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."
The Ghosts of Saturday Night
Tom Waits Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Tryin' to rake in that last night's fare,
And a solitary sailor
Who spends the facts of his life like small change on strangers
Paws his inside P-coat pocket for a welcome twenty-five cents,
And the last bent butt from a package of Kents,
As he dreams of a waitress with Maxwell House eyes
Her rhinestone-studded moniker says, Irene
As she wipes the wisps of dishwater blonde from her eyes
And the Texaco beacon burns on,
The steel-belted attendant with a ring and valve special
Cryin' fill'er up and check that oil
You know it could be a distributor and it could be a coil
The early mornin' final edition's on the stands,
And that town cryer's cryin' there with nickels in his hands
Pigs in a blanket sixty-nine cents
Eggs, roll 'em over and a package of Kents
Adam and Eve on a log, you can sink 'em damn straight
Hash browns, hash browns, you know I can't be late
And the early dawn cracks out a carpet of diamonds
Across a cash crop car lot filled with twilight Coupe Devilles
Leaving the town in a-keeping
Of the one who is sweeping
Up the ghost of Saturday night
In Tom Waits’s song “The Ghosts of Saturday Night”, the lyrics paint a vivid picture of a town at dawn, just as the night is coming to an end. The opening line describes a cab that is frantically searching for the last fare of the night. The song then shifts to focus on a lone sailor who is aimlessly wandering about, using his money to buy drinks for strangers. The sailor's pockets are almost empty, with only a few coins and cigarette ends remaining. In his mind, he’s imagining a woman with “Maxwell House eyes and marmalade thighs with scrambled yellow hair.” He hopes to find solace in her arms.
The lyrics then move on to describe the waitress Irene. Her name is decorated with rhinestones, and she is wiping the dishwater from her eyes. The Texaco gas station attendant works hard, checking oil and filling up cars. The morning edition of the newspaper is just coming out, and the town cryer is shouting out the day’s news. Lastly, the song ends with a sweeping character cleaning up the town and taking care of the “ghost of Saturday night." The lyrics in this song illustrate the sadness and understated beauty of the end of a typical night in the life of a small town.
Line by Line Meaning
A cab combs the snake,
A taxicab drives back and forth on a street, hoping to pick up passengers who are leaving the bars and clubs that just closed.
Tryin' to rake in that last night's fare,
The cab driver hopes to collect the last bit of money available on a Saturday night.
And a solitary sailor
Who spends the facts of his life like small change on strangers
A sailor who lives a lonely life, with no one to share his stories except for random strangers he meets, with whom he shares small talk and buys them drinks.
Paws his inside P-coat pocket for a welcome twenty-five cents,
The sailor digs into his pocket hoping to find a coin he can use to participate in the conversation.
And the last bent butt from a package of Kents,
The sailor smokes the last cigarette from a crumpled pack of Kent cigarettes.
As he dreams of a waitress with Maxwell House eyes
And marmalade thighs with scrambled yellow hair
The sailor imagines an ideal woman with bright eyes like a popular coffee brand, and a soft figure with curly blond hair, reminiscent of marmalade.
Her rhinestone-studded moniker says, Irene
As she wipes the wisps of dishwater blonde from her eyes
The waitress's name is Irene, and she has sparkly fake jewels on her clothes. She clears away remnants of dried soap from around her eyes.
And the Texaco beacon burns on,
The sign of the Texaco gas station still glows and attracts customers in the middle of the night.
The steel-belted attendant with a ring and valve special
Cryin' fill'er up and check that oil
You know it could be a distributor and it could be a coil
The gas attendant checks a customer's car and points out that the problem could be related to the distributor, a component of the car engine that distributes voltage to the spark plugs, or the coil.
The early mornin' final edition's on the stands,
And that town cryer's cryin' there with nickels in his hands
The early morning newspaper is now available at the newsstands, and the man selling them is shouting and holding out his hand for people to give him nickels in exchange for a copy.
Pigs in a blanket sixty-nine cents
Eggs, roll 'em over and a package of Kents
Adam and Eve on a log, you can sink 'em damn straight
Hash browns, hash browns, you know I can't be late
The menu at a diner features several cheap breakfast items, including pigs in a blanket, eggs, and hash browns. The singer wants his eggs over easy, and he's in a hurry to leave because he has somewhere to be.
And the early dawn cracks out a carpet of diamonds
Across a cash crop car lot filled with twilight Coupe Devilles
The sun is rising, casting a beautiful light over a parking lot full of expensive cars like the Cadillac Coupe Deville.
Leaving the town in a-keeping
Of the one who is sweeping
Up the ghost of Saturday night
As the night ends, the last person cleaning up the streets and alleys is the one who is responsible for the memory of the wild Saturday night that just ended.
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, JALMA MUSIC
Written by: TOM WAITS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@saravos3531
Play "The Ghosts Of Sat…"
on Apple Music
"The Ghosts Of Saturday Night (After Hours At Napoleone's Pizza House)"
A cab combs the snake,
Tryin' to rake in that last night's fare,
And a solitary sailor
Who spends the facts of his life like small change on strangers...
Paws his inside P-coat pocket for a welcome twenty-five cents,
And the last bent butt from a package of Kents,
As he dreams of a waitress with Maxwell House eyes
And marmalade thighs with scrambled yellow hair.
Her rhinestone-studded moniker says, "Irene"
As she wipes the wisps of dishwater blonde from her eyes
And the Texaco beacon burns on,
The steel-belted attendant with a 'Ring and Valve Special'...
Cryin' "Fill'er up and check that oil"
"You know it could be a distributor and it could be a coil."
The early mornin' final edition's on the stands,
And that town cryer's cryin' there with nickels in his hands.
Pigs in a blanket sixty-nine cents,
Eggs - roll 'em over and a package of Kents,
Adam and Eve on a log, you can sink 'em damn straight,
Hash browns, hash browns, you know I can't be late.
And the early dawn cracks out a carpet of diamond
Across a cash crop car lot filled with twilight Coupe Devilles,
Leaving the town in a-keeping
Of the one who is sweeping
Up the ghost of Saturday night...
@Joel_Powell
It's just amazing that Tom was 25 when this song was released. Yet, the flow, the lyrics, and the story are like they are coming from a man who has lived much longer.
I think Tom was born with an old soul.
@Banjo3440
what better way to end an album about a Saturday night than a song about Sunday morning?
@blakiecakes419
Some of the best lyrics for any song ever. It puts such a clear visual into my mind..
@TheFerranxu5
And here I am, late night, listening to this masterpiece while I smoke to the filter what it has to be my last cigarette. Thanks Tom, I don't know where I'd be without your music.
@nicholasaramirez885
you mean a last bent butt from a package of kents?
@fredhelmecke6073
Masterpiece...got that.
@jackrimbaud3826
Well done, sir....well done!!
@geoduncan6549
"Could be your distributor...Could be your coil" ...One of the best and funniest lines of any song.
@Sulashua
Lonely sailor smoking and thinking about a waitress named Irene. Then a gas station and a mechanic, early morning newpapapers, diner breakfast and as the day dawns, some Caddillacs. I mean how much more Tom Waits can this get?
@shawnriffhard
It IS very Tom Waitsish!