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Tom Waits, Hobo Sapiens

Mick Brown, Telegraph Magazine, April 1999

TOM WAITS FIRST made his name by singing songs about that area of town marked out by the pawnbroker, the tattoo-parlour and the Greyhound bus station. These were wonderful stories - funny, sad and wise - in which hookers were saints and skid-row bums were lovingly depicted as 'little boys', and which led Francis Ford Coppola to describe him as "the prince of melancholy".

Total word count of piece: 4353

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