Tom Waits: “Play like your hair’s on fire. Play like you have no pants on.”
Photo by Anton Corbijn in the NYT
At 61 Mr. Waits is acclaimed as an American marvel: a songwriter who can be smart and primal, raucous and meticulous, ethereal and earthy, bleak and comical. He has sung about drunks, tramps, carnies and killers, spinning tall tales and reeling off free-associations that somehow add up; he has also shown a vulnerable side in tender, unironic love songs. He has been recording for four decades and persisting on his own terms, particularly since 1980. That’s when he married Kathleen Brennan, who became his partner in songwriting and production and helped forge a sound to match his voice and their lyrics: part old weird America, part junk sculpture, part mad-scientist experiment, part cartoon, part hellfire sermon, part throw-down.
A Grizzled Troubadour Dusts Off His Bowler. By Jon Pareles in the NYT.
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