25 things you might not know about Tom Waits

He was born Thomas Alan Waits on 7 December 1949, one day after Blues legend Leadbelly died in New York. His parents were teachers who divorced when he was 10.

1. He had a band in the early 70s called The Nocturnal Emmissions.

2. The first of Waits’ 25 appearances as a screen actor was in the 1978 movie Paradise Alley, written by and starring Sylvester Stallone. Waits played a drunken piano player named Mumbles.

3. He was nominated for an Oscar for his soundtrack to the 1980 Francis Ford Coppola film One From the Heart.

4. Waits met his future wife, Kathleen Brennan, on the set of One From the Heart. She was working as a script analyst at the movie studio. They married in August 1980 and now have three children, Casey, Kelly and Sullivan, the oldest of whom, Casey Waits (21), is the drummer on his father’s current tour.

5. He keeps a notebook full of interesting facts, including gems such as the fact that the average cockroach can live up to two weeks after decapitation.

6. In 1982, Asylum Records refused to release his seventh album, the now legendary Swordfishtrombones. Label President Joe Smith warned, ‘with this record you will lose all your old fans and gain no new ones’. Waits was subsequently dropped by Asylum and the album had to wait a year until 1983 to get its release on Waits’ new independent label, Island. The album is regarded by many as his finest record.

7. The Eagles made his song ‘Ol’ 55’ a hit in 1974. He described their version as ‘antiseptic’.

8. His favourite contemporary artist is Missy Elliot.

9. During the Asylum years Waits toured hard as a support act for various bands including Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and Martha and the Vandellas. The crowds didn’t take to him and he was frequently jeered and spat at.

10. Aged 19, Waits was a doorman at a San Diego music hole called the Heritage Coffeehouse. He eventually took to its stage as a performer. but he made less money: $8 an hour on the door, $6 on stage.

11. After Island Records were taken over by multinational Polygram, Waits jumped ship to the smaller Anti Records, releasing his label debut, Mule Variations, in 1999. He signed the contract with Anti’s parent company, Epitaph, after, he claims, they bought him a brand new Cadillac.

12. He has won two Grammy awards – for Bone Machine (1992) and Mule Variations (1999).

13. ‘There ain’t nothin’ funny about a drunk.’ Despite an early career built on his persona of the world-beaten, cocktail-lounge boozehound, Waits has been sober for the past 16 years. In 1977 he told Rolling Stone journalist David McGee ‘You know, I was really starting to believe that there was something amusing and wonderfully American about a drunk. I ended up telling myself to cut that shit out.’

14. Five different versions of the Waits song ‘Way Down The Whole’ have been used in the opening credits of each of the seasons of hit US TV show The Wire. Performers include Waits himself, The Blind Boys of Alabama, Steve Earle and a group of Baltimore middle-school students.

15. He has worked as a club doorman, in a pizza restaurant, for the US Coastguard and has driven an ice cream truck. ‘The hardest thing about driving an ice cream truck’ he once said of his teenage job ‘is getting the little bell out of your head at night.’

16. A recording of France’s premier mime artist entitled The Best of Marcel Marceau is Waits’ favourite dinner party soundtrack. It features 40 minutes of silence followed by two of thunderous applause. He gets annoyed when people talk across it.

17. Bookmakers put him at 10-1 to be Christmas number one in Ireland last year when an Irish blog site launched a campaign to make the 1978 Waits track ‘Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis’ top of the charts. The attempt fell short, but the song did reach 28 in the singles sales chart and 11 on iTunes, ahead of ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday’ by Wizzard.

18. In 1992 Waits won $2.37m in a lawsuit against the potato chip company Frito Lay, (who make Doritos and Walkers crisps in the UK) when, after Waits refused permission to use the song ‘Step Right Up’ in an advert, the company recorded and used a jingle with a sound-alike.

19. It is widely reported that Waits cried when he first saw This is Spinal Tap, finding it a little too familiar for comfort.

20. Of the many rare instruments used on his recordings through the years including the calliope (or steam piano) and a bow-played, water-filled, tubular creation known as the waterphone. Waits’ favourite is the Chamberlain Music Master 600; an early analog synthesizer that contains inbuilt samples of everything from galloping horses to owls hooting.

21. There have been 13 outings of the Tom Waits festival, Waitstock, held on a farm in Poughkeepsie near New York. Highlights from 2003 included a potato cannon, ‘Tom Waits Gong Show’ and the release of several black cats during ‘Mystery Hour’.

22. In 1988 Waits reworked ‘Heigh Ho’ from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves for a film song compilation album.

23. In a press conference video released in May this year, Waits claimed the tour route of his 12 US performances was planned to follow the shape of the constellation Hydra.

24. His favourite sound is bacon frying in a pan.