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."
Barcarolle
Tom Waits Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Her ribbons are all out of tune
She is skating on the ice
In a glass in the hands of a man
That she kissed on the train
And the children are all gone into town
To get candy and we are alone in the house here
And I belong only to you
The water is filling my shoes
In the wine of my heart there's a stone
In a well made of bone
That you bring to the pond
And I'm here in your pocket
Curled up in a dollar
And the chain from your watch around my neck
And I'll stay right here until it's time
The girls all knit in the shade
Before the baby is made
And the branches bend down
To the ground here to swing on
I'm lost in the blond summer grass
And the train whistle blows
And the carnival goes
'Til there's only the tickets and crows here
And the grass will all grow back
And the branches spell 'Alice'
And I belong only to you
The lyrics of Tom Waits's song Barcarolle are a mix of surrealism and symbolism, creating an ambiguous and dreamlike atmosphere. The first line of the song sets the scene for a surreal landscape where a cloud lets go of the moon, immediately introducing the theme of detachment and disconnection from reality. The second line reveals that the "ribbons" of the moon are "out of tune," creating a discordance in the natural order of things, a feeling of unease and disorientation. The third line brings us into a more concrete scenario, where the moon is "skating on the ice," but not alone, as it is held in a glass by a man who has been kissed by her on the train.
The rest of the verses are a mix of imagery that doesn't follow a logical sequence but creates moments of powerful intensity. The singer declares his belonging to someone, but the image of water filling his shoes suggests he is drowning, while the stone in the wine of his heart represents a burden. The idea of being curled up in a dollar and having a chain around his neck highlights the feeling of being trapped and objectified, yet he remains willingly inside the pocket of the person he belongs to. The final image of the branches spelling "Alice" creates a reference to Alice in Wonderland, where the singer is lost in a surreal world, like the singer in the song. Overall, the lyrics convey a feeling of belonging and displacement at the same time, evoking the complexity of the human experience.
Line by Line Meaning
A cloud lets go of the moon
The moon is no longer hidden behind a cloud
Her ribbons are all out of tune
Her hair or clothing is disheveled
She is skating on the ice
She's gliding along the frozen water
In a glass in the hands of a man
The man is holding a drink with ice in it
That she kissed on the train
She kissed the man she's with while riding the train
And the children are all gone into town
The kids went to the city to buy candy or something like that
To get candy and we are alone in the house here
The couple is together in the house without any children
And your eyes fall down on me
The man looks at the woman with affection
And I belong only to you
The two people are in a committed relationship
The water is filling my shoes
The woman's shoes are getting wet
In the wine of my heart there's a stone
There's an obstacle in her heart that she needs to overcome
In a well made of bone
A bone well might be a metaphor for death or something dark
That you bring to the pond
The man is bringing something dark to a peaceful place
And I'm here in your pocket
The woman is metaphorically with the man all the time
Curled up in a dollar
The woman is insignificant or unimportant, like a dollar bill
And the chain from your watch around my neck
The woman feels like she's chained to the man because of their relationship
And I'll stay right here until it's time
The woman is willing to wait for whatever comes next
The girls all knit in the shade
The ladies are doing something pleasant, like knitting
Before the baby is made
They're doing this before the start of what might lead to pregnancy
And the branches bend down
The trees are bending under the weight of something
To the ground here to swing on
Someone might sit and swing from the branches near the ground
I'm lost in the blond summer grass
The person is surrounded by beautiful grass and the colors of the season
And the train whistle blows
The train is passing by
And the carnival goes
The festival continues
Til there's only the tickets and crows here
When the carnival ends, all that's left is debris and scavengers
And the grass will all grow back
The land will rejuvenate and heal from the activity that took place
And the branches spell 'Alice'
The branches of the tree have a unique shape that spells out a name
And I belong only to you
The couple remains devoted to each other throughout it all
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: KATHLEEN BRENNAN, THOMAS ALAN WAITS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
liz!
so beautiful. tom waits and colin stetson is an all-time combo
William Jones
This almost brings a tear to my eye, but I have to listen to it over and over again. Absolutely beautiful.
frederique lenfant
Expliquez moi pourquoi le monde va mal? Barcarolle 7500 vues !!!!! Je ne comprends pas...quelque chose m’échappe !