Quotes: The Business

"I think you should fight for your independence and freedom at all costs. I mean, it's a plantation system. All a record company is is a bank, and they loan you a little money to make a record and then they own you for the rest of your life. You don't even own your own work. Most people only have a small piece of their publishing. Most people are so happy to be recording, which I was, you like the way your name looks on the contract, so you start signing. I got myself tied up in a lot of knots when I was a kid."

Ambition/ Success/ Recognition

TE (1975): Waits describes his relationship with his record company [Asylum] and fellow artist as "All right, I don't invite them over to my house or anything; but I don't really know very many of them. They have a lot of faith in me over there, with the idea that sooner or later I'll do something significant." His sales are, he admits, "pretty catastrophic" with the income "barely paying production costs." Thanks largely to a constant series of barnstorming personal appearance tours the audience is growing. "In cities like Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Boston and Denver. I'm a very bizarre cultural phenomenon."(Source: "Not so much a poet, more a purveyor of improvisational travelogue". New Musical Express. Todd Everett, November 29 1975)

Q (1975): Has success spoiled Tom Waits? TW: "Hardly spoiled. But, hardly "success" either. "I'm not concerned about financial success. I just don't think about it. If anything, I've become more comfortable, knowing that I can sleep until two and hang out until 10 in the morning; and don't have to worry about losing my job. "But I'm not a big star. I'm not even a twinkle," Waits eyes dance. "I'm just a rumour." (Source: "Not so much a poet, more a purveyor of improvisational travelogue". New Musical Express. Todd Everett, November 29 1975)

Tom Waits (1976) on Troubadour hoot-nights: "I was as ambitious as hell. I wasn't any good, but I was ambitious, and I thought I was better than anybody, and I sucked raw eggs. But you have to think that way. To let an audience intimidate you is musical suicide." (Source: "Waits: Personality Without Pretention" Los Angeles Times (USA) March 14, 1976. By Richard Cromelin. Pop Music pg. V64)

Tom Waits (1976): "I really have changed. I've become a little more ambitious about it [recording ]. For me it's also a craft. It's not something that drops out of the sky. It's not something where you sit at your picture window, and watch the sun glistening off the trees and a deer walks by and whispers in your ear. It's really a craft, and it's hard work. It's just a lot of discipline, and hopefully, you get better with each project. I've just about worked out the stuff for my next album, so what I'm going to do when I get back to Los Angeles is get drunk as a skunk, and stay that way for about three days... then I'm going right into the studio." (Source: "Watch out for 16 year old girls wearing bell bottoms...". "ZigZag" magazine. Peter O'Brien. London. May, 1976)

Tom Waits (1976): "I think you'll probably never go broke underestimating the collective taste and attention spon of the American public. When it comes down to the hit parade, things are so tightassed and exclusive that the stuff people have to base their own musical frame of reference on is limited, all except for the people that are curious enough to go out and do their own research. If all you do is listen to the hit parade, man..." (Source: "Bitin' the green shiboda with Tom Waits". "Down Beat" magazine. Marv Hohman. Chicago. June 17, 1976)

Q (1976): What would have happened to your head if Nighthawks would have started selling fantastically, like Springsteen's Born To Run? Would your outlook have been altered? TW: I don't know, man. I can't make no predictions on anything like that, no. I think I'm my own handicap. So I don't know. I never really expected that to happen. (Source:"Bitin' the green shiboda with Tom Waits". "Down Beat" magazine. Marv Hohman. Chicago. June 17, 1976)

Tom Waits (1976): "I'm not on easy street by any sense of the imagination. I'm a rumor in my own time. I couldn't even begin to tell you how much I'm making, but I am making more than when I was driving a cab. I feel at times I'm residually in jeopardy with my record company. I don't pull in a lot of dividends. Most of the money I make is from personal appearances and I spend most of that on the band and the bus. I made it to 169 on the record charts and figured if we could only get to 200 it would be great. But I found out it goes the other way. No I don't know exactly how much I'm making." (Source: "The Ramblin' Street Life Is The Good Life For Tom Waits" Rambler magazine. Rich Trenbeth. Chicago. December 30, 1976)

Tom Waits (1978): "Today's heroes are tomorrow's service station operators. I'm lucky. I'm a pretty good mechanic." (Source: "Nighthawks at the Chelsea". Modern Hi-Fi and Musics SoundTrax: Larry Goldstein. October 1978)

Q (1979): What sort of status have you attained in America? What sort of progress do you think you've made? TW: "Well, it's taken seven years and I've gone from beer bars to small theatres, so I guess you could say that I'm breaking out of the bars... After seven years (laughs)." (Source: "The Neon Dreams Of Tom Waits". "New Musical Express" magazine. John Hamblett. London. May 12, 1979)

Tom Waits (1979): "I'd like to make some kind of breakthru. When I get home. I've got two months to write an album and I've got no idea of what I'm gonna come up with. I'm waiting for it to drop on me. I usually go to a room and I stay there until I'm done, and that's where my real rewards are. It's a little difficult for me in the studio. I don't feel comfortable. It's like so antiseptic, you know. I pull away from anybody who's tried to give me any sort of direction, never had anybody look over my shoulder, tell me what to do. I don't turn it into a party or something." (Source: "Wry ... Danish to go". "MelodyMaker" magazine. Brian Case. Copenhagen, Early 1979)

BC (1979): It's not like back home, he says, where his father turns up at his performances with a bunch of good loud buddies to heckle him. The memory cheers him up. TW: "Well ... huh. He always tells me, If it's difficult - do it. And tell ya kids the same thing. Not that anyone'd marry ya. Hafta be crazy." (Source: "Wry ... Danish to go". "MelodyMaker" magazine. Brian Case. Copenhagen, Early 1979)

Tom Waits (1979): "The important thing is to continue to challenge yourself". "Cos I think that I would rather be a failure on my own terms than a success on somebody else's. This industry has a tendency to chew you up and spit you out - today's heroes are tomorrow's service station attendants. "Most of the time the dream is sweeter than the taste." (Source: "Tom Waits: A Sobering Experience", "Sounds" magazine. Dave Lewis. August 4, 1979)

Tom Waits (1981): "I don't claim to be anything other than an entertainer ." (Source: "Tom Waits: The Beat Buff Speed Poet Home Booze Hayseed" New Musical Express (UK). Ian Penman. March 28, 1981)

Tom Waits (1983): "The Devil's Dictionary defines fame as "being conspicuously miserable". A lot of the problems connected with fame are perpetuated by the performers more than by the public, because many performers use the press as if it's a priest. They tell journalists very private details of their lives and you have to be careful about that because it can be dangerous and damaging. It's a little cheap too, considering that you should probably reserve a lot of that for your close personal friends and relatives." (Source: "One From The Heart ... One For The Road ". New Musical Express magazine. Kristine McKenna. October 1, 1983)

Tom Waits (1983): "I would rather be a failure on my own terms than a success on someone else's. That's a difficult statement to live up to, but then I've always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them there are." (Source: "Skid Romeo". The Face magazine. Robert Elms. Los Angeles, 1983)

Tom Waits (1983): "I guess the whole concept is things are gonna be real rough for a while and you're gonna play a lot of real joints and bang on a lot of doors and people are going to treat you like dog meat and then all of a sudden one day - ping! - things are gonna get better and you can look back on 'em as the good old days. The albums that I've made - now, this' (Swordfishtrombones) the first one that I've ever produced so it's the first one that I've had a real firm active role in the direction and the landscape of the music and there's a lot of different barometers for how you're doing. I'm not absolutely sure that making a million dollars and having your face on a lunch box in Connecticut is really what that's all about. I think as long as you're still taking turns and exploring and trying out new things, I think then you're better off." (Source: Swordfishtrombones Interview (interviewer's tape). Date: 1983/ 1984)

Q (1985): "As a family man, are you thinking more in terms of career these days?" TW: "You can't, without driving yourself crazy. You can't perceive it correctly. You just have to stay interested, keep a sense of humour, stay civilised and curious, an' y'know, enjoy life's rich pageant. Some are more afraid of success than of failure. It's hard to get on the radio, an' without that you can't affect things an' 'catch the young'. It's all business y'know? I don't know - maybe I have been a cult for too long, but you do what you do. So many come along as a big sensation an' then tomorrow nobody gives a shit about them - keep it movin' pal! I stay a little... outside the glass. I think I'd like to take a crack at a wider audience, but with that comes responsibility. If you're too big you get selfconscious, if you're too obscure you feel nervous. So it's hard. The main thing is songs..."(Source: "Subterranean Low-Life Blues". "Sounds" magazine. Chris Roberts. New York, October 19, 1985)

Tom Waits (1985): "So they tell me the shows we're doing in London are sold out already. I can hardly believe that." Well, Swordfishtrombones had quite a big impact, Tom. TW: "Mmm, but there's the other side of that, it doesn't last too long. Everything is temporary - they pump you up for a little while, dye your hair, see you in a different shape. It goes around for a while and comes back down again. It's not something you can really build on.".(Source: "Hard rain". New Musical Express: Gavin Martin. October 19 1985)

Tom Waits (1987): "What do you mean by success? My record sales have dropped off considerably in the United States. I do sell a lot of records in Europe. It's hard to gauge something you don't have real contact with. We have no real spiritual leadership, so we look to merchandising. The most deprived, underprivileged neighborhoods in the world understand business. Guns, ammo, narcotics... But yes, SALES HAVE DROPPED OFF CONSIDERABLY IN THE LAST FEW YEARS... and I want to talk to somebody about it. I used to play Iowa. I haven't been to Iowa in some time." (Source: "Tom Waits Is Flying Upside Down (On Purpose)". Musician, Mark Rowland. October 1987)

Tom Waits (1987): "The thing is, when you hit a vein, you make a breakthrough, there are a lot of people who want to go through that door. Whether you made it with a screwdriver or an M-16, there'll be a lot of traffic. So I don't tap into a national highway. I really think you have to be careful. Everybody looks at the country as this big girl they want to kiss. Like they're courting this big broad, you know? Gonna take the baby out, yeah, show her a good time. Does this sound silly? I'm just talking off the top of my head." (Source: "Tom Waits Is Flying Upside Down (On Purpose)". Musician, Mark Rowland. October 1987)

MR (1987): Is it upsetting that by taking chances you seem to lessen the likelihood of reaching a wider audience? TW: Music is social, but I'm not making music to be accepted. I think everyone has to go out on their own journey. MR: Is it helpful to have developed a separate vocation as an actor? TW: [takes mock offense} What, you don't think I can make a living just playing my music, is that what you're insinuating? But it helps with the groceries? (Source: "Tom Waits Is Flying Upside Down (On Purpose)". Musician, Mark Rowland. October 1987)

Tom Waits (1987): "If I just wanted to make money, there are a lot of other ways to do it," says Waits, who finds the idea of corporate sponsorship and the current craze for using rock songs to sell products abhorrent. "People, have asked me about using my songs in commercials, but I`m not interested. That's not why I'm in music." (Source: "A Multifacted Singer Looks For New Directions". Chicago Tribune. Lynn Van Matre. October 18, 1987)

LM (1987): He's vague about record sales - he knows that he has fans in Europe, Hong Kong and behind the Iron Curtain as well as in the U.S. - but acknowledges that none of his albums has sold the 500,000 copies necessary to earn a gold album, pop music's standard measure of commercial success. "It doesn't bother me," says Waits. "I do fine. All of that stuff is just hubcaps and headlights, anyway, and I don't really go in for trophies and all that. I don't believe in it. "A lot of people approach music like crop-dusting. Or ballistics. They create things that are a certain size, that fit in a chamber-and when those people are gone, somebody else will come along and create things that are exactly the same size. I know that (we have) a mercantile heritage," adds Waits with a laugh, "but I'm nervous about that kind of a system." (Source: "A Multifacted Singer Looks For New Directions". Chicago Tribune. Lynn Van Matre. October 18, 1987)

Tom Waits (1988): "I tell people the only reason I play small parts is that I keep dreaming the director will get sick and I'll have to take over. I'm half kidding, of course, But only half." (Source: "Tom Waits: Eccentric In The Very Best Sense" Los Angeles Times. Charles Champlin. January 14, 1988)

Tom Waits (1988): "People get frightened that success is going to take them out of life. They're no longer going to be on the corner of Bedlam and Squalor; life will only be something you can get through the mail. "But Jack Nicholson just stays in there, being himself. He's a good ad for success." (Source: "Tom Waits: Eccentric In The Very Best Sense" Los Angeles Times. Charles Champlin. January 14, 1988)

Tom Waits (1988): Popular music is like a big party, and it's a thrill sneaking in rather than being invited. Every once in a while, a guy with his shirt on inside out, wearing lipstick and a pillbox hat, gets a chance to speak. I've always been afraid I was going to tap the world on the shoulder for 20 years and when it finally turned around, I was going to forget what I had to say. I was always afraid I was going to do something in the studio and hate it, put it out, and it was going to become a hit. So I'm neurotic about it. (Source: "Tom Waits 20 questions". Playboy magazine: Steve Oney. -- March 1988)

Tom Waits (1988): "I'm not big on awards. They're just a lot of headlights stapled to your chest, as Bob Dylan said. I've gotten only one award in my life, from a place called Club Tenco in Italy. They gave me a guitar made out of tiger-eye. Club Tenco was created as an alternative to the big San Remo Festival they have every year. It's to commemorate the death of a big singer whose name was Tenco and who shot himself in the heart because he'd lost at the San Remo Festival. For a while, it was popular in Italy for singers to shoot themselves in the heart. That's my award." (Source: "Tom Waits 20 questions". Playboy magazine: Steve Oney. -- March 1988)

Tom Waits (1988): "What I'm trying to do now incorporates certain ethnic influences, but it has a harder edge than that. I'm not a commercial artist. I don't get a tremendous amount of airplay. But it seems I reach a certain amount of people by talking to magazines. You'd be more apt to see me in a magazine that you would hear me on the radio... It's kind of strange. It's kind of like reading about a bird in an electronics magazine. You hope that you'll be on radio, but radio is so changed now. It's like mainstream network stuff, the demographics of it. Except for a few struggling stations with a limited range and format. I mean, you can glue decals all over your head that say "Coca-Cola" and "Pepsi" and advertise cigarettes and underwear. That's one way to get across. You know, like race drivers that have every product known to man tattooed across the side of their car. And a lot of groups choose to align themselves with big companies to underwrite their tours. I hate that shit." (Source: "A Flea In His Ear". City Limits magazine. Bill Holdship. Los Angeles. May 12-19 , 1988)

Tom Waits (1988): "If someone thinks you're great, it's not really you they think is great. And if they do a hatchet job on you, it's not really you. So the best thing to do is to protect yourself. Put on a moustache and sunglasses and stripes in your tie. Shave your head, change your name - and then keep the rest of you off the side for your friends and family. Otherwise, you're in a shooting gallery. Stick your neck out, and they'll skin you, hang you on the wall, and throw back the bones. So you have to focus on your own work. That's what's important, your own growth and development." (Source: "A Flea In His Ear". City Limits magazine. Bill Holdship. Los Angeles. May 12-19 , 1988)

Tom Waits (1988): "Sometimes you realize there's a certain amount of resignation in song composing, but then you hear different people do different things with it. And then you deal with the ballistics of radio, where you're constantly reminded that the bullet must fit the chamber. They're striving for an American Rifle Association that creates this whole blue-metal network of sameness. Like a parts store. I don't strive to fit into that, but it's always there. In order to continue to develop and grow and change and even to have an effect on someone else, people have to be aware of you. I mean the Stones had a great influence on popular music. They always stayed in the garage, but they still came out of the radio. It was amazing cause their albums are very primitive. Keith Richards says what he was trying to do was be the hair in the gate." (Source:" Tom Waits". Graffiti Magazine: Tim Powis. December 1, 1988)

Tom Waits (1992): "Well, popular music --whatever popular music is-- there aren't very many real serious qualifications to enter that field. A lot of broken people find their way into it because nobody belongs near 'em. Time will decide what still has real value after we're gone--we're dealing with the anatomy of business and distribution. Once you get beyond that, you can maybe really hear a record and not worry about whether someone's going to think you're in or out for liking it. People today kill for tennis shoes and jackets. It's a jungle. Listening to the wrong music can get you blown in half." (Source: "Tom Waits at work in the fields of song ". Reflex nr. 28: Peter Orr. October 6, 1992)

Tom Waits (1993): "I want it to do well," he says of 'Bone Machine'. "I seem to have a wide reputation, but my records don't sell a lot. A lot of people seem to have bought one record or they heard one record a long time ago and got me down, so they don't have to check in anymore: 'Oh, that guy. The one with the deep voice without a shave? Know him. Sings about eggs and sausage? Yeah, got it.'" (Source: "Tom Waits' wild year". Musician: Mark Rowland. January, 1993)

Tom Waits (1999): "I used to take the bus to the Troubadour and stand out front at 9 o'clock in the morning on a Monday and wait all day to get up and do 15 minutes onstage. 'Cause you know, you never had confidence, you have absolutely no self-esteem, but you have this mad wish to do something public at the same time. You're sitting all day next to a guy with a silver trumpet who's on acid, you're sharing cigarettes and drinking Tabs. And then like a whole Mexican family with nine kids comes in in matching vests and pants and studs and hats, from ages 19 down to 4, and they get up and do "Guadalajara," "Eres Tu?" -- remember that? Break your heart, just break your heart... I saw Miles Davis there. Professor Irwin Corey. They swing a spotlight around right by the cigarette machine to pick you up: And nowwww, ladies and gentlemen, the Troubadour is proud to present... And they'd say your name, and they'd walk you up to the stage in the spotlight. I used to watch other acts do that, and I'd be in the audience with my coffee, and I said, "That's it. That's it for me." (Source: "Gone North, Tom Waits, upcountry". L.A. Weekly: Robert Lloyd. April 23-29, 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "I'm still not convinced that I made the right decision. Who's to say, y'know? I go back and forth. I think I'm, like, doing this children's work. "What do you do?" "I make up songs." "Uh, OK, we could use one of those, but right now what we actually need is a surgeon." In terms of the larger view, there's no question that entertainment is important. But there are other things I wish I knew how to do that I don't." (Source: "Mojo interview with Tom Waits ". Mojo: Barney Hoskyns. April 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "It all has to do with demographics and who likes what: if you like that, you'll like this. If you like hairdryers, you'll like water-heaters. Then you try to distinguish yourself in some way, which is essential- you find your little niche. When you make your first record, you think, That's all I wanna do is make a record. Then you make a record and you realize, Now I'm one of a hundred thousand people who have records out, OK, now what? Maybe I outta shave my head." (Source: "Mojo interview with Tom Waits ". Mojo: Barney Hoskyns. April 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "I think by the time Francis called and asked me to write those songs, I had really decided I was gonna move away from that lounge thing. He said he wanted a "lounge operetta," and I was thinking, well, you're about a couple of years too late. All that was coming to a close for me, so I had to go on and bring it all back, It was like growing up and hitting the roof. I kept growing and kept banging into the roof, because you have this image that other people have of you, based on what you've put out there so far and how they define you and want they want from you. It's difficult when you try to make some kind of turn or a change in the weather for yourself. You also have to bring with you the perceptions of your audience."(Source: "Mojo interview with Tom Waits ". Mojo: Barney Hoskyns. April 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "I'm not everybody's cup of tea, nor do I aspire to be... This isn't musical imperialism.". (Source: "Wider public greets Waits' 'Variations' ". USA TODAY: Edna Gundersen. June 1999)

Q (1999): "I bet you'd find commercial success a little unsettling. TW: "Ok, I'm mistrustful of large groups of people enjoying anything together. You try to be careful that you don't wind up in one of those darkly ironic situations where you've become the very thing you despise. What you want is a faucet and a sink for your popularity. Otherwise you don't get a drink for six years or the whole living room fills up with water. there's very little in between.". (Source: "Wider public greets Waits' 'Variations' ". USA TODAY: Edna Gundersen. June 1999)

Q (2002): Does he think that if he had taken a different turn, he might have sold as many records as Bruce Springsteen, the Eagles and Rod Stewart, all of who have covered his songs? TW: "I don't know about that," he says amiably. "If you're eccentric then you're eccentric. I don't think I ever got to a crossroads in my life when I could have done that. That was their destiny and it wouldn't have fitted if I'd try to put that on." (Source: "Dirt music". The Sydney Morning Herald. (Australia), by Nigel Williamson. April 27, 2002)

Tom Waits (2002) : "It's nice to see some of what you've put out there returning. It raises my self-esteem - to know that you're going into the blood system and giving someone a cold." ("A double shot of Waits." Globe and Mail (Canada) May 7, 2002 - Print Edition, Page R1 by Carl Wilson)

JV (2004): I was surprised to learn Mule Variations sold a million copies woildwide. How does that feel? TW: I guess it feels good. isn't that supposed to feel good? JV: But what does that mean when an artist like Tom Waits can sell a million copies of an album at a time when the music business is basically saying nothing but easy-sell artists are worth bothering with? TW: I don't know what it means. If they were lawn chairs, what would it mean? If they were potted plants, what would it mean? If they were little poodles, what would it mean? It's America: free enterprise." (Source: "Magnet Interview With Tom Waits" Magnet Magazine (UK), by Jonathan Valania. October, 2004)

Tom Waits (2004): "You have to look at it in terms of commerce, I get these songs for nothing. They were growing at the side of the road like berries. And I sell them at a premium. I have a love-hatred relationship with it. They (the public) want to celebrate you, and then they want to kill you. They want to cook you and then they want to eat you. And then they want to remember you - even when you're still alive." (Source: "Well Worth The Waits", The Times (UK). October 22, 2004. By David Sinclair)

Tom Waits (2006): "I'm just out here trying to build a better mousetrap. If somebody doesn't like what I do, I really don't care. I'm not chained to public opinion, nor am I swayed by the waves of popular trends. I just keep on doing my own investigations." (Source: "Tom Waits: Haunted songster's revelatory dispatch from the Twilight Zone", Now Magazine (Canada). Vol. 26, no. 11. November 16 - 22, 2006. By Tim Perlich)

Q (2006). "People talk about your sound and your production and your voice, but it's really about the songs for you, isn't it? If you had to define yourself in one word, would "songwriter" be it? A. I don't know. I guess. All right. Let's see. Astronaut? Brain surgeon? Architect? World leader? Q. C'mon. You'd love it if people were still singing your songs 100 years from now. A. You hope that you're building things that are going to last. You don't really know that. It's just making a song. It's not like I'm saving lives or changing the world. Q. Don't underestimate yourself. People talk about songs being lifelines. A. Well, they're fishing for a compliment, see. Q. Bono thinks you can change the world with a song. A. Who? Q. The singer in U2. A. Oh, right. OK. Like "Kumbaya"?" (Source: "Tom Waits Still In The Driver's Seat", The Chicago Tribune (USA). November 21, 2006. By Greg Kot)

Robert Siegel (2006): "So how do you deal with the idea that you'd start of determined to be from the outside and to be different and to be avant-garde. And you're at serious risk of being, you know, "Tom Waits popculture superstar" here. TW: You need a scandal I guess. You know, every now and then (laughs). Or you gotta just disappear for a while. I try to keep my audience a little hungry, you know uh, "Don't feed the dolphins." is my word. Next time you go out they'll poke a hole in your boat. RS: (laughs) TW: So they don't need to be fed every day. RS: No. TW: That's the thing about uh, your audience." (Source: "Tom Waits: The Whiskey Voice Returns", All Things Considered, episode 123. NPR radio show (USA). November 21, 2006. By Robert Siegel)

Tom Waits (2006): "I think the key to staying around is diversification... "You have to be able to speak several languages, or at least that's the way I've always seen it." (Source: "Tom Waits: Weird Science". Harp magazine (USA). December 1, 2006. Telephone interview by Mark Kemp)

Touring

MH (1976): The first time I saw you perform was back in St. Louis a few years ago, when you were playing Kiel Auditorium as a solo warm-up act for Zappa and the Mothers. Not only were you swamped by the sheer immensity of the hall, with your vocals almost totally inaudible, but the crowd was obviously a rock-oriented set. They were far from being into a lone guy up there singing tales of brokendown autos and barroom troubles. That was a bad scene. TW: Aw, man... the worst. I bit the green shiboda on that tour with Frank. That wasn't even the worst night, though: if I remember correctly, St. Louis was a snap. I had some real bitches on that tour. We played a lot in the South and ended up on Mothers' Day at midnite in the Philharmonic Hall in New York. That tour was my own decision, though. I wasn't doing anything at the time and Frank's original opening act had quit. So he was stuck and I volunteered my services. It was like mercy killing, you know - an experience that turned into a real catastrophe. The cats in his band were easy to get along with, it wasn't their fault. Tom Fowler was in Frank's band at the time, Bruce Fowler on trombone, Napoleon Murphy Broek, George Duke, Ruth Underwood... I went out every evening and proceeded to ruin my evening, and the audience's too, I guess. (Source: "Bitin' the green shiboda with Tom Waits". "Down Beat" magazine. Marv Hohman. Chicago. June 17, 1976)

Tom Waits (1976): "You know I've been the opening act for a long time and now I'm just slowly starting to headline. It's another world. Used to open for groups like the Mothers of Invention and Cheech and Chong. I used to get all sorts of produce and crap thrown at me. Some nights I had enough to make a fruit salad." (Source: "The Ramblin' Street Life Is The Good Life For Tom Waits". "Rambler" magazine. Rich Trenbeth. Chicago. December 30, 1976)

DM (1977): The final horror came as opening act for the Mothers, whose audiences treated Waits with monumental disdain. Kids crowded around the apron of the stage, spitting and cursing at him, flipping him the bird. TW: "I'd stand there and say 'Well, thank you. Glad you enjoyed that one. I've got a lot of new material I'm going to play for you tonight.' It went right downhill and I never got my fingers underneath to pull it up. It's amusing in retrospect, but there were some nights when, Jesus Christ, does this type of work look interesting to you!?"(Source: "Smelling like a brewery, lookin' like a tramp". Rolling Stone: David McGee. January, 1977)

Tom Waits (1978): "I go out on the road for so long, and I play my songs so much, that I have to come home and write new stuff just so I'll have new tunes to take out. If I play the same song in 50 different cities over a period of four months it gets boring... People like to think you do one concert a year and you're doing it in their town, just for them, but it does get a bit tiresome. I change the show every night, the order of the tunes is different. I throw out some, add new tunes. I always try to keep each evening unique - for me, mainly." (Source: "A Rumor In My Spare Time". Hit Parader magazine, by Deane Zimmerman. Date: October, 1978)

Tom Waits (1983): "The uncontrollable urge to play Iowa has finally left me. The problem is usually you never have the chance to really be in charge of every detail of the show. You play cafeterias, student unions and nightclubs a different nightmare every time, so... " (Source: "Tom Waits For No Man". Melody Maker. Brian Case. October 29, 1983)

Q (1985): Now you're going on tour. Do you pick your tour band just on musicianship or do you try to pick people who are easy to get along with? TW. In a way, I pick people who are easy to get along with. I just have the road manager make announcements. "Whatever you do, don't go to Tom with all of your problems. If you have problems with girlfriends, if you have problems with your instruments or travel plans, please see the road manager. Do not approach Tom with any personal problems! I repeat: do not approach Tom with any personal problems!" I'm best when I don't get involved. "Do not discuss salary with Tom!" It's going to be good. (Source: "Tom Waits for no man". Spin Magazine: Glenn O'Brien. November 1985)

GB (1985): I've heard that record companies are sick of paying for videos, so they're trying to get companies to pay to have their products displayed in them. TW. Yeah, you see that all over in films now. Whenever they're in the kitchen you're going to see Nasbisco. It's weird, though. You spend all this time on the road and then you realize that in a matter of seconds you can reach more people than you have in the last 17 years. That's a little hard to swallow." (Source: "Tom Waits For No Man". Spin Magazine: Glenn O'Brien. November 1985)

GB (1985): What's your life like on the road? TW: "Well, you get up in the morning, along with millions of other Americans, and you go to the airport. You get to a new town. I go to the Chamber of Commerce as soon as I get in and talk to whoever is in charge. Sometimes I do. But most of the time you really don't know where you are. It's very possible that you may come out on stage and say, "It's great to be here in St. Louis" and you could very well be in Denver or Seattle. That's happened." (Source: "Tom Waits For No Man". Spin Magazine: Glenn O'Brien. November 1985)

Tom Waits (1987): "I still have nightmares where the whole crowd is moving toward me and then the keys are falling off the piano and the curtain rips and my shoe comes off and I'm crawling toward the wings and the crowd is moving toward me, hurling insults at me. And car parts. I played cow palaces, rodeos, sports facilities, hockey arenas with the ice beneath the cardboard. It cools off the place. It's alright in August, but it's a bitch in February. But if you can appreciate the rich pageantry of it... Never have your wallet with you onstage. It's bad luck. You shouldn't play the piano with money in your pocket. Play like you need the money."(Source: "Boho Blues". Spin Magazine: Bart Bull. 1987)

SH (1987): The worst gig you ever played? TW: "Opening for The Mothers Of Invention. Some times I wake up in the night sweatin' 'bout that one. Hordes of long hairs approaching the stage. I didn't really translate to baseball arenas and rodeos. I did it for the money. Initiation. Throw him to the lions. Frank was a nice guy though." (Source: "I Just Tell Stories For Money". New Musical Express magazine. Sean O'Hagan. Los Angeles. November 14, 1987)

Tom Waits (1993): "On the southside of Chicago, at the Checkerboard Lounge, the last great bluesman, Hound Dog Taylor, was performing before a rowdy audience and getting heckled by a drunk in the first row. Hound Dog pulled out a .38-caliber revolver, shot the drunk in the foot, put the gun back in his pants, and finished the song. I've thought of doing this many times but never had the courage." (Source: "Tom Foolery - Swapping stories with inimitable Tom Waits". Buzz Magazine: May, 1993)

BM (1999): Why did you stop touring? TW: "There are all these variables on the road. If you're [at home] with your instruments and a tape machine, you can fashion things how you want them. On the road, you're dealing with all kinds of wind and weather. You know, viscosity and thermal breakdown." (Source: "Tom Waits for no man". Time Out New York nr. 187: Brett Martin. April 22-29 1999)

Q (1999): You've done sporadic performing the last couple of years. Is there any particular reason why you haven't done a lot of live performances? TW: "I break out. I don't know. It's a lot of headaches, it's a lot of variables and it's different every night. I don't know. I lived out on the road, I liked it out there, I lived in a motel, it was fine. You've got to bring your own coffee, you've got to bring your own coffee pot. I don't know. We're gonna go out and do some shows." (Source: "Tom Waits '99, Coverstory ATN". Addicted to Noise: Gil Kaufman en Michael Goldberg. April 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "I had to have Frank Zappa on stage to keep the audience from hurting me." Oh, it didn't go over. It was a complete mismatch. We had the same manager [Herb Cohen], and he said, "Aaaargh! Go to Canada with Frank! Frank will treat you right! In fact, go meet Frank in Canada! At a hockey arena!" After my cruel set, after the bleeding had stopped, I came back in the middle of his show and he would play "Ol' 55" and I'd tell a story. I had fun, some nights. But I had to have Frank on stage to keep them from hurting me. They were Frank's people, you know? They didn't want to hear anybody. And they thought that whoever was coming out before Frank, Frank had designed it that way and wanted them to hurt me: pelt me, throw things at me and abuse me. And the chant: "We! Want! Frank!" Or "You suck!" was also a big favourite." (Source: "Tom Waits, In Dreams". Exclaim: Michael Barclay. April/ May 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "I might go on tour, do a few shows, but I'm not really a fan of touring. It's just so inconvenient. You're far away from home. You're wasting a lot of time sitting around waiting. When I was young - oh well, younger - I toured a lot. I lived out of my suitcase, but now that I have a home, kids, a family, it's different. I guess I'm getting old." (Source: "Interview with Tom Waits". NY Rock: Gabriella. May 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "I was always rather intimidated by Frank, 'cos he was like some type of baron. There was so much mythology around him, and he had such confidence. Tremendous leadership and vision. When I toured with him, it was not well thought-out. It was like your dad saying, "Why don't you go to the shooting range with your brother Earl?" And I was like, I don't really want to, I might get hurt. And I did get hurt. I went out and subjected myself to all of this intimidating criticism from an audience that was not my own. Frank was funny. He'd just say: "How were they out there?" He was using me to take the temperature, sticking me up the butt of the cow and pulling me out. Kind of funny in retrospect. I fit in, in the sense that I was eccentric. Went out every night, go my 40 minutes. I still have nightmares about it. Frank shows up in my dreams, asking me how the crowd was. I have dreams where the piano is catching fire and the legs are falling off and the audience is coming at me with torches and dragging me away and beating me with sticks... so it was a good experience." (Source: "Mojo interview with Tom Waits ". Mojo: Barney Hoskyns. April 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): ''We play for two weeks, then take two weeks off,'' he says. ''I only enjoy performing periodically. It takes its toll. You've got to worry about viscosity, thermal breakdown, metal fatigue and diminishing returns. I try not to pound the songs into the dirt, so we rest, cool down and gas up every couple of weeks.''. (Source: "Talking with Tom Waits is like trying to converse with a ghost in a fog". The Toronto Star, Edition 1: Greg Quill. August 19 1999)

Tom Waits (2002): "On my first tours I had to open for Frank Zappa, I'd go out and get beer cans thrown at me, people spitting at me. I always felt like I was a rectal thermometer taking the temperature of the audience for Frank. I told myself, 'This is good for me; it's called paying your dues.' At least I wasn't driving a school bus or selling arms for a living. It was painful, but you move on, get your own band together and suddenly some other guy is your rectal thermometer." (Source: "Everything Goes To Hell". Uncut 5th Anniversary Special. Take 61, June 2002 by Gavin Martin)

Tom Waits (2004): "My manager worked with Zappa, so I went on the road and opened for Frank Zappa for a couple of years - really hard time, very disturbing, with 3,500 people united together chanting 'You suck', full volume, in a hockey arena. But I think I wanted some resistance. So that I would really be genuinely committed to what I wanted to do. I didn't want it to be too easy. It wasn't." (Source: The Mojo Interview. Mojo magazine by Sylvie Simmons. Issue October 2004)

Q (2004) :Q: A lot of performers today are uncomfortable being called entertainers, like it's beneath them. You seem very comfortable coming out of a tradition of entertainers, which goes back to the vaudeville era and before. TW: "Oh, yeah, of course. I'm in show business. I'm like a ventriloquist, or a magician, or a trapeze artist. I'm in the business. How do you take a picture of your driveway and make it look like the road of life? There's an art to it. If everybody could do it, there'd be nothing unique to it. At the same time, you could say everybody can do it. We're so consumer-oriented that people forget they can do it." (Source: "Tom Waits Interview" San Diego Union Tribune (USA). By George Varga. October 3, 2004)

Tom Waits (2004): "I don't go on the road a lot. It makes me grumpy. I go if I have to. It's like anything when you travel. Everything gets banged up, especially the songs. The acoustics are different every night. There's a diminishing return. But I still do it. I usually like it when I get out there. It's just the anticipation of airports and all that stuff. I'm an albino catfish. I like it in my tank."(Source: 'Songs Of Decay From Waits" Toronto Star (Canada). By Vit Wagner. October 5, 2004)

Tom Waits (2004): "Just the physics alone of going into a new hall every night. I'm a grumpy old guy. It doesn't take much to tick me off, I'm like an old hooker, you know." (Source: "Magnet Interview With Tom Waits" Magnet Magazine (UK), by Jonathan Valania. October, 2004)

Tom Waits (2004): "You want to make sure that your demand is much higher than your supply. The public is a wild animal. It's better not to feed them too well. These long tours only make me even more grumpy. I leave home and my family. I'm dealing with tickets and cabs and theatres. And hotels. Four walls, a TV and an ice machine. I used to like it, but now I have really had it after two weeks." (Source: "Worth The Waits", by David Sinclair. The Times (UK), October 22, 2004)

Tom Waits (2006): "I'm always afraid things will go wrong. Plus, when you're taking this whole thing and you're moving it all around the country, it's always awkward. It's like, for me, moving somebody who has been in an accident, you know. "Don't move me, don't move me," that's the first thing the show says to me at the end of rehearsal. "Whatever you do, don't move me, I like it here." Q: Maybe the country singers in Branson, Missouri who have their own theaters have the right idea. TW "I've thought of that Branson deal. I've discussed that with other artists. Just the idea that you don't go on the road, they go on the road and come to you. Makes perfect sense to me. Getting out in front of all those people, after a while, if you're well prepared, it's fun. I'm not always well prepared." (Source: "Tom Waits Call And Response", Stop Smiling magazine No. 28 (USA). October 27, 2006)

Tom Waits (2009): "I played in Japan once; I played in an abandoned temple. The roof had been torn off. They thought it would be a cool place for a concert but it was 30 below. All I remember was my sax player making a fire out of chop sticks and holding his horn over the flame to warm it up before we went on. Everyone was dressed up in moon gear. It was pretty cold out there. It's hard to compete with the natural elements. It's captured better in a theater. I'm probably a little old fashioned and a little backward" (Source: "Irrelevant Topics - Tom Waits & Beck Hansen". Beck official site. July 8/ 17, 2009)

Stage Persona/ Public Image

Tom Waits (1975): "I know what works and what doesn't, strictly by trial and error. People who like what I do have come to expect this narrative; this I-don't-give-a-shit shuffle that I've been doing for a few years. I'm aware that I cut a certain sort of figure on stage. It's the difference between lighting up a cigarette in your living room, and lighting one up on stage - a whole different attitude takes over. Everything is blown up beyond proportion. I want to be able to go up and be a caricature of myself on stage."(Source: "Not so much a poet, more a purveyor of improvisational travelogue". New Musical Express. Todd Everett, November 29, 1975)

Tom Waits (1978): "I'm really getting a little tired of being referred to as 'wino man'. It was okay for a while, but I would like to be a little more three dimensional. I don't think I'm odd. I may be a bit of a misfit but that's about it... It's been a blessing and a curse, It's important to have an image, and a signature and all that, and I'm glad I have one. But from there I want to build and show some other sides of me. I'm going to try and write with that in mind... Onstage in particular - I want to try and explore some new ideas I've got, and maybe keep my 'wino' in my pocket. I don't know. I'm wrestling with that idea right now." (Source: "A Rumor In My Spare Time". Hit Parader magazine, by Deane Zimmerman. Date: early 1978)

Tom Waits (1979): "But I'll tell you something, I get so fucking tired of all this 'come on, give me some entertainment, give me some one-liners' that I get all the time. Everybody wants me to be somebody different for them; what they expect me to be, they want me to live up to it, you know. It's an occupational hazard I suppose, but I ain't no different to anybody else, it's just somebody's image of me that changes." (Source: "Tom Waits: A Sobering Experience", "Sounds" magazine. Dave Lewis. August 4, 1979)

Tom Waits (1985): "You know, you can't really be too concerned with what people really think of you, you know? You just kinda have to pursue your own eh... You know you're on your own adventure of growth and discovery... And eh... Actually people... You know, like Charles Bukowski said you know: "People think that I'm down on 5th and Main, you know, at the Blarney Stone, you know, throwing back shooters and you know smoking a cigar, you know, but I'm on the top floor of the health club, you know, with a towel in my lap, you know, with a blonde, you know, watching Johnny Carson." So, I mean, it's not always good to be where they think you are, you know? As far as the public goes, you know... Cause when people get like an opinion of you and eh... they're like fortune cookies you know? They kinda got you there and that's where they put you. And eh... if you subscribe to it as well, which is easily done, you know. Cause you don't have to figure out who you are, you just ask somebody else, you know. And if you do that... eh..." (Source: NME picture disc interview (Baktabak, UK) by Barney Hoskyns. May 25, 1985)

Tom Waits (1987): "When you have a certain geography that becomes associated with you," he explains, "people dream you into it. They develop their own ideas about who you are and what you do, and you can only control a certain amount of that." (Source: "Tom Waits Makes Good" Los Angeles Times: Robert Sabbag. February 22, 1987)

BH (1988): Where do you think you fit in the scheme of public perceptions? TW: "I don't know. The kind of thing I'm working on now, I would hope in some cases - I don't want this to sound pretentious, but it may earn me a bit of youth particularly in Europe, you know, I have much more of a younger audience, an audience that sort of began with Swordfishtrombones. In America, I have a lot of people who've been listening to me, seeing me, since 1972... They want me to come out unshaven, drink whisky and tell stories about broken-down hotels. You know, Hoagy Carmichael-style." (Source: "A Flea In His Ear". City Limits magazine. Bill Holdship. Los Angeles. May 12-19 , 1988)

Tom Waits (1994): "You either have one [image] you are trying to change, or you don't have one and would give anything to have one. A lot of people have died from other people's ideas of them. These realizations are subtly maturing his creative process. I used to get so mad on the road, pick up my piano bench with my teeth and throw it, bite pieces out of my sport coat and spit it at the audience. I'd be in some really inspiring situations, but I was so pissed off - at the sound system, the band, the audience, I hadn't eaten - that it couldn't reach me. Now I have to make sure I'm not just giving myself a fix with an audience to make myself feel like a big shot. I've done that in the past, we've all done that, trying to tap the world on the shoulder. I've always been afraid the world was going to turn around, and I was going to forget what I had to say, that I was just in the business of getting attention". (Source: "The music of chance". Spin Magazine: June 1994. Mark Richard)

Tom Waits (1999): "There's a notion that artists are kind of impetuous and eccentric and irresponsible and unreliable. We have this kind of codependent relationship with artists and we allow them to be nuts and knocked out and coming home late and all that. I guess for a long time I've subscribed to all that. But I don't think that you have to be in order to ... Most people, I think, trust artists more that seem crazier. You trust the work more." Kaufman: The Kurt Cobain role. TW: "Yeah, right. Live hard, die young and leave a good- looking corpse." Goldberg: But what you're saying is that you don't subscribe to that. TW: "No, I don't think you have to, though. But I think most teenagers and most kids in their 20s believe that to be an artist, you're going to have to really dig all the way to China and come back with chow mein in your hair. [laughs] You're going to have to go to hell in a handbag. But I don't believe it. I think you can be creative and all that, but I think you can still be reliable. Those are big things for me. I've been married almost 19 years now and it's been the best thing I ever did. My wife's great, she's the best." (Source: "Tom Waits '99, Coverstory ATN". Addicted to Noise: Gil Kaufman en Michael Goldberg. April 1999)

BH (1999): To what extent did the persona you created on 'The Heart of Saturday Night' merge with the real Tom Waits? TW: "You mean, am I Frank Sinatra or am I Jimi Hendrix? Or am I Jimi Sinatra? It's a ventriloquist act, everybody one." BH: But some people are more honest about it being an 'act' than others. We aren't supposed to think Neil Young is doing an 'act'. TW: "I don't know if honesty is an issue in show business. People don't care whether you're telling the truth or not, they just want to be told something they don't already know. Make me laugh or make me cry, it doesn't matter. If you're watching a really bad movie and somebody turns to you and says, "You know, this is a true story," does it improve the film in any way? Not really. It's a bad movie. Let me put it like this. The person that people thought they were seeing on-stage- how much of a true story was that? I don't know. How many Germans does it take to screw in a lightbulb? How many sperms are in a single ejaculation? Four hundred million. And it's hard to believe that all of us are the ones that won." (Source: "Mojo interview with Tom Waits ". Mojo: Barney Hoskyns. April 1999)

Tom Waits (2004): "I have a very different life when I'm not on the road or in the studio. My role in the family is very different to my role in that world - ball games, graduations, family reunions. I think perhaps when I was younger I was much more hesitant to leave my world that I drew nourishment from to write, and now I feel like I can go back and forth between the documentary and the romantic comedy you know?" (Source: The Mojo Interview. Mojo magazine by Sylvie Simmons. Issue October 2004)

Tom Waits (2004): "I'd got as far as I could with what I was dong up to that point (Swordfishtrombones). I was kind of living my life upside down (before then); I wanted to be an old man when I was a little kid. And I think my first records were my attempt to sound like an old man. Not that I don't still sound like that, it's just my approach then was as a very old man. I made records live to two-track. I wrote in a little room; I set up my own Brill Building. I wrote almost exclusively at the piano." (Source: "Tom Waits Interview". San Diego Union Tribune (USA). By George Varga. October 3, 2004)

Tom Waits (2004): "People want to drink with you,... Immediately. But I think it's good to have 'em think you're down here when you're really over there. I'm kind of a ventriloquist. You don't want to get confused with the dummy. It's easily done." (Source: "Barroom Bard's Next Round" San Francisco Chronicle (USA). By Joel Selvin. October 3, 2004)

Q (2006): For a while, Waits had that fear himself, the fear that when he finally dried out the songs would dry up, too. He worked through it, though. 'I was trying to prove something to myself, too,' he says, revealingly. 'It was like, "Am I genuinely eccentric? Or am I just wearing a funny hat?" All the big questions come up when you get sober. "What am I made of? What's left when you drain the pool?"' (Source: "Off Beat", The Observer Magazine (UK), October 29, 2006. By Sean O'Hagan)

Q (2006). "So how do you feel about the stuff you did pre-Kathleen, back in the '70s? A lot of your fans still love it. A. I sound like a kid to me. It's just like looking at pictures of yourself from years ago. ... For a lot of people the early stuff is where it was strongest, and they've gotten kind of safe as they go. I felt like I started out rather safe and gotten more adventurous. Q. So losing some fans didn't bother you? A. I don't really follow the direction of my audience. They follow my direction. It works better with me driving." (Source: "Tom Waits Still In The Driver's Seat", The Chicago Tribune (USA). November 21, 2006. By Greg Kot)

Q: Were you consciously cultivating a persona back then? Were you thinking about wanting to be a certain kind of writer and trying to live the way a guy like that would live? Tom Waits (2009): "Well, all writers are looking for that, y’know? Where do you have to go to find the real shit? But it still requires a great deal of craft and the correct sensibility and style and… Yeah. I probably should have changed my name. It would have been a lot simpler for me. Because you’re trying to find out what it is about you that’s genuine, and what you have to invent. Most people don’t care if you’re telling them the truth or if you’re telling them a lie, as long as they’re entertained by it. You find that out really fast. You could tell somebody that you used to work in the circus, or you worked at a slaughterhouse, or you drove an ice cream truck, or you worked at the racetrack. It doesn’t much matter to anybody. Everyone’s selling their story. Made-up or true, it doesn’t matter. It’s a place of commerce as well, so everyone’s trying to make it, y’know?" (Source: "Fifty Years Of L.A. Rock" by Alex Pappadema. men.style.com (GQ magazine blog)/ USA. March 12, 2009)

Music Industry/ Showbusiness

 

DM (1977): ... the industry's confounding marketing and merchandising techniques which, Waits claims, reduce his albums to "products" destined for a rendezvous with the "Miscellaneous" and "W, X, Y - Z" bins in record stores.(Source: "Smelling like a brewery, lookin' like a tramp". Rolling Stone: David McGee. January, 1977)

DM (1977): Cohen [Herb Cohen] was impressed enough to offer the young songwriter - who was living out of his car at the time - a contract. It was an unexpected blow of good fortune, and it forced Waits to reconsider his priorities. TW: "You bust your chops to get hold of something, get chumped again and again to where you become bitter and coldblooded, and suddenly someone's saying, 'Okay, here.' And you can't offer any kind of rebuttal. You just have to take it, along with the responsibility. That was frightening."(Source: "Smelling like a brewery, lookin' like a tramp". Rolling Stone: David McGee. January, 1977)

BM (1977): By now Waits was on the road with a trio, playing the club circuit. Today, he looks back disgustedly on this period. TW: "It was the old case of the one-size-fits-all industry-push on a new songwriter - throw you out there and see what you can do, I didn't know what the hell I was doing."(Source: "Smelling like a brewery, lookin' like a tramp". Rolling Stone: David McGee. January, 1977)

DM (1977): The final injustice came last spring in New Orleans when Roger McGuinn, Joan Baez, Kinky Friedman and some other members of the "Rolling Blunder Revue" as Waits termed Dylan's entourage, took over the stage at Ballinjax Club just before Waits was scheduled to begin his set. TW: "They got up there for an hour just before I was supposed to begin my set, Nobody even asked me; before I knew it, fuckin' Roger McGuinn was up there playing guitar and singing and Joan Boaz and Kinky were singing. By the time I got onstage the audience was stoked. They were all lookin' around the room and shit. I don't need this crap - it was my show. I was drinkin' too much on top of everything else."(Source: "Smelling like a brewery, lookin' like a tramp". Rolling Stone: David McGee. January, 1977)

Tom Waits (1977): "Yeah. I don't take things at face value like I used to. So I dispelled some things in these songs that I had substantiated before. I'm trying to show something to myself, plus get some things off my chest. 'Step Right Up' - all that jargon we hear in the music business is just like what you hear in the restaurant or casket business. So instead of spouting my views in "Scientific American" on the vulnerability of the American public to our product-oriented society, I wrote 'Step Right Up'."(Source: "Smelling like a brewery, lookin' like a tramp". Rolling Stone: David McGee. January, 1977)

Tom Waits (1979): "I'm trying to do an R...B album when I get home [Heartattack And Vine]. Trying to do something a little more - uh - mix-it-up. Trying to find a way to combine it, because I don't get played on the radio ever. Marcel Marceau gets more airplay than I do. I heard myself once in North Dakota, that's all. I was in Michigan somewhere and I was listening to the radio, and I called the disc jockey. I said, listen - I just played a concert, sold out a twenty-five hundred auditorium. And I'm bustin' my chops, would ya mind, you know? He said, Who is this? I said, My name is Tom Waits. He said, No it isn't. Hung up on me." (Source: "Wry ... Danish to go". "MelodyMaker" magazine. Brian Case. Copenhagen, Early 1979)

Tom Waits (1981): "Record companies, the way the whole thing works - they'll pee on your back and tell you it's raining, you know? " (Source: "Tom Waits: The Beat Buff Speed Poet Home Booze Hayseed" New Musical Express (UK). Ian Penman. March 28, 1981)

Tom Waits (1983): "Anybody that's been in this business for more than 10 years has got horror stories about where the money went."(Source: "Skid Romeo". The Face magazine. Robert Elms. Los Angeles, 1983)

Tom Waits (1983): "There's nothing more embarrassing than a person who tries to guess what the great American public would like, makes a compromise for the first time and falls flat on his face. I don't intend to do that."(Source: "Skid Romeo". The Face magazine. Robert Elms. Los Angeles, 1983)

Tom Waits (1987): "I see the way a lot of people talk to the press. To me it's a bit like talking to a cop." (Source: "Tom Waits Makes Good" Los Angeles Times: Robert Sabbag. February 22, 1987)

Tom Waits (1987): "I must admit when I was a kid I made a lot of mistakes in terms of my songs; a lot of people don't own their songs. Not your property. If John Lennon had any idea that someday Michael Jackson would be deciding the future of his material, if he could I think he'd come back from the grave and kick his ass, and kick it real good, in a way that we would enjoy. Now I have songs that belong to two guys named Cohen from the South Bronx. Part of what I like about the last three albums is that they're mine. To that point I didn't own my copyrights. But to consciously sell them to get the down payment on a house, I think that's wrong. They should be embarrassed. And I rest my case." (Source: "Tom Waits Is Flying Upside Down (On Purpose)". Musician, Mark Rowland. October 1987)

Tom Waits (1989): "That's the beauty of show business. It's the only business you can have a career in when you're dead." (Source:"Eavesdropping on Elvis Costello and Tom Waits". Option Magazine. July/ August 1989)

Tom Waits (1993): "I saw Monti Rock III in 1969 on the Sunset Strip at a place called Filthy McNasty's with six people in the audience. He was crawling through a bitter and distracted version of "Tennesee Waltz" when he suddenly stopped the band (the members of which were all wearing matching pink jumpsuits). The room screamed with feedback as he threw his drink against the wall and stabbed an amplifier with a mike stand, telling the six business suits in the audience they were all bloodsuckers. He laughed nervously as he sweated in the spotlight and delivered a purely psychotic confession that resembled a cross between an execution and a striptease. In a style somewhere between a pimp and a preacher, he told stories of being a hairdresser in Puerto Rico and wanting to make it in Hollywood someday. He then lit up and sang "I Who Have Nothing" a cappella. I was there, and I knew that I wanted to get into show business as soon as possible." (Source: "Tom Foolery - Swapping stories with inimitable Tom Waits". Buzz Magazine: May, 1993)

MR (1994): Waits says he has always been fascinated with human oddities, collecting books like Ripley's Believe It or Not, books of strange and incredible facts. TW: "Some people might consider it sick or demeaning, but these people had careers and were very well-respected in show business," says Waits. TW: "Everybody I know in show business has something about them mentally, spiritually, or physically that makes them an oddity." (Source: "The music of chance". Spin Magazine: June 1994. Mark Richard)

Tom Waits (1999): "Lenny Bruce said you'll never go broke underestimating the taste of the American public. People have built fortunes on it! But we had the Monkees. There's always something. Teenybopper music. It comes and it goes. It's like decals. It's like ice cream. "We had ice cream, and it's gone." "We had a balloon, and it popped." So what. You'll get another one. We seemed to be geared toward that--so you drop it into the water, and everyone's drinking it, and you get real silly, and then it wears off, and then you wake up and move on. It seems like that's part of the rhythm and cycle of American merchandising and promotion. You just have to know what's right for you and what's not. Other people are lining up to watch a guy in a leotard and a blond wig blow into a piece of wood. It comes and it goes, right?" (Source: "Holding On: A Conversation with Tom Waits". Newsweek: Karin Schoemer. 23 March, 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "Barnum ... Bailey had Sarah Bernhardt's leg on display for a couple of years. They had it in formaldehyde. There was a certain point where Sarah Bernhardt's leg was making more money than she was 'cause she was doing Shakespeare in bars." (Source:"Tom Waits '99, Coverstory ATN". Addicted to Noise: Gil Kaufman en Michael Goldberg. April 1999)

Q (1999): How important was it meeting Bones Howe - somebody who understood what you wanted to do? TW: "Well, Jerry Yester [producer of Closing Time] was a great producer- the first guy whose house I ever went to and found a pump organ. Bones I met... I don't remember how I met Bones. In those days, nobody would even think of sending you into the studio without a producer. In their mind, they gave you 30 grand, you might disappear to the Philippines and they never see you again. They're not giving you 30 grand, they're giving this guy who plays tennis and wears sweaters and lives in a big house, they're giving him the money and he's paying for everything. Just show up on time and stay out of jail." (Source: "Mojo interview with Tom Waits ". Mojo: Barney Hoskyns. April 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "It was really Kathleen that said, "Look, you can do this. You know, I'd broken off with Herbie [Herb Cohen], and we were managing my career at that point, and there were a lot of decisions to make. I mean, I thought I was a millionaire, and it turned out that I had, like 20 bucks. And what followed was a lot of court battles, and it was a difficult ride for both of us, particularly being newly weds. At the same time, it was exciting, because I had never been in a studio without a producer. I came from that whole school where an artist needs a producer. You know, they know more than I do, I don't anything about the board. I was really old-fashioned that way." (Source: "Mojo interview with Tom Waits ". Mojo: Barney Hoskyns. April 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "It's gotta be hard for someone starting out now [in the music business]... All the business you have to go through, making the videos, all this competition. I thought it was bad when I started out." (Source: "The resurrection of Tom Waits ". Rolling Stone; David Fricke. June 24 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "There's something to be said for longevity. For some people, being in pop music is like running for office. They court the press in a very conscentious fashion. They kiss babies. No matter how black their vision is, their approach is the same. I'm more in charge of my own destiny." (Source:"The resurrection of Tom Waits ". Rolling Stone; David Fricke. June 24, 1999)

JV (1999): By the early '90s, Waits had moved his family to Northern California and released Bone Machine, a dark blast of rustic surrealism, apocalyptic blues braying and killing-field hollers that won him a Grammy for Best Alternative Music Performance in 1992. ("He flipped out when he got the Grammy," says [Jim] Jarmusch. "He hated that. 'Alternative to what?! What the hell does that mean?!'"). (Source: "The Man Who Howled Wolf ". Magnet: Jonathan Valania. June/ July 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "It's [the Eyeball Kid] a metaphor for people that get into show business, because they usually have some kind of family disturbance or are damaged in some way or another. I had a manager when I was a kid, I threw in with a guy named Herbie Cohen, who worked with Zappa. I wanted a big bruiser, the tough guy in the neighborhood, and I got it. JV: A knee-breaker? TW: You said that, not me. I got to be careful what I say about Herbie. I'll wind up in... court." (Source: "The Man Who Howled Wolf ". Magnet: Jonathan Valania. June/ July 1999)

Q (1999): What do you think of all the consolidation that has been going on with the major labels, cutting staff and artists? TW: "I think you should fight for your independence and freedom at all costs. I mean, it's a plantation system. All a record company is is a bank, and they loan you a little money to make a record and then they own you for the rest of your life. You don't even own your own work. Most people only have a small piece of their publishing. Most people are so happy to be recording, which I was - you like the way your name looks on the contract, so you start signing. I got myself tied up in a lot of knots when I was a kid." (Source: "The Man Who Howled Wolf ". Magnet: Jonathan Valania. June/ July 1999)

Q (1999): Did you know that musicians are distributing their music through the Internet? TW: "You've entered an area where I have no coordinates. The computer is at the bottom of the pool in my back yard, along with my television set." (Source: "Reapers and weepers". Metromix Chicago: Greg Kot. August 1999)

Tom Waits (2002): "The big (record) companies are more like countries than companies. Or they are like jellyfish. They have no anatomy. But they sting. Record companies are no longer interested in maintaining or nurturing or supporting the growth of an artist. They want you as a cash cow on the day you get there. And then, when you stop making milk they want you on the barbecue right away." (Source: "Tom Waits: A Poet of Outcasts Who's Come Inside." New York Times (USA) by Jon Pareles. May 5, 2002)

Tom Waits (2002): "It (music) is expensive noise. It's nothing but wild sounds that have been civilized into time signatures and tunes. And definitely the most expensive of all noises." (Source: "This Business Called Show". Austin Chronicle (USA) May 10, 2002 by Margaret Moser)

Tom Waits (2002): "Everybody in this business called show has something peculiar about them that they've been made fun of for or singled out in an unpleasant way or made to feel like they were not good enough to fit in. And at some point, you realize, "Well, dammit, fine! Maybe I can make some dough off of it. I have one eye and a bad leg and a funny way of dancing or talking or standing and my nose whistles and my hair came in wrong. Show business. That's for me. I'll take it." (Source: "This Business Called Show". Austin Chronicle (USA) May 10, 2002 by Margaret Moser)

Tom Waits (2002): "They (musicians having their music used in advertising) are all high on crack. Let's just say it's a sore subject with me. I went to court over it, you know... You know, you see a bathroom-tissue commercial, and you start hearing "Let The Good Times Roll," and the paper thing's rolling down the stairs. Why would anybody want to mortify and humiliate themselves? Well, it's just business, you know? The memory that you have and the association you have with that song can be co-opted. And a lot of people are really in it for the money. Period. A lot of people don't have any control over it. I don't own the copyrights to my early tunes. So it is unfortunate, but there are a lot of people that consciously want their songs exploited in that way, which I think is demeaning. I hate it when I hear songs that I already have a connection with, used in a way that's humiliating. I mean, in the old days, if somebody was doing a commercial, you used to say, "Oh, gee, too bad, he probably needs the money." But now, it's like hocking cigarettes and underwear with rock 'n' roll. I guess that's our big export. It's like how a good butcher uses every part of the cow. I don't like hearing those Beatles songs in the commercials. It almost renders them useless. Maybe not for everyone else, but when I hear it I just think, "Oh, God, another one bites the dust." (Source: "The Onion A.V. Club online magazine (USA), by Keith Phipps. Volume 38, issue 20. May 29, 2002)

Tom Waits (2002): "If I did disco or parlour songs or anything, it wouldn't matter. I don't feel chained to anybody's affectations of what they think I should do. I'm in a unique position. I pretty much do what I want. I'm not like the Backstreet Boys or anything. I don't have to live up to selling 26 million records, so that if I sell 17 million I'm a failure... There are a lot of people who are in it for the money. There are record companies that are like behemoth cartels. They're like countries themselves. But that could be said of anything." (Source: "The Hobo Comes Home". The Weekend Australian (Australia). June 1, 2002. By Iain Shedden)

Tom Waits (2002): "I think music, or going into show business in any form, is like running off to join the circus. It seems like most people who have things about them that are peculiar or unusual or imbalanced, that make them unique or special, are drawn to entertainment. At one point or another, you're going to say: Maybe I could do something with this."(Source: "Make Mine A Double", Black + White magazine (USA). Issue 61. June/ July 2002. By Clare Barker)

Tom Waits (2004): "When you hit 50, people want to lure you to town and give you some trophy, and then shoot you and mount you on the wall next to a moose. I don't really like that kind of stuff." (Source: "Tom Waits Interview San Diego Union Tribune (USA). By George Varga. October 3, 2004)

Tom Waits (2004): "My deal is, usually they (interviewers) know too much about you, or they don't know nothing about you. The nothin' is usually fine with me... I like to be invisible. I like to work on my songs on my album, and that's how I use a microphone. But sometimes [talking to people] is good for business." (Source: "Nighthawk In The Light Of Day" Ottawa Xpress (Canada), by Melora Koepke. October 7, 2004)

Tom Waits (2006): "I started recording when I was pretty young and pretty naive," Waits remembers. "And you know, I wasn't really in the world yet. I mean, the way you do anything is usually the way you do everything, so I was fairly naive about the whole music business and all that, and very naive as a composer." (Source: "Tom Waits: Weird Science". Harp magazine (USA). December 1, 2006. Telephone interview by Mark Kemp)

Les Claypool (2007): "Tom Waits is a friend of mine, and we were talking one day and ... he was like, 'You know, people like their dentists to be dentists. They don't want their dentists to be dentists and a carpenter and a gardener. People like their specialists to be specialists." (Source: "Claypool's versatile, but he still plays bass", Brad Burke. Peoria Journal Star. May 24, 2007)

Changing Labels

DZ (1978): Waits, who records on Elektra/ Asylum, acknowledges that it may have been difficult in the past for his record company to "merchandise" him but feels that they've done the best they can. "I'm not easy to merchandise," he says, "I'm on the road 8 months a year. That's what I end up doing and that's more of a sales pitch than anything anyone else can do. The record company doesn't attempt to make me 'palatable', they don't look over my shoulders. I do what I can... I give them albums. (Source: "A Rumor In My Spare Time". Hit Parader magazine, by Deane Zimmerman. Date: early 1978)

Tom Waits (1979): "I suppose my style is reflected in my sales figures, but fortunately my record company doesn't stand over my shoulder and tell me what to do. If I wanted that I would've been working in a car wash or something."(Source: "Tom Waits: A Sobering Experience", "Sounds" magazine. Dave Lewis. August 4, 1979)

GM (1985): His relationship with WEA turned sour when he tried to release ' Swordfishtrombones' as the follow up to 'Heartattack and Vine'. TW: "They heard it but they didn't recognize it, so amidst all the broken glass and barbed wire I crawled out between the legs of the presidents. It was the big shakedown at Gimble's, business I guess."(Source: "Hard rain". New Musical Express: Gavin Martin. October 19, 1985)

Tom Waits (1985): "Maybe that's why I write so many songs now, the songs I write now belong to me, not someone in the Bronx. I did not stay abreast of what was happening to me. I'm happier to be on a small label, Blackwell [Island] is artistic, a philanthropist. You can sit and talk with him and you don't feel you're at Texaco or Heineken or Budweiser. There's something operating here that has a brain, curiosity and imagination."(Source: "Hard rain". New Musical Express: Gavin Martin. October 19 1985)

CD (1992): Did that new need that you were having, did that warrent the label change? TW: Actually, no the album [Swordfishtrombones] was made for EA [Elektra/Asylum], and Joe Smith heard it; he didn't know what to do with it. He looked at me like I was nuts. At first he said, "Produce your own record, go ahead, make your own record, you should be producing your own record." So I said, "Okay, good." I made about three or four things and brought 'em in and he heard 'em and he said, "Well, I dunno, eh..." Then [I] made a whole record, and played it for him, and he said, "I dunno if we can put this thing out or not." So Chris Blackwell heard it, and I left EA through a loophole in my contract and I snuck out. Chris Blackwell loved the album, said "We'll put it out." So that's what happened. He was very in tune with it. Blackwell has great ears you know. Because he liked what I did, so I guess that means he has great ears, you know." (Source:"Morning becomes Eclectic ". KCRW radio Interview: Chris Douridas. Rebroadcast January 2 1998. Original broadcast 1992?)

Tom Waits (1999): "They (Epitaph) are pro-artist, they're forward - thinking, and I like their taste in music, barbecue, and cars. It's a friendly place, independent label. As Wayne Kramer said, 'Most of the music on the label is 160-beats per minute.' In that sense, we are probably the oldest guys over there. It's surprising how many people at the label are musicians, and are still playing gigs. Frankly, it's more like a partnership. As a business, it's a muscle car all the way." (Source: "A Q...A about Mule Variations". MSO: Rip Rense. January (?), 1999)

KS (1999): Were you done with Island when you went to Epitaph? TW: "I was, yeah. I left my contract, my last record for them was The Black Rider. The big fish ate the little fish, which happens invariably. But Epitaph, they're forward-thinking people. They're definitely not old school-old school being "Ten for me and one for you, ten for me and one for you." They kind of describe themselves as more like a service organization. "If you don't want to tour, fine, we can work with that." They don't give you a list of things they expect from you. In fact, they have a group on the label that was hell-bent on getting its record off the radio, for God's sake. I mean, most people spend their life trying to get on the radio. This group was getting airplay, and they were pissed! And they sued! And the record company was 100% behind them. "We'll get you off the radio!" They brought in the big guns and they went down to the station and said, "Listen, we hear you're playing this group and we want them off of there!" So I thought that was pretty good. I thought that showed a kind of madness and flexibility." (Source: "Holding On: A Conversation with Tom Waits". Newsweek: Karin Schoemer. 23 March 1999)

RL (1999): "I think they're all great," he'll say later of Epitaph's young, enthusiastic and musically inclined staff. TW: "I came from the whole period where record guys, it's like meeting guys from DuPont -- they start looking at you like they want to lift up a part of you and look underneath, you feel like they're smelling meat." (Source: "Gone North, Tom Waits, upcountry". L.A. Weekly: Robert Lloyd. April 23-29 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "Well, they [Epitaph] put together a very impressive proposal. I was between labels. They're young and hungry and do an excellent job. We just did one record with them. Probably do more. You know, it's owned and operated by musicians. It's just a real good place for us right now. If I wanted to do a record of cha-chas, and play only in Buenos Aires in a place that held three people, they'd say, "Cool, we like it. I can get behind that." They like unusual challenges. A lot of the larger labels, you find yourself falling between the cracks sometimes, if what you're doing doesn't have a wide, broad appeal. They're kind of eccentric like me. That's what I like about it." (Source: "Mule Conversations". Austin Chronicle: Jody Denberg. April 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "With a label, it's your own relationship to begin with. People check out who else is on a label, you can't avoid that. I'm on a label, someone else might come along and say, 'Oh, Tom Waits, he's on there [Epitaph], maybe we'll check that out.' It's normal. But it's a good place. They're musicians. Brett Gurewitz engineers and still plays music. Andy Kaulkin [president of Epitaph Records] is a huge guy with massive hands who plays blues piano. He plays in blues bands. So I guess you trust that aspect of it. It's not like dealing with people from DuPont. It's a little more personable, and I like that." (Source: "Tom Waits '99, Coverstory ATN". Addicted to Noise: Gil Kaufman en Michael Goldberg. April 1999)

Q (1999): You're on a new label now [Epitaph]. Were there issues before with what you were allowed to put out and what you wanted to put out? Do you have more freedom now? TW: "My contract ran out with Island, and I was in between trains, and they needed a parental figure over there at Epitaph. It's a good place to be for me. I could do anything over there, and they would celebrate it and get behind it. Those kind of situations are rare. I could do can-can's and torch songs and Indian ragas and Cuban stuff and midget wrestling, and they'd say, "Great!" I'd say, "And I only want to play one gig, in Buenos Aires in a place that holds four people." They'd say, "We love it! When do you want to start?". Kathleen and I felt more at home there. Plus, they're musicians. They're forward-thinking; they're not part of the plantation system. They respect artists, and they pay them. I really think they are the way things should be." (Source: "Tom Waits, In Dreams". Exclaim: Michael Barclay. April/ May 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "Punk rock is more about the posture and the politics and the attitude, and being as iconoclastic as you possibly can. There's a band on the label [Epitaph], NOFX, who were getting played on the radio, and they were livid. They said, "We'll get our lawyers down here. Get that record off the radio!" And they did, they got it off the air." Q: Would you do the same? TW: "I don't know, it's not my thing. I kinda like hearing myself on the radio. It's happened once or twice, and I liked it. I've been trying for 25 years to get on the radio in some form or another, so I'm a bit of a different challenge. But I salute it. I salute diversity and standing up for what you believe in, living your life the way you want to live it. It's a good place for me to be. I don't know what it means, except that [Epitaph is] trying to branch out a little bit. If you're only selling napkins and tableware, you're going to have to diversify at a certain point." (Source: "Tom Waits, In Dreams". Exclaim: Michael Barclay. April/ May 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "What I really like about it is that a lot of the people there (Epitaph) are musicians. They're working for the label, but they're still playing gigs. It's not run like a business, it's more run like friends and partners who are working together. They're one of the few labels who give artists time to grow." (Source: "Interview with Tom Waits". NY Rock: Gabriella. May 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "The fact is, if I told them (Epitaph) I wanted to do Cuban gospel disco cartoon music, they'd say, `When are you going into the studio?" As proof of the company's unflagging support of its artists, Waits cites the case of the die-hard punk band NOFX, which demanded that one of its songs be removed from commercial radio stations. TW: "They got their song taken off the air,'' he marvels. "I like that. Most people are trying to get on the radio.'' (Source: "Waits plays out `Variations' on a twisted persona". San Francisco Chronicle: James Sullivan. April 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "She [Kathleen] really co-produced that record [Swordfishtrombones] with me, though she didn't get credit. She was the spark and the feed. The seminal idea for that record really came from Kathleen. So it was scary and exciting, but it was like, "Well, OK, let's find an engineer." And I found Biff Dawes, and he was into it. And I knew a lot of musicians. So I went in and did four songs, and I went and played them to Joe Smith at Elektra-Asylum. And he didn't know what to make of it, and at that point I was kind of dropped from the label. Then [Chris] Blackwell [Island] heard the record and picked it up. That was kind of a bumpy ride there for awhile." (Source:"Mojo interview with Tom Waits ". Mojo: Barney Hoskyns. April 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "They [Epitaph] have a group on the label that was hellbent on getting its record - off - the radio, for God's sake," he says. "The record company was behind them 100 percent.". (Source: "More Dylan than Dylan". Newsweek: Karen Schoemer. May 10 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): [on Epitaph]"They're easier to be around than folks from Dupont. Not to generalize about large record companies, but if you're not going platinum, you're not going anywhere." (Source: "The resurrection of Tom Waits ". Rolling Stone; David Fricke. June 24 1999)

Q (1999): Speaking of the business end of things, why did you leave Island Records? TW: "It started changing a lot. (Former owner Chris) Blackwell's gone. For me, it's about relationships. And when Blackwell pulled out and started his own company, I lost interest." (Source: "The Man Who Howled Wolf ". Magnet: Jonathan Valania. June/ July 1999)

Tom Waits (2004): "It was my first record for them (Epitaph) and I had no idea what was going to happen. I was excited but I wasn't really sure where I fit in - an almost exclusively punk label and here I am, like 50, am I some old fuddy-duddy trying out a new haircut? But they convinced me that I belonged there and that what I was doing was perfectly valid, and that gave me confidence. Because what I do is kind of abstract - I work on things that are in some way invisible." (Source: The Mojo Interview: Tom Waits Speaks. Mojo Magazine (USA/ UK), by Sylvie Simmons. September, 2004)

Q (2006). You started collaborating with her [Kathleen] on "Swordfishtrombones" [1983], an album that got you dropped from your first label. It must have been like, "Wait a second, what did I get myself into here?" A. They [the label executives] said, "You're going to lose all of your old fans and you're not going to get any new ones either." Q. When you hear something like that from your "boss" it's got to be discouraging. A. Yeah, but it's always important to bet on yourself. Someone will dare you: "You'll break your neck if you try to jump that." Sometimes that's all you need to strike out on your own. They didn't know that they did you good." (Source: "Tom Waits Still In The Driver's Seat", The Chicago Tribune (USA). November 21, 2006. By Greg Kot)

Tom Waits (2006): "In those days [Swordfishtrombones], people didn't give money to an artist and say go produce your own record," he says. "They gave it to a producer. If they gave it to an artist, it'd be like throwing the money away. They thought you'd spend it all on drugs or women, or you'd go to Mexico or who knows what. So they wanted you to get in there with a guy with a better haircut. Not necessarily better ideas, but a better haircut and cleaner clothes...He [Joe Smith of Asylum] hated it.. I mean, this is a guy who looked like a sports announcer, so I didn't really have much of a rapport with him. I felt like I was talking to an insurance agent. So he says to me, 'You're going to lose all of your old fans and you won't get any new ones.' I think he even called me 'kid.' He fancied himself as something of a mob boss but he also had a little bit of a fraternity feel to him. It was discouraging, but we were able to get off the label on a loophole. He [Chris Blackwell of Island], loved the record... He came out to L.A., we had coffee and he said, 'Yeah, I'll put it out.' And that was it. So we moved to New York and were there for three or four years." (Source: "Tom Waits: Weird Science". Harp magazine (USA). December 1, 2006. Telephone interview by Mark Kemp)

Commerce

Tom Waits (1976): "I think you'll probably never go broke underestimating the collective taste and attention spon of the American public. When it comes down to the hit parade, things are so tightassed and exclusive that the stuff people have to base their own musical frame of reference on is limited, all except for the people that are curious enough to go out and do their own research. If all you do is listen to the hit parade, man..."(Source: "Bitin' the green shiboda with Tom Waits". "Down Beat" magazine. Marv Hohman. Chicago. June 17, 1976)

MH (1976): What would have happened to your head if Nighthawks would have started selling fantastically, like Springsteen's Born To Run? Would your outlook have been altered? TW: "I don't know, man. I can't make no predictions on anything like that, no. I think I'm my own handicap. So I don't know. I never really expected that to happen". (Source: "Bitin' the green shiboda with Tom Waits". "Down Beat" magazine. Marv Hohman. Chicago. June 17, 1976)

Tom Waits (1976): "I don't take things at face value like I used to. So I dispelled some things in these songs that I had substantiated before. I'm trying to show something to myself, plus get some things off my chest. 'Step Right Up' - all that jargon we hear in the music business is just like what you hear in the restaurant or casket business. So instead of spouting my views in "Scientific American" on the vulnerability of the American public to our product-oriented society, I wrote 'Step Right Up'."(Source: "Smelling like a brewery, lookin' like a tramp". Rolling Stone: David McGee. 1976)

Tom Waits (1979): "It's hard to avoid disco so I have heard some of it, but there's nothing about the music that I enjoy. I don't know why it's caught on so big, but for us to even discuss it is helping to sustain and perpetuate it. All these artists that are rushing out, cutting disco records are just after those little wrinkled pieces of paper with pictures of dead Presidents on them. Disco music is like a bad cold that won't go away - the best thing to do is ignore it." (Source: "Rock, Disco: Strange Bedfellows", by Kristine McKenna. Los Angeles Times. April 22, 1979)

Tom Waits (1979): "I'm trying to do an R...B album when I get home [Heartattack And Vine]. Trying to do something a little more - uh - mix-it-up. Trying to find a way to combine it, because I don't get played on the radio ever. Marcel Marceau gets more airplay than I do. I heard myself once in North Dakota, that's all. I was in Michigan somewhere and I was listening to the radio, and I called the disc jockey. I said, listen - I just played a concert, sold out a twenty-five hundred auditorium. And I'm bustin' my chops, would ya mind, you know? He said, Who is this? I said, My name is Tom Waits. He said, No it isn't. Hung up on me."(Source: "Wry ... Danish to go". Melody Maker magazine. Brian Case. Copenhagen, Early 1979)

Tom Waits (1983): "There's nothing more embarrassing than a person who tries to guess what the great American public would like, makes a compromise for the first time and falls flat on his face. I don't intend to do that."(Source: "Skid Romeo". The Face magazine. Robert Elms. Los Angeles, 1983)

Tom Waits (1983): "I would rather be a failure on my own terms than a success on someone else's. That's a difficult statement to live up to, but then I've always believed that the way you affect your audience is more important than how many of them there are."(Source: "Skid Romeo". The Face magazine. Robert Elms. Los Angeles, 1983)

CR (1985): As a family man, are you thinking more in terms of career these days? TW: "You can't, without driving yourself crazy. You can't perceive it correctly. You just have to stay interested, keep a sense of humour, stay civilised and curious, an' y'know, enjoy life's rich pageant. Some are more afraid of success than of failure. It's hard to get on the radio, an' without that you can't affect things an' 'catch the young'. It's all business y'know? I don't know - maybe I have been a cult for too long, but you do what you do. So many come along as a big sensation an' then tomorrow nobody gives a shit about them - keep it movin' pal! I stay a little... outside the glass. I think I'd like to take a crack at a wider audience, but with that comes responsibility. If you're too big you get selfconscious, if you're too obscure you feel nervous. So it's hard. The main thing is songs..."(Source: "Subterranean Low-Life Blues". "Sounds" magazine. Chris Roberts. New York, October 19, 1985)

GB (1985). Have you ever been asked to do a commercial? TW. "A couple. They wanted me for American Airlines. But we couldn't get the money up. A recreational vehicle company wanted me to do an ad for them. I've had offers for beer commercials. GB. I could have sworn I saw Robert Gordon in a Budweiser commercial. TW. Yeah, that was him. GB. Dr. John does that toilet paper commercial. TW. Yeah, "Roll all night long." He also does a cookie commercial. GB. Springsteen turned down $12 million to appear in a Chrysler commercial for three seconds. TW. Yeah, they came to me first. The same offer, $12 million, but they wanted me to be in it for one second. I said, "Forget it! Go ask Bruce." GB. Maybe they could get John Cougar. Unless his name identifies him too much with General Motors. TW. Honda offered me $150,000 to do that commercial. That's twice what Lou got. They said I could write my own copy. Chevrolet! They won't leave me alone. Then a feminine hygiene commercial wanted me. GB. Summer's Eve Disposable Douche makes you feel fresh as a country lane? TW. Those were my lines! I just couldn't say them. I tried it so many different ways, I just couldn't make it. GB. Like Rocky. TW. It's hard, because we're so product-oriented that our only real spiritual leadership comes from that angle, chasing the dollar. It's like it's OK if you get enough money for it. Selling out is alright as long as you get enough. GB. I don't hold the toilet paper commercial against Dr. John, though. There's a guy who deserves to make some money. TW. But I don't know if he got enough! " (Source: "Tom Waits For No Man". Spin Magazine: Glenn O'Brien. November 1985)

Tom Waits (1987): "...And none of them (songs) will be used for beer commercials. It's amazing, when I look at these artists. I find it unbelievable that they finally broke into the fascinating and lucrative world of advertising after years on the road, making albums and living in crummy apartments; finally advertising opened up and gave them a chance for what they really wanted to do, which was salute and support a major American product, and have that name blinking over their head as they sing. I think it's wonderful what advertising has done, giving them these opportunities to be spokesmen for Chevrolet, Pepsi, etc."(Source: "Tom Waits Is Flying Upside Down (On Purpose)". Musician, Mark Rowland. October 1987)

MR (1987): Do you ever get approached by major advertisers? TW: "I get it all the time, and they offer people a whole lot of money. Unfortunately I don't want to get on the bandwagon. You know, when a guy is singing to me about toilet paper - you may need the money but, I mean, rob a 7-11! Do something with dignity and save us all the trouble of peeing on your grave. I don't want to rail at length here, but it's like a fistula for me. If you subscribe to your personal mythology, to the point where you do your own work, and then somebody puts decals over it, it no longer carries the same weight. I have been offered money and all that, and then there's the people that imitate me too. I really am against people who allow their music to be nothing more than a jingle for jeans or Bud. But I say, "Good, okay, now I know who you are." 'Cause it's always money. There have been tours endorsed, encouraged and financed by Miller, and I say, "Why don't you just get an office at Miller? Start really workin' for the guy." I just hate it. MR: It's especially offensive if, as you say, you see music as something organic. TW: The advertisers are banking on your credibility, but the problem is it's no longer yours. Videos did a lot of that because they created pictures and that style was immediately adopted, or aborted, by advertising. They didn't even wait for it to grow up. And it's funny, but they're banking on the fact that people won't really notice. So they should be exposed. They should be fined! [bangs his fist on the table] I hate all of the people that do it! All of you guys! You're sissies! " (Source: "Tom Waits Is Flying Upside Down (On Purpose)". Musician, Mark Rowland. October 1987)

Tom Waits (1987): "If you talk too much about people it kind of demystifies them, you know. And it's like watching things that are moving; you may like them today and not tomorrow. People who have careers are moving targets. Who would have known some guy you liked would go and do commercials for Honda? And then you're embarrassed to dig him, 'cause they tampered with their mythology. The guy was doing a beautiful tailspin, he went into a double flip with a camel-hair thing and then - right into the crapper."(Source: "Tom Waits Is Flying Upside Down (On Purpose)". Musician, Mark Rowland. October 1987)

Tom Waits (1987): "If I just wanted to make money, there are a lot of other ways to do it," says Waits, who finds the idea of corporate sponsorship and the current craze for using rock songs to sell products abhorrent. "People, have asked me about using my songs in commercials, but I'm not interested. That's not why I'm in music. "What kind of commercial offers have I had?" Waits pauses briefly, apparently pondering whether to play it straight or have some fun with the question. Given his wildly improvisational sense of humor, the outcome of the decision is never really in doubt-a fact that becomes increasingly clear as Waits plunges on with comedic abandon. "Well, they wanted me to be the spokesman for American Airlines," he says. "That's right, they wanted to show me in the cockpit as a reliable pilot in the friendly skies. There would be this real closeup of my face - I'm kind of smiling, with bad teeth-as we take off over the skyline and the plane turns upside down. "Yeah, a lot of different kinds of products want me," adds Waits, warming to his subject. "Women's hair removal stuff. And moisturizers - the whole line of Lancome products. That's right, they wanted me to be the Lancome man. And then there are all the offers to sell cigarettes and underwear. So many offers are coming in, they're clogging up our telephone lines and we can't make calls out."(Source: "A Multifacted Singer Looks For New Directions". Chicago Tribune. Lynn Van Matre. October 18, 1987)

LM (1987): He's vague about record sales - he knows that he has fans in Europe, Hong Kong and behind the Iron Curtain as well as in the U.S. - but acknowledges that none of his albums has sold the 500,000 copies necessary to earn a gold album, pop music's standard measure of commercial success. "It doesn't bother me," says Waits. "I do fine. All of that stuff is just hubcaps and headlights, anyway, and I don't really go in for trophies and all that. I don't believe in it. "A lot of people approach music like crop-dusting. Or ballistics. They create things that are a certain size, that fit in a chamber-and when those people are gone, somebody else will come along and create things that are exactly the same size. I know that (we have) a mercantile heritage," adds Waits with a laugh, "but I'm nervous about that kind of a system."(Source: "A Multifacted Singer Looks For New Directions". Chicago Tribune. Lynn Van Matre. October 18, 1987)

Tom Waits (1987): "I don't think my music is that social. It sure ain't part of the advertisin' industry either. Some guys in this town write songs to fit a bottle of beer or a tennis shoe. Jingles. Singin' adverts. I ain't part of that too much."(Source: "I Just Tell Stories For Money". New Musical Express magazine. Sean O'Hagan. Los Angeles. November 14, 1987)

Q (1988): To create a marketable pop song, do you have to sell out? TW: "Popular music is like a big party, and it's a thrill sneaking in rather than being invited. Every once in a while, a guy with his shirt on inside out, wearing lipstick and a pillbox hat, gets a chance to speak. I've always been afraid I was going to tap the world on the shoulder for 20 years and when it finally turned around, I was going to forget what I had to say. I was always afraid I was going to do something in the studio and hate it, put it out, and it was going to become a hit. So I'm neurotic about it."(Source: "Tom Waits 20 questions". Playboy magazine: Steve Oney. -- March 1988)

BH (1988): Where do you think you fit in the scheme of public perceptions? TW: "I don't know... The kind of thing I'm working on now, I would hope in some cases - I don't want this to sound pretentious, but it may earn me a bit of youth particularly in Europe, you know, I have much more of a younger audience, an audience that sort of began with Swordfishtrombones. In America, I have a lot of people who've been listening to me, seeing me, since 1972... They want me to come out unshaven, drink whisky and tell stories about broken-down hotels. You know, Hoagy Carmichael-style. What I'm trying to do now incorporates certain ethnic influences, but it has a harder edge than that... I'm not a commercial artist. I don't get a tremendous amount of airplay. But it seems I reach a certain amount of people by talking to magazines. You'd be more apt to see me in a magazine that you would hear me on the radio... It's kind of strange. It's kind of like reading about a bird in an electronics magazine. You hope that you'll be on radio, but radio is so changed now. It's like mainstream network stuff, the demographics of it. Except for a few struggling stations with a limited range and format. I mean, you can glue decals all over your head that say "Coca-Cola" and "Pepsi" and advertise cigarettes and underwear. That's one way to get across. You know, like race drivers that have every product known to man tattooed across the side of their car. And a lot of groups choose to align themselves with big companies to underwrite their tours. I hate that shit."(Source: "A Flea In His Ear". City Limits magazine. Bill Holdship. Los Angeles. May 12-19, 1988)

Tom Waits (1988): "Sometimes you realize there's a certain amount of resignation in song composing, but then you hear different people do different things with it. And then you deal with the ballistics of radio, where you're constantly reminded that the bullet must fit the chamber. They're striving for an American Rifle Association that creates this whole blue-metal network of sameness. Like a parts store. I don't strive to fit into that, but it's always there. In order to continue to develop and grow and change and even to have an effect on someone else, people have to be aware of you. I mean the Stones had a great influence on popular music. They always stayed in the garage, but they still came out of the radio. It was amazing cause their albums are very primitive. Keith Richards says what he was trying to do was be the hair in the gate." (Source: "Tom Waits". Graffiti Magazine: Tim Powis. December 1, 1988)

Tom Waits (1988): "He [Michael Jackson] is a softdrink company. He's like a cartel. It goes beyond music. He's like a country. They make decisions like countries, based on economics."(Source: " Tom Waits". Graffiti Magazine: Tim Powis. December 1, 1988)

Tom Waits (1992): "It's hard sometimes if you're faced with having to deal with the traditional world of commerce. We seem to salute anything that you can make 10 million of and sell to everybody; the fact that everybody's got one is a triumph, not the fact that you made 10 great ones. I don't use that as a gauge. But there are parts of America where music is a living thing. In New Orleans, music is just like this Tabasco here. They just go get some and put it on their food. The only thing really vital in this country, that is constantly evolving and working very hard, the only real American music is America's black music. It's infused with something so important. My daughter listens to the rap station and it's a music that is like graffiti or jail poems, it's like a brick through the window. It's powerful and essential."(Source: "Composer, musician, performer, actor - Tom Waits is a Renaissance man whose musique noir captures the sound of the Dark Age". Pulse! Derk Richardson. September 1992)

Tom Waits (1992): "Well, popular music -- whatever popular music is -- there aren't very many real serious qualifications to enter that field. A lot of broken people find their way into it because nobody belongs near 'em. Time will decide what still has real value after we're gone--we're dealing with the anatomy of business and distribution. Once you get beyond that, you can maybe really hear a record and not worry about whether someone's going to think you're in or out for liking it. People today kill for tennis shoes and jackets. It's a jungle. Listening to the wrong music can get you blown in half." (Source: "Tom Waits at work in the fields of song ". Reflex nr. 28: Peter Orr. October 6 1992)

Tom Waits (1992): "They imitated my voice (Frito Lay). The guy who did the voice was like a fan of mine who does an impersonation of me and lives in Texas; plays in a band." Waits sued, eventually winning a judgment in his favour of $2.5 million dollars, but of course it's still in appeal. The impersonator was Tom's star witness. TW: "He felt so bad that he did this. He knew when he did it he was doing a bad thing. But he vindicated himself by helping us win the case. "I haven't seen a dime. These things go on forever and forever. Never get involved in litigation. Your hair will fall out, your bones will turn to sand. And it will still be going on. "It was like throwing a rock through a window-but you wait for five years to hear the sound. Litigation is like picking up a glass of water with a prosthetic hand. It's very frustrating, and you'll never get it to your lips. But when you have to, you have to. If somebody burned your house down, you'd have to do something about it." (Source: "The Lie In Waits". VOX (USA), by Peter Silverton. Paris, October, 1992. Article reprinted as "A Conversation With Tom Waits", The Observer, by Pete Silverton. November 23, 1992)

Q (1999): Are you really, as the opening track declares, "Big in Japan?" How do you know this? Ever been there? TW: "I see myself in the harbor, ripping up the electrical towers, picking up cars, going in like Godzilla and levelling Tokyo. There are people that are big in Japan, and are big nowhere else. It's like going to Mars. It's also kind of a junkyard for entertainment. You can go over there and find people you haven't heard of in 20 years, that have moved over there, and they're like gods. And then there are all those people that don't do any commercials, they have this classy image. And over there, they're hawking cigarettes, underwear, sushi, whiskey, sunglasses, used cars, beach blankets."(Source: "A Q...A about Mule Variations". MSO: Rip Rense. January (?) 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "I think your music is a gift, and I don't do commercials... There are people that do that, but I'm not one of them and I don't want people to think I am one of them, hawking cigarettes or potato chips".(Source: "Tom Waits, Hobo Sapiens". Telegraph Magazine: Mick Brown. April 11, 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "Epitaph, they're forward-thinking people. They're definitely not old school-old school being "Ten for me and one for you, ten for me and one for you." They kind of describe themselves as more like a service organization. "If you don't want to tour, fine, we can work with that." They don't give you a list of things they expect from you. In fact, they have a group on the label that was hell-bent on getting its record off the radio, for God's sake. I mean, most people spend their life trying to get on the radio. This group was getting airplay, and they were pissed! And they sued! And the record company was 100% behind them. "We'll get you off the radio!" They brought in the big guns and they went down to the station and said, "Listen, we hear you're playing this group and we want them off of there!" So I thought that was pretty good. I thought that showed a kind of madness and flexibility."(Source: "Holding On: A Conversation with Tom Waits". Newsweek: Karin Schoemer. 23 March 1999)

KS (1999): There's a lot of appliance-type salesmanship in the music industry right now. TW: Lenny Bruce said you'll never go broke underestimating the taste of the American public. People have built fortunes on it! But we had the Monkees. There's always something. Teenybopper music. It comes and it goes. It's like decals. It's like ice cream. "We had ice cream, and it's gone." "We had a balloon, and it popped." So what. You'll get another one. We seemed to be geared toward that--so you drop it into the water, and everyone's drinking it, and you get real silly, and then it wears off, and then you wake up and move on. It seems like that's part of the rhythm and cycle of American merchandising and promotion. You just have to know what's right for you and what's not. Other people are lining up to watch a guy in a leotard and a blond wig blow into a piece of wood. It comes and it goes, right?"(Source: "Holding On: A Conversation with Tom Waits". Newsweek: Karin Schoemer. 23 March 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "Most of us, in some form or another, are fascinated with anything that makes us different. Most of us from time to time have felt that way and can relate on a certain level, whether it's internal or external. At one point Barnum and Bailey were displaying Sarah Bernhardt's leg, it was touring the U.S. And at the time, I guess Sarah Bernhardt was doing Shakespeare in a saloon. At one point, someone remarked that her leg was making more money than she was. That really depressed her."(Source: "Tom Waits, In Dreams". Exclaim: Michael Barclay. April/ May 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "It all has to do with demographics and who likes what: if you like that, you'll like this. If you like hairdryers, you'll like water-heaters. Then you try to distinguish yourself in some way, which is essential- you find your little niche. When you make your first record, you think, That's all I wanna do is make a record. Then you make a record and you realize, Now I'm one of a hundred thousand people who have records out, OK, now what? Maybe I outta shave my head." (Source: "Mojo interview with Tom Waits". Mojo magazine: Barney Hoskyns. April 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "I'm not everybody's cup of tea, nor do I aspire to be... This isn't musical imperialism."(Source: "Wider public greets Waits' 'Variations' ". USA Today: Edna Gundersen. June 1999)

Q (1999): I bet you'd find commercial success a little unsettling. TW: "Ok, I'm mistrustful of large groups of people enjoying anything together. You try to be careful that you don't wind up in one of those darkly ironic situations where you've become the very thing you despise. What you want is a faucet and a sink for your popularity. Otherwise you don't get a drink for six years or the whole living room fills up with water. there's very little in between."(Source: "Wider public greets Waits' 'Variations' ". USA Today: Edna Gundersen. June 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "There's something to be said for longevity. For some people, being in pop music is like running for office. They court the press in a very conscientious fashion. They kiss babies. No matter how black their vision is, their approach is the same. I'm more in charge of my own destiny."(Source: "The resurrection of Tom Waits ". Rolling Stone; David Fricke. June 24, 1999)

Tom Waits (1999): "They always want me to do ads for underwear and cigarettes, but I never did them. I did one and I'll never do it again. I used to see celebrities doing ads and my first reaction was, "Aw, gee he must have needed the money. That's tough." When somebody was on the slide, they would do an ad."(Source: "The Man Who Howled Wolf ". Magnet: Jonathan Valania. June/July 1999)

Q (1999): You successfully sued Frito-Lay for doing a commercial with a guy to sounds and acts just like you. TW: "This guy from Texas got paid 300 bucks to do me. That was his specialty, anyway, that he does this perfect impersonation of me. And they did this whole thing around "Step Right Up," and every now and then they would say "Fritos" or whatever. And afterward, the guy felt so bad, he came out as our star witness. We won $2.5 million. David beats Goliath." (Source: "The Man Who Howled Wolf ". Magnet: Jonathan Valania. June/July 1999)

Q (2002): Does he think that if he had taken a different turn, he might have sold as many records as Bruce Springsteen, the Eagles and Rod Stewart, all of who have covered his songs? TW: "I don't know about that," he says amiably. "If you're eccentric then you're eccentric. I don't think I ever got to a crossroads in my life when I could have done that. That was their destiny and it wouldn't have fitted if I'd try to put that on." (Source: "Dirt music". The Sydney Morning Herald. (Australia), by Nigel Williamson. April 27, 2002)

Tom Waits (2002): "The big (record) companies are more like countries than companies. Or they are like jellyfish. They have no anatomy. But they sting. Record companies are no longer interested in maintaining or nurturing or supporting the growth of an artist. They want you as a cash cow on the day you get there. And then, when you stop making milk they want you on the barbecue right away." (Source: "Tom Waits: A Poet of Outcasts Who's Come Inside." New York Times (USA) by Jon Pareles. May 5, 2002)

Tom Waits (2002): "It (music) is expensive noise. It's nothing but wild sounds that have been civilized into time signatures and tunes. And definitely the most expensive of all noises." (Source: "This Business Called Show". Austin Chronicle (USA) May 10, 2002 by Margaret Moser)

Tom Waits (2002): "They (musicians having their music used in advertising) are all high on crack. Let's just say it's a sore subject with me. I went to court over it, you know... You know, you see a bathroom-tissue commercial, and you start hearing "Let The Good Times Roll," and the paper thing's rolling down the stairs. Why would anybody want to mortify and humiliate themselves? Well, it's just business, you know? The memory that you have and the association you have with that song can be co-opted. And a lot of people are really in it for the money. Period. A lot of people don't have any control over it. I don't own the copyrights to my early tunes. So it is unfortunate, but there are a lot of people that consciously want their songs exploited in that way, which I think is demeaning. I hate it when I hear songs that I already have a connection with, used in a way that's humiliating. I mean, in the old days, if somebody was doing a commercial, you used to say, "Oh, gee, too bad, he probably needs the money." But now, it's like hocking cigarettes and underwear with rock 'n' roll. I guess that's our big export. It's like how a good butcher uses every part of the cow. I don't like hearing those Beatles songs in the commercials. It almost renders them useless. Maybe not for everyone else, but when I hear it I just think, "Oh, God, another one bites the dust." (Source: "The Onion A.V. Club online magazine (USA), by Keith Phipps. Volume 38, issue 20. May 29, 2002)

Tom Waits (2002): "If I did disco or parlour songs or anything, it wouldn't matter. I don't feel chained to anybody's affectations of what they think I should do. I'm in a unique position. I pretty much do what I want. I'm not like the Backstreet Boys or anything. I don't have to live up to selling 26 million records, so that if I sell 17 million I'm a failure... There are a lot of people who are in it for the money. There are record companies that are like behemoth cartels. They're like countries themselves. But that could be said of anything." (Source: "The Hobo Comes Home". The Weekend Australian (Australia). June 1, 2002. By Iain Shedden)

Further reading: Interviews (complete transcripts)