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."
Watch Her Disappear
Tom Waits Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
And from a window across the lawn I watched you undress
Wearing your sunset of purple tightly woven around your hair
That rose in strangled ebony curls
Moving in a yellow bedroom light
The air is wet with sound
The faraway yelping of a wounded dog
And the ground is drinking a slow faucet leak
A light goes on and the door opens
And a yellow cat runs out on the stream of hall light and into the yard
A wooden cherry scent is faintly breathing the air
I hear your champagne laugh
You wear two lavender orchids
One in your hair and one on your hip
A string of yellow carnival lights comes on with the dusk
Circling the lake with a slowly dipping halo
And I hear a banjo tango
And you dance into the shadow of a black poplar tree
And I watched you as you disappeared
I watched you as you disappeared
I watched you as you disappeared
I watched you as you disappeared
...
The song "Watch Her Disappear" by Tom Waits is a vivid description of a dream that he had about watching someone he deeply cares about undressing. The dream is set in a dark, surreal landscape that is filled with sound and imagery. The lyrics are rich with symbolism and metaphor, and the descriptions are vivid and sensual.
The dream begins with Waits watching the object of his affection undressing from a distant window. She is wearing a sunset of purple that is tightly woven around her hair, which is described as "strangled ebony curls". She is moving in a yellow bedroom light, and the air is wet with sound, including the faraway yelping of a wounded dog. As she undresses, Waits watches mesmerized, and the ground is drinking a slow faucet leak. The descriptions create an atmosphere that is both dreamlike and surreal.
As the dream continues, Waits watches his love interest move about her soft and fading house. The air is filled with a wooden cherry scent, and Waits hears her champagne laugh. She is wearing two lavender orchids, and a string of yellow carnival lights comes on with the dusk, circling the lake with a slowly dipping halo. Waits hears a banjo tango, and she dances into the shadow of a black poplar tree. Eventually, Waits watches her disappear, and he repeats the phrase "I watched you as you disappeared" four times before the song ends.
Overall, "Watch Her Disappear" is a haunting and poetic description of a dream about loss and longing. The descriptions are vivid and sensual, and the symbolism is powerful. The song leaves the listener with a sense of nostalgia for something that was never really there.
Line by Line Meaning
Last night I dreamed that I was dreaming of you
The singer had a dream where they were dreaming about someone they know
And from a window across the lawn I watched you undress
In the dream, the singer watched the person they were dreaming about undress from afar
Wearing your sunset of purple tightly woven around your hair
The person in the dream had purple clothing wrapped around their hair
That rose in strangled ebony curls
The person in the dream had black curly hair that looked tight and uncomfortable
Moving in a yellow bedroom light
The lighting in the dream was yellow and the person was moving within it
The air is wet with sound
The atmosphere of the dream had a lot of sound
The faraway yelping of a wounded dog
One of the sounds in the dream was a distant dog howling in pain
And the ground is drinking a slow faucet leak
There was a leak in the dream that was seeping into the ground
Your house is so soft and fading as it soaks the black summer heat
The person in the dream lived in a house that looked worn out and was absorbing the summer's heat
A light goes on and the door opens
A door opened in the dream and light shone through it
And a yellow cat runs out on the stream of hall light and into the yard
During the door opening in the dream, a yellow cat ran out of the hallway and into the yard
A wooden cherry scent is faintly breathing the air
There was a slight smell of cherry wood in the dream
I hear your champagne laugh
The singer heard the person in their dream laugh
You wear two lavender orchids
The person in the dream had two purple flowers decorating them
One in your hair and one on your hip
One of the flowers was on the person's hair, and the other was on their hip
A string of yellow carnival lights comes on with the dusk
As the night started to fall in the dream, a set of yellow carnival lights turned on
Circling the lake with a slowly dipping halo
The lights encircled a lake and faded in and out
And I hear a banjo tango
The singer heard the sound of a banjo playing a tango
And you dance into the shadow of a black poplar tree
The person in the dream danced under the shade of a black poplar tree
And I watched you as you disappeared
The artist watched as the person in their dream vanished
I watched you as you disappeared
The artist reiterates that they were watching the person in their dream as they vanished
I watched you as you disappeared
The artist reiterates again that they watched the person in their dream vanish
I watched you as you disappeared
For the final time, the singer repeats that they watched the person in their dream disappear
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, JALMA MUSIC
Written by: KATHLEEN BRENNAN, THOMAS ALAN WAITS
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@user-vl1ox4gy4r
Я слышу прекрасный голос Тома...❤❤❤
@charlesnielson7945
I hear a banjo tango...
@copediff
i hear your champagne laugh