own voicelessness; like a never-ending sorrow that chokes the very life out of them.
Like a camp fire dying
After you die, it's like no more warmth, no more light; like fading away into an oblivion where nothing exists beyond.
Like a big dog breeding
After you die, it's like an existence that grows from the excitement and impulse but continues even when that enthusiasm is long gone; like a hope left to grow unattended in a dark corner.
Like a pig hog feeding
After you die, it's like the animalistic nature within the human prevails, and nothing more than feeding on the basics of survival prevails.
Like a top hat tipping
After you die, it's like a brief moment of acknowledgement. A thing worth noticing, but that moment fades in no time.
Like a dropped rat skipping
After you die, it's like an insignificant being occupying a momentary space, that scurries away as fast as it appears.
Like a tin horn glowing
After you die, it's like a shimmer of something promising that never reaches full fruition; like the light just before the dawn and never the dawn itself.
Like a gin storm blowing
After you die, it's like a sudden, chaotic whirlwind that messes up everything and eventually fades away into nothingness.
Like a neck tie flapping
After you die, it's like the mundane, lifeless stuff that doesn't matter is all that's left - nothing exceptional or spectacular like the impression that one leaves behind.
Like a rich guy clapping
After you die, it's like the flimsy, unimportant applause of people that are much like you; like celebrating something trivial in front of those who also have nothing substantial to do but watch and clap.
Like a big fool crawling
After you die, it's like the foolishness of one's existence is laid bare and is all that remains, with no scope for redemption or reconciliation.
Like a rig tool falling
After you die, it's like the thing that you looked at as the centre of your work - your famous and glorified tool, crashing, falling apart and rendering your work meaningless.
Like a back door squeaking
After you die, it's like the setting that you thought you owned - betrayed you, with everything that could represent memories, easy to access, always opening to a squeaking surprise.
Like a crack whore tweaking
After you die, it's like getting heavily inside the grip of addiction, with nothing else of importance to do but succumb to the madness that the addiction brings.
What is it like? What is it like after we die?
Inquiring about what happens when you die. What does one expect after life?
Like a string that's broken
After you die, it's like the tie that you wore around your collar, the metaphorical noose around your neck worn thin, and unable to hold together, letting go of everything it bound.
Like a thing that's smoking
After you die, it's like the charred remains of a thing that used to be lively and eventually succumbed to entropy, broken down and turned into nothingness.
Like a blue flame burning
After you die, it's like a pure energy that has a short but shining life, before it disappears forever into nothingness, much like the afterglow of a blue flame.
Like a new brain learning
After you die, it's like another round of learning but with an entirely brand-new set of rules, perception and probably devoid of the previous life's experience.
Like more cold coffee
After you die, it's like being given the same old thing but a bit colder; everything that one could expect but in a poorer condition with a taste of emptiness.
Like a poor old softie
After you die, it's like being that ageing, weakened and scathed part of life that belongs to the past; like the embodiment of everything that one could be before the end.
Like a declining graveyard
After you die, it's like being a slowly fading memory like a graveyard that grows increasingly empty and has fading memories of the lives that once were.
Like a shining brave star
After you die, it's like being everything that one could be in a pure and bright sense like a star that still shines long after its death, leaving behind inspiring rays that keep inspiring future generations.
Like a child that's fainting
After you die, it's like being lost, weak and alone like a child that falls victim to delirium, causing it to fade away gently, leaving behind nothing but a shadow.
Like a wild ass painting
After you die, it's like being beheld by a strange, wild theory without any meaning, like an untamed ass that paints the world in its vision, resulting in a chaotic symmetry that never forms.
Contributed by Landon O. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
Diego que já foi Danilo e que se chamava Rodrigo
Gostei bastante desse álbum ❤️
Nick Wiles
Spanking crisp comments space!
Smooth as a babies bottom draw handle, a week before the birth. Salute! & thank you for the music, Mr T.W. It has been a unique & unusual journey for the ears. One not easily forgotten. I'm quite sure that it is YOUR characteristic voice & take on things which is soundtrack to the weirdness of my dreams. Yeah, it really helps the nightmares achieve ultimate peak! Wishing you very well T.W. Thanks again!!
Visions of Madness
Tom Waits is a legend.
Isten Fasza
WTF
Kenyouth Archibald
Only the brave ones ask the hard questions 👀