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."
Nirvana
Tom Waits Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
he was a young man riding a bus through North Carolina on the way to somewhere.
And it began to snow.
And the bus stopped at a little cafe in the hills and the passengers entered.
And he sat at the counter with the others, and he ordered, the food arrived.
And the meal was particularly good, and the coffee.
She was unaffected, and there was a natural humor which came from her.
And the fry cook said crazy things and the dishwasher in back laughed a good clean pleasant laugh.
And the young man watched the snow through the window.
And he wanted to stay in that cafe forever.
The curious feeling swam through him that everything was beautiful there and it would always stay beautiful there.
And then the bus driver told the passengers that it was time to board.
And the young man thought "I'll just stay here, I'll just stay here"
And then he rose and he followed the others into the bus.
He found his seat and looked at the cafe through the window and then the bus moved off, down a curve, downward, out of the hills.
And the young man looked straight forward.
And he heard the other passengers speaking of other things,
or they were reading or trying to sleep.
And they hadn't noticed the magic.
And the young man put his head to one side, closed his eyes, and pretended to sleep.
There was nothing else to do,just to listen to the sound of the engine,and the sound of the tires, in the snow.
The lyrics of Tom Waits's "Nirvana" tell the story of a young man who, while riding a bus through North Carolina, stops at a little café in the hills because of the snow. While the passengers were enjoying their meal, the young man, who had never met anyone like the unaffected waitress and the crazy fry cook, watched the beauty of the snow and the café through the window with the curious feeling that everything was beautiful there and it would always stay beautiful there. However, when the bus driver told the passengers to board, the young man thought of staying there forever, but he eventually followed the others into the bus. Listening to the sound of the engine and the tires in the snow, there was nothing for him to do but pretend to sleep.
The song's lyrics discuss a moment of missed opportunity and unrealized potential. The young man on the bus experiences a momentary glimpse of beauty and contentment but doesn't act on it. The scene Waits paints is dreamy and surreal, but it highlights the fact that people's perceptions are subjective and can be influenced by their surroundings. The chorus of the song, which only says "Nirvana" (a Buddhist concept signifying enlightenment and release from the cycle of rebirth), suggests that the young man has reached this state of enlightenment by experiencing this moment but has been unable to hold onto it.
Line by Line Meaning
Not much chance, completely cut loose from purpose,
There was little opportunity for direction or purpose in his life.
he was a young man riding a bus through North Carolina on the way to somewhere.
He was a young man traveling through North Carolina with no clear destination.
And it began to snow.
Snow started to fall as the bus traveled through North Carolina.
And the bus stopped at a little cafe in the hills and the passengers entered.
The bus stopped at a small cafe, and the passengers got off the bus to enter.
And he sat at the counter with the others, and he ordered, the food arrived.
He sat at the counter with the other passengers, ordered food, and received it.
And the meal was particularly good, and the coffee.
Both the meal and coffee were excellent.
The waitress was unlike the women he had known.
The young man saw that the waitress was different from the women he had previously encountered in his life.
She was unaffected, and there was a natural humor which came from her.
She had a natural humor that was authentic and unpretentious.
And the fry cook said crazy things and the dishwasher in back laughed a good clean pleasant laugh.
The fry cook said unconventional things, and the dishwasher laughed spontaneously.
And the young man watched the snow through the window.
The young man gazed out of the window and observed the snowfall.
And he wanted to stay in that cafe forever.
He wanted to remain in the cafe for eternity given the beauty of the environment and the food he'd just eaten.
The curious feeling swam through him that everything was beautiful there and it would always stay beautiful there.
He had an indescribable feeling that the beauty of the cafe and its surroundings would always be preserved.
And then the bus driver told the passengers that it was time to board.
The bus driver announced that it was time for the passengers to re-board the bus.
And the young man thought "I'll just stay here, I'll just stay here"
The young man considered staying in the cafe and not going to another place.
And then he rose and he followed the others into the bus.
He stood up and followed the other passengers to re-board the bus.
He found his seat and looked at the cafe through the window and then the bus moved off, down a curve, downward, out of the hills.
He located his seat on the bus and watched the cafe through the window as the bus departed, descending down a hill.
And the young man looked straight forward.
The young man gazed straight ahead while traveling on the bus.
And he heard the other passengers speaking of other things, or they were reading or trying to sleep.
The young man listened to the other passengers' chatter, and some were reading or trying to sleep.
And they hadn't noticed the magic.
None of the other passengers seemed to have appreciated the magic of the cafe.
And the young man put his head to one side, closed his eyes, and pretended to sleep.
The young man turned his head to one side, closed his eyes, and feigned sleep.
There was nothing else to do,just to listen to the sound of the engine,and the sound of the tires, in the snow.
There was nothing else to do except for listening to the engine and tire sounds as the bus traveled through the snow.
Contributed by Arianna Y. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
Alistair J. Pearson
The symbolism in this is wonderful. I always felt that the protagonist getting off the bus was him being born. The cafe is life, the woman his wife and, of course, nobody wants to leave, but we all have to get back on the bus eventually.
Zarathustra P
Wow that's a great interpretation...
Edward V
Never though of it like that. I always saw it simply as a picture of humans' never-ending restlessness. Even when seeing what we perceive to be perfection, we still insist, almost unconsciously, on carrying on our strive for something else, never stopping... But listening to it through your interpretation, I see very well where you're coming from. Especially the snow at the end makes sense then, as snow is often used to symbolise death and the unknown.
Buckycarbon
I love the way Tom Waits draws you into a moment
Billy Barton
No one does it better.... at least for me.
Werebat
This song always makes me think of meeting the woman who would become my current wife. I was young and recently divorced and in a similar frame of mind, and the feeling was very much the same -- being with this new person who I had met quite by accident in a Sam's Club was so wonderful, but staying with her was not part of the original plan, which was to spend the rest of my life in serial monogamy, because I just didn't trust that any woman could be as good as she seemed to be at first.
Thank God, unlike the man in this story, I actually stayed in that cafe.
15 years and three kids later, I often think about how close I came to ending up like the guy in this story, and missed the opportunity of a lifetime.
Ander S
I recommend Martha by Tom Waits. It tells a story of a man who left the café and quite regretted it.
John Smith
This always instantly brings me back to cross-country greyhound bus trips in my late teens/early twenties because I had a few bucks in my pocket and nothing better to do. Good times...
Misophone Official
The breathing is perfect on this track… the hum and rustle… sublime
mandelstang666
One of the most beautiful experiences I have ever known.