Tom Waits
Photo: Robert Frank
146 articles
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Tom Waits: Ronnie Scott's, London
Live Review by Fred Dellar, New Musical Express, 12 June 1976
HE TAKES the stage with what he describes as his don't care-a-shit shuffle. Very apt ...
The Backpages Interview: Tom Waits
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, 26 April 2002
Thomas Alan Waits is about to release two albums simultaneously – Alice and Blood Money. In this previously unpublished interview from the spring of 1985, ...
Audio interviews
Interview by Chris Roberts, Rock's Backpages audio, 20 September 1988
Moles at Stonehenge? Umbrellas? Showbiz Shirts? Yes, it's another leap into the surrealistic world of Tom Waits
File format: mp3; file size: 52.3meg, interview length: 54' 29" sound quality: ***
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages audio, 28 January 1999
On his new album, Mule Variations; on changing labels; on his formative influences... and on edible slugs! On Beatniks, recording, songwriting, Frank Zappa and L.A.... and his first tattoos!
File format: mp3 File size: 71.4mb, interview length: 1h 14' 23", sound quality: **
Interview by Gavin Martin, Rock's Backpages audio, May 2002
On Charley Patton and James Brown, encounters with William Burroughs and Keith Richards, and being a 'rectal thermometer' for Frank Zappa...
File format: mp3; file size: 61.8mb, interview length: 1h 07' 29" sound quality: ****
Interview by Joel Selvin, Selvin On The City, KSAN 107.7, 2006
Tom Waits talks about some of his favourite artists - William Burroughs, Daniel Johnston, Johnny Cash, and being the adult when working with Keith Richards!
File format: mp3 File size: 24.7mb Interview length: 26' 56"; Sound quality: *****
List of articles in the library
John Hammond Jr. and Tom Waits: Folk-Blues — Two Times And Places
Profile by Philip Elwood, The San Francisco Examiner, 30 May 1973
POPULAR MUSIC generations are particularly short in recent years — styles change, young artists establish new norms, a huge maturing audience sets new standards twice ...
Tom Waits: Thursday Afternoon, Sober as a Judge
Profile and Interview by Jeff Walker, Music World, June 1973
IT IS SOMETIMES extremely difficult to separate an artist from the trend he's involved in; even if there's only a single element that makes him ...
Sarah Kernochan: House of Pain; Tom Waits: Closing Time; Eagles: On The Border
Review by j. poet, The Berkeley Barb, 7 June 1974
j poet moans: step on me i like it ...
Tom Waits, Garland Jeffreys: The Cellar Door, Washington DC
Live Review by Howard Wuelfing, Unicorn Times, October 1975
THE NIGHTHAWK SOARS ...
Tom Waits: Reno Sweeney's, New York City NY
Live Review by Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, 23 October 1975
AS A PERFORMER, Tom Waits seems closer to Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen than to anyone else currently working in rock; unlike them, however, Waits ...
Tom Waits: Not So Much a Poet, More a Purveyor of Improvisational Travelogue
Profile and Interview by Todd Everett, New Musical Express, 29 November 1975
Could TOM WAITS really be The Next Big Thing? TODD EVERETT, in Los Angeles, finds out. ...
Tom Waits: Nighthawks At The Diner (Asylum Import) *****
Review by Mick Brown, Sounds, 6 December 1975
Waits: poet of the streets and bars ...
Tom Waits: A Seventies Storyteller With Fifties Beat Style
Profile and Interview by Mick Houghton, Time Out, 1976
"I WAS BORN at a very young age in the back seat of a yellow cab in Murphy Hospital parking lot. I had to pay ...
Tom Waits: Nighthawks at the Diner (Asylum)
Review by James Wolcott, Creem, March 1976
WENT TO a press party celebrating the publication of Ed Sander's Tales of Beatnik Glory; the room was filled with old beats (Burroughs, Ginsberg), neo-Beats ...
Tom Waits: Personality Without Pretension
Interview by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 14 March 1976
THERE'S NO PLACE like Tom Waits' home. There's no home, at any rate, quite like Tom Waits' place. The Silver Lake court cottage looks like ...
Tom Waits: Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, New York NY
Live Review by Wayne Robins, Newsday, 10 May 1976
True believer, but not Kerouac the second ...
Interview by Karl Dallas, Melody Maker, 5 June 1976
TOM WAITS, currently appearing at London's Ronnie Scott Club, talks to Karl Dallas. ...
Tom Waits: Would you say this man was attempting to convey an impression of sordid Bohemianism?
Interview by Fred Dellar, New Musical Express, 5 June 1976
I CAME IN on the southbound flyer, then hoofed it halfway across town to see Tom. From a nearby window drifted the sound of Billie ...
Tom Waits: Ronnie Scott's, London
Live Review by Mick Houghton, Sounds, 12 June 1976
IT'S NOT easy to discover the real Tom Waits. He's continually performing. Off stage, in conversation, he frequently draws from his onstage material in his ...
Tom Waits: Warm Beer, Cold Women
Interview by Mick Brown, Sounds, 12 June 1976
TOM WAITS rocks backwards and forwards in his chair, pulls at a cigarette, draws deep, then turns his face out of the smoke, back into ...
Review by Richard Cromelin, Phonograph Record, October 1976
CHARACTERS, REAL honest-to-goodness characters, are hard to come by these days, so right off the bat Tom Waits, with his wino outfits and broken-soul slouch, ...
Tom Waits: Small Change (Asylum, Import)
Review by David Hepworth, New Musical Express, 20 November 1976
Waits refuses to face his critics (to his lasting credit...) ...
Tom Waits: Royce Hall, UCLA, Los Angeles CA
Live Review by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 7 December 1976
Emotional Pull of Tom Waits ...
Tom Waits: Sound Circus, London
Live Review by Michael Watts, Melody Maker, 7 May 1977
THE OBVIOUS question about Tom Waits — is he, or is he not, a phoney? — ought to be perfectly clear, yet was never quite ...
Tom Waits: Sound Circus, London
Live Review by Paul Rambali, New Musical Express, 14 May 1977
APTLY ENOUGH, since he lives in hotels for ten months of every year, Tom Waits was born in the back of a taxi. His description ...
Review by Mick Brown, Sounds, 14 May 1977
ANOTHER ALBUM From Tom Waits, his fourth, belatedly released here to tie in with a recent one-off performance in London. ...
Tom Waits: Foreign Affairs (Asylum 7E-1117)
Review by Fred Schruers, Rolling Stone, 17 November 1977
THE ADMIRING audience that Tom Waits built up with his early work now worries about him in a way that does his derelict's persona proud: ...
Tom Waits: Pantages Theater, Los Angeles CA
Live Review by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 21 November 1977
TOM WAITS' followers keep a close, almost medical eye on their hero's voice, much as Jets fans used to watch the status of Namath's knees. ...
Tom Waits: Foreign Affairs (Asylum)
Review by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 11 February 1978
A RUMOUR IN HIS OWN TIME ...
Interview by Colin Irwin, Melody Maker, 29 April 1978
FORGIVE the blasphemy, but I reckon God must have been way out of his little box when he deposited Tom Waits among us. Mr. Waits ...
Interview by Mark Bliesener, Rocket, July 1978
He Says He Gave Us The Best Years Of His Life, So What More Should We want? ...
Tom Waits: The Bad Liver and Broken Heart Brigade
Interview by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 15 July 1978
The gent pictured on the left has quit the organisation listed below, at least as far as vocally viewing life through the bottom of a ...
Review by Paul Rambali, New Musical Express, 25 November 1978
Waits and measures ...
Tom Waits: Blue Valentine (Asylum 6E-162)
Review by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, 10 December 1978
TOM WAITS, BEAT-ERA RELIC ...
Tom Waits: Huntington Hartford Theatre, Los Angeles CA
Live Review by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 15 December 1978
IT'S FITTING that Tom Waits is appearing at the Huntington Hartford, usually the home of legitimate stage productions. Waits finally has come upon an ideal ...
Tom Waits: Blue Valentine (Asylum)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Creem, February 1979
ONCE I WAS really drunk in this very fancy bar where they had this woman playing piano, looked like somebody's grandmother, and I kept asking ...
Live Review by Karl Dallas, Melody Maker, 28 April 1979
Doing the Palladium slouch ...
The Skid Row Drunk Goes Legit: Tom Waits live in New York
Live Review by Mick Farren, New Musical Express, 1 December 1979
BECAUSE of circumstances too dumb to relate here and now, I had never seen Tom Waits doing a live show, unless, of course you count ...
Tom Waits Does New York Shuffle
Report and Interview by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 20 January 1980
IF NEIL SIMON can relocate from New York to Los Angeles, it's only fair that one of our local fixtures should return the favour. Tom ...
Tom Waits: Heartattack & Vine (Asylum/WEA)
Review by Nick Kent, New Musical Express, 11 October 1980
American stars and bars ...
Tom Waits on Heartattack and Vine
Interview by Stephen K. Peeples, Elektra-Asylum Records, Spring 1980
NOTE: With the appointment made to conduct a Tom Waits interview on the Zoetrope Studios lot in Hollywood on Sept. 4, 1980, I listened to my ...
He's a Coppola Swell: Tom Waits
Interview by Mick Brown, The Guardian, March 1981
THE FIRST TIME Tom Waits visited London, in 1976, he earned the dubious distinction of being thrown out of the club were he had been ...
Tom Waits: Waits And Double Measures
Interview by Johnny Black, Smash Hits, 18 March 1981
PUT YOURSELF in my place. Scant hours earlier I'd been regaled with the tale of how, in an interview the previous day, Tom had turned ...
Tom Waits: London, Victoria Apollo
Live Review by Andy Gill, New Musical Express, 28 March 1981
TOM WAITS, sad to say, has now joined the illustrious pantheon of artistes whose performances have driven me to sleep. Sad, because this is the ...
Tom Waits: The Beat Buff Speed Poet Home Booze Hayseed
Interview by Ian Penman, New Musical Express, 28 March 1981
Or: the ten-piece Tom Waits jigsaw puzzle. As manufactured by Ian Penman ...
Tom Waits: Bounced Checks (Asylum ASK 52316)
Review by Patrick Humphries, Melody Maker, 14 November 1981
HAVING HAD his thunder stolen by Rickie Lee Jones, ol' gravel voice weighs in with a timely "Greatest Hits" compilation. It's a selection from six ...
Interview by Dave Zimmer, BAM, 26 February 1982
Everybody looked like a broken-down movie extra; a withered starlet, disenchanted stuntmen, midget auto racers, poignant California characters with their end-of-the-continent sadness, handsome, decadent, Casanova-ish ...
Tom Waits: Hollywood Confidential
Interview by Dave Zimmer, BAM, 26 February 1982
LA's Hobo Laureate Creates the Score for Coppola's One From the Heart. ...
Tom Waits: Swordfishtrombones (Island)
Review by Ian Penman, New Musical Express, 24 September 1983
NOW, BEFORE I step before you again to review some music, and then have to face an old familiar tune (videlicet: guilty of obscurantism), I ...
Review by Richard Williams, The Times, 1 October 1983
Piercing fragments from the gutter ...
Review by Richard Williams, The Times, 1 October 1983
Piercing fragments from the gutter ...
Tom Waits: Swordfishtrombones (Island ILPS 9762)
Review by Brian Case, Melody Maker, 8 October 1983
WITH 15 TRACKS, this is sketchbook Waits and indicates the range of his writing gifts. Maybe it's the influence of writing music for movies, but ...
Swordfish Out of Water: Tom Waits
Interview by Edwin Pouncey, Sounds, 15 November 1983
"WHEN YOU drive from Los Angeles to Northern California... Leaving Los Angeles is like you’re being put upon and then it gets simpler and simpler, ...
Tom Waits: Swordfishtrombones (Island ILPS90095-1)
Review by Sam Sutherland, High Fidelity, January 1984
BETWEEN HIS fall from grace at his old record company (due as much to executive shifts as poor sales) and his time-consuming involvement in the ...
Interview by Glenn O'Brien, Interview, May 1984
TOM WAITS writes great songs and sings them with greatness. He made his first album ten years ago. It was called Closing Time; he has been ...
Review by Edwin Pouncey, Sounds, 1985
With my head full of violent thoughts, swirling with the alcohol I've poured down myself to accomplish the task at hand, I'm just in the ...
Tom Waits: The Sultan Of Sleaze
Interview by Peter Silverton, You, 1985
Well I got a bad liver and a broken heart,yea I drunk me a river since you tore me apart,and I don't have a drinking ...
Tom Waits: Marlowe Of The Ivories
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 25 May 1985
DID HIS wife die in the fire? ...
Review by Biba Kopf, New Musical Express, 12 October 1985
NICE PEOPLE wear their hearts on their sleeves. The soiled souls peopling Tom Waits' songs have theirs tattooed on their arms. His cast of characters ...
Live Review by Richard Williams, The Times, 18 October 1985
Saloon bar ballads ...
Interview by Gavin Martin, New Musical Express, 19 October 1985
"I told you I was sick" ...
Tom Waits: Subterranean Low-Life Blues
Interview by Chris Roberts, Sounds, 19 October 1985
"THE COOLEST PERSON I ever met was definitely Shaw. It was a bleak autumn afternoon when Shaw thumped me in the 12-years-old ribcage and said, ...
Reigning Hats And Dogs: Tom Waits at the Dominion, London
Live Review by Don Watson, New Musical Express, 26 October 1985
COME INSIDE, the finger beckons and the man with the stubble breaks out a grin and leans in your direction... ...
Live Review by Ted Mico, Melody Maker, 26 October 1985
WAITS FOR THE MAN ...
Interview by Glenn O'Brien, Spin, November 1985
How to act. How to watch Mr. Rogers. How to pick a road manager. How to live in the big city. And more solid information. ...
Review by Mark Dery, Record, January 1986
THIS IS HOW the other half lives, the dark underbelly for whom being born in the U.S.A. means Huey Long, Lenny Bruce on a bender, ...
With Hall & Oates: G.E. Smith — "Call me a contemporary commercial pop-rock guitar player."
Interview by Gene Santoro, Guitar Player, February 1986
"IF THERE'S anything worth writing about me, it's that I'm a guy like most of the people who read Guitar Player," insists G.E. Smith. "I'm ...
Interview by Peter Silverton, Beat, March 1986
TOM WAITS CHOSE to meet in the heart of his own territory, in a cheap restaurant just down the road from what he said was ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 1987
SUBTITLED "Un Operachi Romantico In Two Acts", Frank's Wild Years is effectively the final part of a trilogy that began in 1983 with the extraordinary ...
Tom Waits: Franks Wild Years (Island) *****
Review by Mat Snow, Sounds, 22 August 1987
ONE FOR THE ROAD ...
Tom Waits: Hollywood Babble-On
Interview by Ted Mico, Melody Maker, 22 August 1987
BOHO, BARFLY AND BEAT BRAMAH, TOM WAITS HAS NOW TURNED HIS SLEAZY TALENTS TO THEATRE AND FILM. TED MICO TOOK A DRINK WITH THE SCOURGE ...
Tom Waits: Franks Wild Years (Island)
Review by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 30 August 1987
WAITS: DREAMLIKE, DISTANT ...
Tom Waits is Flying Upside Down (On Purpose)
Interview by Mark Rowland, Musician, October 1987
"IT'S ALWAYS the mistakes," Tom Waits is saying. "Most things begin as a mistake. Most breakthroughs in music come out of a revolution of the ...
Tom Waits: Wiltern Theatre, Los Angeles CA
Live Review by Don Waller, Los Angeles Times, 9 November 1987
Tom Waits Shines His Lamp on Sleazy Underside of Life Quirky Sounds, Offbeat Lighting, Wiggy Jigs Make for a Highly Stylized, Intimate Concert ...
I Just Tell Stories For Money: Tom Waits
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, New Musical Express, 14 November 1987
SOMETIMES YOU CAN get a pretty good idea about someone's music just by checking out their appearance. If clothes maketh the man, they also speak ...
Interview by Bill Holdship, Creem, January 1988
I'M A LITTLE nervous – and I don't get this way often these days. But I've heard that Tom Waits can be a difficult interview. ...
Tom Waits: Big Time (Island LP/Cassette/CD)
Review by Len Brown, New Musical Express, 1 October 1988
START MAKING SENSE ...
Hal Willner: "He's The Kind Of Guy Who Knows When Something Sounds Absurd, It's Beautiful"
Interview by Mark Rowland, Musician, January 1989
HAL WILLNER, UNRIVALED KING OF THE "TRIBUTE" ALBUM, TURNS TO DISNEY ...
Tom Waits: The Early Years Volume I (Edsel)
Review by Max Bell, Vox, September 1991
LONG BEFORE he became the rather self-conscious Harry Dean Stanton type he is today, Tom Waits used to intone straight-to-the-heart-of-the matter barroom blues, most of ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, September 1991
THIS, THE FIRST of two volumes of previously unissued Tom Waits tracks, is the latest fruit of the deal with Herb Cohen and Frank Zappa's ...
Interview by Peter Silverton, The Observer, 1992
To converse with Tom Waits is to be lied to, consistently, determinedly, entertainingly. ‘I’ll tell you all my secrets but I’ll lie about my past,’ ...
Tom Waits: Night On Earth (Island)
Review by Everett True, Melody Maker, 30 May 1992
NOT A new album as such, but the soundtrack to the new Jim Jarmusch movie, which stars, among others, Winona Ryder, Giancarlo Esposito and Beatrice ...
Tom Waits: A Mellower Prince Of Melancholy
Interview by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 15 September 1992
HE MIGHT STILL dress as though he staggers around sniffing under dustbin lids, but now the self styled Oddball Kid refuses to play his old ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, October 1992
ON HIS EARLIEST albums, piano was the definitive Tom Waits instrument, its chords illuminated only by the dimmest of nightclub spotlights, filtered through a tumbler ...
Tom Waits: Bone Machine (Island)
Review by Richard C. Walls, Musician, October 1992
VULTURES AT THE DINER ...
Interview by Peter Silverton, Vox, October 1992
TOM WAITS is in Paris wrestling with the truth. As usual the truth is losing, but that's what happens when you're promoting your first album ...
Tom Waits: Bone Machine (Island/PLG)
Review by Evelyn McDonnell, Spin, November 1992
ON THE five years following his last studio album, Tom Waits moved to the country and became a family man. The influences of wife, children, ...
Interview by Mark Rowland, Musician, January 1993
NOT LONG ago, Tom Waits and his family uprooted from Los Angeles, his home for many years, and moved up the coast to the quieter, ...
Tom Waits Benefits Friend, Audience
Live Review by Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle, 6 February 1996
IT TOOK A friend in trouble to get Tom Waits back on stage. ...
Tom Waits: Bourbon, Bullets And Blues
Retrospective by Gavin Martin, Uncut, April 1998
Gavin Martin heads downtown on the trail of Tom Waits' Swordfishtrombones ...
Guide by Tom Cox, The Guardian, 29 January 1999
1 Nick Drake Bryter Layter (Island, 1970) ...
Profile and Interview by 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 ...
What's He Building In There? An Interview with Tom Waits
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, April 1999
TOM WAITS squats down on the fender of his blue Coupe de Ville and tells a joke. ...
Tom Waits: Mule Variations (Epitaph)
Review by Andy Gill, The Independent, 15 April 1999
The Big Noise ...
Tom Waits: Mule Variations (Epitaph)
Review by Tom Cox, The Guardian, 16 April 1999
I'D HATE TO be the neighbourhood psycho on Tom Waits's street. You'd never quite feel safe, terrorised by those all-seeing, scarecrow eyes, observing your every ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, The Independent, May 1999
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 ...
Guthrie's Heir?: Tom Waits' Mule Variations
Review by Gene Santoro, The Nation, 6 May 1999
TOM WAITS IS an imaginary hobo. He cruises the oddball corners of American pop culture, collecting the deft and moving and loopy short takes he ...
Tom Waits: The Long Waits: Return Of An Ageless Artist
Interview by Jim Sullivan, The Boston Globe, 19 September 1999
THERE ARE artists — like, say, Cher — who manage to appear forever young. And then there is Tom Waits, who always seemed old before ...
Live Review by Gavin Martin, Uncut, August 2000
WAITS JUNKIES are everywhere — filling the bars, and brasseries around the venue, queuing up around the block in the rain-drenched Parisian streets. ...
Review by Sylvie Simmons, MOJO, May 2002
NOT A DOUBLE but two individual albums, released at the same time. Your choice. There's Alice, skewed and drowsy, with wonky percussion and soft, smudged, ...
With Morbidity On His Mind, Tom Waits Makes A Double Play
Interview by Jim Sullivan, The Boston Globe, May 2002
Tom Waits — the raspy-voiced singer-songwriter and occasional actor and playwright — has released 14 albums in nearly 30 years. But he has a habit ...
Tom Waits: Everything Goes To Hell
Interview by Gavin Martin, Uncut, June 2002
ON A SUNNY Californian morning, Tom Waits pulls his family-size Suburban Chevrolet into the car park of Santa Rosa's Flamingo Hotel and begins to unpack ...
Review by Mark Mordue, Neumu, 2004
DID YA COME from outer space? Did ya kill that bird in the coop? Ooh there be a guitar like old Barney Kessel and something ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Rock's Backpages, September 2004
RBP: Is it true you cut Real Gone in an old schoolhouse in the Mississippi delta? ...
Marianne Faithfull: Before The Poison; Tom Waits: Real Gone
Review by Everett True, Plan B, September 2004
WHAT KEEPS FOLK like Waits and Faithfull from phoning it in? Why do they feel a need to reinvent themselves, seek out new styles like ...
Tom Waits: A Cluttered Harmony
Interview by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 26 September 2004
THE LITTLE AMSTERDAM sits incongruously in the rolling expanse of Sonoma County farmland, a low white building adorned with a Dutch windmill - a "fake" ...
Interview by Sylvie Simmons, MOJO, October 2004
"HE COMES IN for coffee sometimes. Reads some poetry. They told me he was a musician. Tom Wait. Never heard of Tom Wait." Little Amsterdam's ...
Tom Waits: Barroom Bard's Next Round
Interview by Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 October 2004
TOM WAITS SIPS coffee at the Formica counter of the Chinese takeout and doughnut shop, looking out on the intersection of Mission and 24th streets. ...
Tom Waits: Well Worth the Waits
Report and Interview by David Sinclair, The Times, 22 October 2004
NEXT MONTH Tom Waits will make his first British concert appearance for 17 years. And if the word filtering back from Vancouver and Seattle, where ...
Tom Waits: Real Gone (Anti/Epitaph)
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, November 2004
SINCE IT’S HARD and possibly verboten to say a bad word about Tom Waits, unholy shaman of whacked-out Americana, I’ll content myself with expressing a ...
Review by Eric Weisbard, The Village Voice, 1 November 2004
The eternal hustler works his gloomy-gus shtick and leaves the hipsters wanting more ...
Tom Waits: Hammersmith Apollo, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, February 2005
SO MANY desperate, disappointed people loitered without hope outside the Apollo for this show that one felt vaguely ashamed being in possession of a ticket. ...
Transcript of audio interview by Joel Selvin, Rock's Backpages transcripts, 2006
This is a transcription of Joel's audio interview with Tom. Listen to the audio of this interview. ...
Jim Jarmusch: "Tom Waits said he would glue my head to the wall"
Profile and Interview by Laura Barton, The Guardian, 9 June 2006
WHEN JIM JARMUSCH speaks, it is like a man emptying out his pockets. "Wild Zero. Guitar Wolf. Where they're killing zombies. Rude Boy. The Clash. ...
Tom Waits: Thomas Wolfe Auditorium, Asheville, NC
Report and Interview by Fred Mills, Harp, 2 August 2006
HE CAME, he saw, he conquered. Meanwhile, he hoisted that rag, he got behind the mule, and he tangoed until we were just about sore. ...
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, Rock's Backpages, November 2006
An edited version of this interview appeared in The Observer, October 29, 2006 ...
Tom Waits: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards (Anti/Epitath)
Review by Larry Jaffee, The Audiophile Voice, 21 November 2006
SINCE JOINING indie label Anti/Epitaph, Tom Waits has released four albums, the Grammy-winning Mule Variations (1999), Real Gone (2004), and in between, simultaneously Alice and ...
Tom Waits: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers And Bastards
Review by Mat Snow, MOJO, December 2006
Dylan? Dickens? Rembrandt? Shakespeare? A 21st century beggars' banquet. ...
Interview by Mark Kemp, Harp, December 2006
Whackv.tr.1. To strike (someone or something) with a sharp blow; slap.2. Slang: To kill deliberately; murder.n.1. A sharp, swift blow.2. The sound made by a ...
Scarlett Johansson: Anywhere I Lay My Head (Atco)
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Observer Music Monthly, May 2008
WHEN TOM WAITS started his musical apprenticeship in the LA of the early 1970s, he harbored secret Tin Pan Alley fantasies of having his work ...
School of Rock Study Guide: Singer-Songwriters
Guide by Barney Hoskyns, iTunes, October 2008
"WHERE DO YOU have left to go but in?" It was a question posed by Joni Mitchell, the brilliant Canadian blonde who specialized in intensely ...
Home I'll Never Be: A San Diego Serenade
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Lowside of the Road' (Faber), 2009
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a chapter from my biography Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits, published in 2009 by Faber (UK) and ...
The Piano Has Been Drinking: Tom Waits in London Town
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Lowside of the Road' (Faber), March 2009
In this excerpt from Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits, the barfly bard of the Hollywood sidewalks visits London for the first ...
Barney Hoskyns: Lowside of the Road – A Life of Tom Waits (Faber & Faber)
Book Review by Nick Coleman, The Independent, 1 March 2009
SELF-REVELATION has never come easily to the Los Angeleno songwriter, musician and occasional actor Tom Waits, which is presumably why he writes the kinds of ...
Nirvana: Live At Reading and other live albums
Review by James Medd, The Word, December 2009
They keep saying this is the golden age of live music. So why don't live albums sound as good as they used to? Nirvana: Live At ...
Take It With Me When I Go: Tom Waits Turns 60
Book Excerpt by Barney Hoskyns, 'Lowside of the Road' (Faber), December 2009
To celebrate Tom Waits' 60th birthday (December 9), I hereby offer the coda to my biography Lowside of the Road. An account of seeing the ...
Albums of the Decade: Tom Waits' Real Gone
Review by James Medd, The Word, January 2010
ISTHERE A musician whose stock is higher? It's certainly hard to think of another whose songs are covered by both the singer of Led Zeppelin ...
Tom Waits: Glitter and Doom Live
Review by Barney Hoskyns, Uncut, January 2010
Nighthawks at the arena: potent two-disc set of The Mule's onstage artistry, drawn from his 2008 tours of America and Europe. ...
Frank Zappa's Manager: A Smile On His Lips, And A Pistol Under The Bar
Obituary by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, 19 March 2010
Mick Brown pays tribute to Herb Cohen, who managed Frank Zappa while maintaining an enthusiasm for music, cheese, confectionery and armaments. ...
Herb Cohen: Combative label boss and manager of Frank Zappa and Tom Waits
Obituary by Rob Hughes, The Guardian, 1 April 2010
HERB COHEN, who has died aged 77 of complications from cancer, did not elicit much affection from the artists he managed, but he played a ...
Profile and Interview by James Medd, The Word, November 2011
The genius fog-filled guitarist who pushed Tom Waits' signature sound off the piano stool. ...
Review by Barney Hoskyns, The Word, November 2011
IT SHOULDN'T NEED to be said but I'll say it anyway: Tom Waits' career is one of the more extraordinary examples of mutation in the ...
Review by Andrew Mueller, Uncut, November 2011
Growling, whooping, yelping and crooning: a swaggering, multifarious tour-de-force, says Andrew Mueller ...
Tom's Wild Year: The Story of Swordfishtrombones
Retrospective by Barney Hoskyns, Classic Rock, June 2013
HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU it was not. Tom Waits did, however, have news for fellow guest Ian Hislop, rounding on the latter after ...
Live Review by Jaan Uhelszki, Uncut, January 2014
In which a failed restauranteur — specialities: eel, donuts, fish scales — repays his debt to Neil Young. Lucky day! ...
Tom Waits: Real Gone (Remixed/Remastered)
Review by Andy Gill, The Independent, 13 December 2017
IN A WORLD WHERE everything from Sgt Pepper to What's Going On? is considered fair game for remix "upgrading", it's only slightly surprising — given ...
Jacquire King on Tom Waits' Mule Variations
Interview by Jacob Paul Nielsen, unpublished, 2020
JPN: What are you listening to right now? ...
Interview by Jacob Paul Nielsen, unpublished, 2020
Author's note: I interviewed Oz Fritz and Jacquire King about their engineering work on Tom Waits' Mule Variations. Part of the interview wound up in ...
Rickie Lee Jones: "I had lived volumes long before I was famous"
Interview by Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, 18 April 2021
A fractured childhood, years as a hippie drifter… the musician's new memoir tells of her incredible adventures before she found fame – and of her ...
Alex Harvey: Song Noir – Tom Waits and the Spirit of Los Angeles (Reaktion Books)
Book Review by Simon Warner, Rock and the Beat Generation, July 2022
I REVIEWED Rickie Lee Jones' vividly illuminating autobiography Last Chance Texaco in these pages earlier this year, applying a Beat microscope to her always energetic, ...
Retrospective and Interview by Mark Cooper, Rock's Backpages, March 2024
"DON'T ASK ME any more questions!" groans an exasperated Tom Waits, hunching over an old stand-up piano in the corner of a rehearsal room at ...
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