Variations on Tom Waits

FEW OF the patrons of the China Light diner in Santa Rosa look up when Tom Waits shuffles through the door. Attired in coarse indigo denim and clutching a bulky leather briefcase, to them he’s merely another street eccentric. Just as he blended effortlessly into the barfly demi-monde of sleazoid Hollywood in the days when he was bellowing songs like 'The Piano Has Been Drinking', so now - despite living in domesticated rural bliss with a wife and three children - Waits can wander into a Chinese Diner in northern California without causing a commotion.