Before becoming some kind of punk cabaret Howlin’ Wolf, the character of Tom Waits was born in the form of a songwriter obsessed with jazz, Broadway melodies and Kerouac’s Beat Generation. Between 1973 and 1980, the Californian would record six studio albums and one live album for the Asylum label, recently re-released and re-mastered in Hi-Res 24-Bit. Let’s go back to the early beginnings, chaotic and fascinating, of the most charming celestial bum.

Rather close to his 70th birthday, Tom Waits has become an untouchable icon, slightly trapped in the character that he created for himself. Since the beginning of the 80s, the Californian is this crazy and almost punk bluesman, settled between the Gods of the Chess label (Howlin’ Wolf ahead), the decadent circus of the Republic of Weimar and its monstrous and fantastical realism (Kurt Weill and Berthold Brecht) and the failed candidates to the American Dream. He’s a songwriter possessing unique poetry, gifted, and whose prose is carried out by his voice, which is sandpapered by whiskey and dry tobacco. His character will even end up in front of the cameras of directors as famous as Francis Ford Coppola (One From The Heart, Outsiders, Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, Dracula, Twixt), Jim Jarmusch (Down By Law, Mystery Train, Night On Earth, Coffee And Cigarettes), Robert Frank (Candy Mountain), Robert Altman (Short Cuts) and Terry Gilliam (The Fisher King, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus). But before planting this crumpled and stained banner which still fascinates people, Tom Waits offered a whole other side, or almost…

One thing, only one, will remain intangible in the career of this hobo voluntarily disconnected from his time: the ground under his feet. This ground is California, where he was born during the winter of 1949 in Pomona and where he would spend almost his entire life. Whittier, California then San Diego, Los Angeles and onto Sonoma county where he has now been rooted for many years. In the American middle class, the young Thomas grew up with a certain obsession for Jack Kerouac’s world and writings and Bob Dylan’s songs. But it’s a bit North of San Diego, in Los Angeles, that, from bar to bar, from club to club and from diner to diner, he offered up his first songs. He did a series of small jobs, from doorman to pizza chef, and performed his art on barely-tuned old pianos when the clubs had closed their doors and the customers had left… The mood is folk but he himself sounds rather cabaret. The hippies abound but he himself is rather beat, a trend that some of his fellows already find outdated. Tom Waits is mostly fascinated by the “classics” like Gershwin, Sinatra and Ray Charles, and also by crime fiction writers like Raymond Chandler, not forgetting the Hollywood of the 40s and 50s. It is a procession of names and icons from yesteryear. A taste for the “old stuff” that the young Waits, who precisely dreams himself as an “old man”, accepts completely.

Rather close to his 70th birthday, Tom Waits has become an untouchable icon, slightly trapped in the character that he created for himself. Since the beginning of the 80s, the Californian is this crazy and almost punk bluesman, settled between the Gods of the Chess label (Howlin’ Wolf ahead), the decadent circus of the Republic of Weimar and its monstrous and fantastical realism (Kurt Weill and Berthold Brecht) and the failed candidates to the American Dream. He’s a songwriter possessing unique poetry, gifted, and whose prose is carried out by his voice, which is sandpapered by whiskey and dry tobacco. His character will even end up in front of the cameras of directors as famous as Francis Ford Coppola (One From The Heart, Outsiders, Rumble Fish, The Cotton Club, Dracula, Twixt), Jim Jarmusch (Down By Law, Mystery Train, Night On Earth, Coffee And Cigarettes), Robert Frank (Candy Mountain), Robert Altman (Short Cuts) and Terry Gilliam (The Fisher King, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus). But before planting this crumpled and stained banner which still fascinates people, Tom Waits offered a whole other side, or almost…

One thing, only one, will remain intangible in the career of this hobo voluntarily disconnected from his time: the ground under his feet. This ground is California, where he was born during the winter of 1949 in Pomona and where he would spend almost his entire life. Whittier, California then San Diego, Los Angeles and onto Sonoma county where he has now been rooted for many years. In the American middle class, the young Thomas grew up with a certain obsession for Jack Kerouac’s world and writings and Bob Dylan’s songs. But it’s a bit North of San Diego, in Los Angeles, that, from bar to bar, from club to club and from diner to diner, he offered up his first songs. He did a series of small jobs, from doorman to pizza chef, and performed his art on barely-tuned old pianos when the clubs had closed their doors and the customers had left… The mood is folk but he himself sounds rather cabaret. The hippies abound but he himself is rather beat, a trend that some of his fellows already find outdated. Tom Waits is mostly fascinated by the “classics” like Gershwin, Sinatra and Ray Charles, and also by crime fiction writers like Raymond Chandler, not forgetting the Hollywood of the 40s and 50s. It is a procession of names and icons from yesteryear. A taste for the “old stuff” that the young Waits, who precisely dreams himself as an “old man”, accepts completely.

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