Around this time, Waits had a relationship with Rickie Lee Jones ( who appears on the sleeve art of the Blue Valentine album ).

In the movie, Waits appears in a dream scene as himself, singing the ballad " You Can Never Hold Back Spring " and accompanying himself at the piano.

Waits appears on the songs " Fadin ' Moon " and " Ghost to a Ghost " on Hank Williams III's 2011 album Ghost to a Ghost / Gutter Town.

" Earth Died Screaming " is featured in the 1995 film Twelve Monkeys, while " Jesus Gonna Be Here " is featured in the 2005 film Domino, in which Waits appears.

Weiss released the album Extremely Cool in 1999, featuring extensive collaboration with Tony Gilkyson and Tom Waits, who co-produced the album for his longtime acquaintance ( they met in 1974 at Ebbett's Field, where Weiss played in the house band ) and appears on at least two tracks.

Bowie was chosen to curate the 2007 High Line Festival, selecting musicians and artists for the Manhattan event, and performed on Scarlett Johansson's 2008 album of Tom Waits covers, Anywhere I Lay My Head.

* The Waits Website ( designed to accumulate and disseminate historical information on Waits, and to advertise the growing number of revival bands, as well as their equivalents throughout Europe ).

* David Coulter, Multi-Instrumentalist and Producer / Music Supervisor ; ex-member of Test Dept and The Pogues, has played Musical Saw on numerous albums and live with a who's who of Contemporary Popular Music: Damon Albarn, Gorillaz, Tom Waits, Hal Willner, Richard Hawley, Jarvis Cocker, Marianne Faithfull, Tim Robbins, The Tiger Lillies.

" With this trademark growl, his incorporation of pre-rock music styles such as blues, jazz, and vaudeville, and experimental tendencies verging on industrial music, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona.

Waits, who taught himself how to play the piano on a neighbor's instrument, often took trips to Mexico with his father, who taught Spanish ; he would later say that he found his love of music during these trips through a Mexican ballad that was " probably a Ranchera, you know, on the car radio with my dad.

By 1965, while attending Hilltop High School within the Sweetwater Union High School District, Chula Vista, Waits was playing in an R & B / soul band called The Systems and had begun his first job at Napoleone Pizza House in National City ( about which he would later sing on " I Can't Wait to Get Off Work ( And See My Baby on Montgomery Avenue )" from Small Change and " The Ghosts of Saturday Night ( After Hours at Napoleone's Pizza House )" on The Heart of Saturday Night ).

In 1975, Waits moved to the Tropicana Motel on Santa Monica Boulevard and released the double album Nighthawks at the Diner, recorded in a studio with a small audience in order to capture the ambience of a live show.

By this time, Waits was drinking heavily, and life on the road was starting to take its toll.

Waits, looking back at the period, has said, I was sick through that whole period [...] It was starting to wear on me, all the touring.

Waits put together a regular touring band, The Nocturnal Emissions, which featured Frank Vicari on tenor saxophone, Fitzgerald Jenkins on bass guitar, and Chip White on drums and vibraphone.

Tom Waits and the Nocturnal Emissions toured the United States and Europe extensively from October 1976 until May 1977, including a performance of " The Piano Has Been Drinking " on cult BBC2 television music show the Old Grey Whistle Test in May 1976.

The album also features Bette Midler singing a duet with Waits on " I Never Talk to Strangers.

In August 1980, Waits married Kathleen Brennan, a screenwriter, whom he had met while working on the set of the Francis Ford Coppola movie One from the Heart.

Brennan is regularly credited as co-author of many songs in his later albums, and Waits often cites her as a major influence on his work.

During this period, Waits appeared in a series of minor movie roles, including a cameo role in Wolfen ( 1981 ) as an inebriated piano player, and his song " Jitterbug Boy " also appeared on the movie's soundtrack.

) Contributions from guitarists Marc Ribot, Robert Quine, and Keith Richards accompanied Waits ' move away from piano-based songs, in juxtaposition with an increased emphasis on instruments such as marimba, accordion, double bass, trombone, and banjo.

In the same year, Waits also contributed vocals to the song " Harlem Shuffle " on The Rolling Stones ' album Dirty Work.

The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets — a theatrical collaboration of Waits, director Robert Wilson, and writer William S. Burroughs — premiered at Hamburg's Thalia Theatre on March 31, 1990.

Waits continued to appear in movie acting roles, the most significant of which was his uncredited cameo as a disabled veteran in Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King.

Critic Steve Huey calls it " perhaps Tom Waits's most cohesive album ... a morbid, sinister nightmare, one that applied the quirks of his experimental ' 80s classics to stunningly evocative — and often harrowing — effect ... Waits ' most affecting and powerful recording, even if it isn't his most accessible.

Waits beatboxes on the opening track, " Top of the Hill ", and most of the album's songs begin with Waits's " vocal percussion " improvisations.

Some of the most prominent names include The Grateful Dead, Tom Waits, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Bobby " Werner " Strete, Mod Fun, Virgil Thomson, Jeff Beck, Chick Corea, Dee Dee Ramone, Johnny Thunders, Phil Lynott, Henri Chopin, John Cale, Édith Piaf, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Alice Cooper, Alejandro Escovedo, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Peter Walker, Canned Heat, Sid Vicious, Vivian Stanshall, Richard Hell, Jobriath Boone, Little Annie, Rufus Wainwright, Lance Loud, Abdullah Ibrahim / Sathima Bea Benjamin / Jean Grae, Vasant Rai, Jacques Labouchere, and Leonard Cohen.

of brick-clad steel-piling was put into place to protect the town, most noticeably at the Waits where a pleasing plaza has also been created.

Ribot is also known for collaborating with other musicians, most notably Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, and composer John Zorn.

" Rolling Stone said that the album " contains the most blues of any album Waits has made " but added " the problem is that it's more of the same ", describing it as " the latest installment of discourse ," awarding the album three out of five stars.

The music for the most part consists of Waits ' hoarse, rough voice, set against a backdrop of piano, upright bass, drums and saxophone.

Burroughs wrote the book, while Waits wrote the music and most of the lyrics.

The album features some of the few political songs Waits has ever written, the most explicit being " Day After Tomorrow ", a song Waits has described as an " elliptical " protest against the Iraq War.

As well, she has occasionally performed in musical theatre, most notably productions of Tom Waits ' experimental rock opera The Black Rider, stealing the show according to Pitchfork. com.

O ' Hara has also made several small film appearances, most notably with Tom Waits in Candy Mountain ( 1986 ).

Lyrically, Waits ' songs frequently present atmospheric portrayals of grotesque, often seedy characters and places — although he has also shown a penchant for more conventional ballads.

From August to December 1971, Waits made a series of demo recordings for Cohen's Bizarre / Straight label, including many songs for which he would later become known.

In reaction to these hardships, Waits recorded Small Change ( 1976 ), which finds him in a much more cynical and pessimistic mood, lyrically, with many songs such as " The Piano Has Been Drinking ( Not Me ) ( An Evening with Pete King )" and " Bad Liver and a Broken Heart ( In Lowell )".

Waits also contributed two songs to the documentary Streetwise ( 1984 ), " Rat's Theme " and " Take Care of All My Children ".

Waits developed his acting career with several supporting roles and a lead role in Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law in 1986, which also featured two of Waits's songs from Rain Dogs in the soundtrack.

The same year saw Waits provide spoken word contributions to Devout Catalyst, an album by one of Waits ' greatest influences, Ken Nordine, on the songs " A Thousand Bing Bangs " and " The Movie.

Paul Schmidt adapted the text from the works of Lewis Carroll ( Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, in particular ), with songs by Waits and Kathleen Brennan presented as intersections with the text rather than as expansions of the story, as would be the case in conventional musical theater.

These songs would be recorded by Waits as a studio album 10 years later on Alice.

In 1993, he released The Black Rider, which contained studio versions of the songs that Waits had written for the musical of the same name three years previously, with the exceptions of " Chase the Clouds Away " and " In the Morning ", which appeared in the theatrical production but not on the studio album.

John Hammond's Wicked Grin, a collection of Waits cover songs, was released in 2001.

The album is also notable for containing a number of covers of songs by other artists, including The Ramones (" The Return of Jackie and Judy " and " Danny Says "), Daniel Johnston (" King Kong "), Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht (" What Keeps Mankind Alive "), and Leadbelly (" Ain't Goin ' Down to the Well " and " Goodnight Irene "), as well as renditions of works by poets and authors admired by Waits, such as Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac and a previously released duet with Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse entitled " Dog Door ".

On May 20, 2008, Scarlett Johansson's debut album, entitled Anywhere I Lay My Head, featured covers of ten Tom Waits songs.

Waits has steadfastly refused to allow the use of his songs in commercials and has joked about other artists who do ( commenting " If Michael Jackson wants to work for Pepsi, why doesn't he just get himself a suit and an office in their headquarters and be done with it ?").

The company had approached Waits to use one of his songs in an advertisement, which Waits declined.

The track listing included covers of songs by Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen and Richard and Linda Thompson, Blind Willie Johnson, Tom Waits and The Low Anthem.

Burke's career was revived with the July 23, 2002 release of Don't Give Up on Me on Fat Possum Records and produced by Joe Henry, where he sang songs written specifically for the album by various leading recording artists, including Bob Dylan, Brian Wilson, Van Morrison, Elvis Costello and Tom Waits.

* Albums consisting of one artist performing only songs by another artist, such as Great Zeppelin, a tribute album for Led Zeppelin, performed solely by Great White or Wicked Grin, a collection of Tom Waits songs performed by John Hammond Jr ..