This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (March 2009)

Wild grass

Cut grass

Zoysia grass flower

Pennisetum setaceum flowers

Houses with turf roofs in Iceland

Grasses, or more technically graminoids, are monocotyledonous, usually herbaceous plants with narrow leaves growing from the base. They include the "true grasses", of the Poaceae (or Gramineae) family, as well as the sedges (Cyperaceae) and the rushes (Juncaceae). The true grasses include cereals, bamboo and the grasses of lawns (turf) and grassland. Sedges include many wild marsh and grassland plants, and some cultivated ones such as water chestnut (Eleocharis dulcis) and papyrus sedge (Cyperus papyrus). Uses for graminoids include food (as grain, sprouted grain, shoots or rhizomes), drink (beer, whisky, vodka), pasture for livestock, thatch, paper, fuel, clothing, insulation, construction, sports turf, basket weaving and many others.

Ecology[link]

A kangaroo eating grass

Graminoids are among the most versatile life forms. They became widespread toward the end of the Cretaceous period, and fossilized dinosaur dung (coprolites) have been found containing phytoliths of a variety of grasses that include grasses that are related to modern rice and bamboo.^[1] Grasses have adapted to conditions in lush rain forests, dry deserts, cold mountains and even intertidal habitats, and are now the most widespread plant type; grass is a valuable source of food and energy for all sorts of wildlife and organics.

Graminoids are the dominant vegetation in many habitats, including grassland, salt-marsh, reedswamp and steppes. They also occur as a smaller part of the vegetation in almost every other terrestrial habitat.

There are some 3,500 species of graminoids.^[2]

Many types of animals eat grass as their main source of food, and are called graminivores – these include cattle, sheep, horses, rabbits and many invertebrates, such as grasshoppers and the caterpillars of many brown butterflies. Grasses are also eaten by omnivorous or even occasionally by primarily carnivorous animals.

In the study of ecological communities, herbaceous plants are divided into graminoids and forbs, which are herbaceous dicotyledons, mostly with broad leaves.

Agriculture[link]

Plants of this type have always been important to humans. They have been grown as food for domesticated animals for up to 6,000 years. (See grass fed beef.) They have been used for paper-making since 2400 BC or before. Now they provide the majority of food crops, and have many other uses, such as feeding animals, and for lawns. There are many minor uses, and grasses are familiar to most human cultures.

Grasses used as an ornamental planting

Lawns[link]

In some places, particularly in suburban areas throughout the world, the maintenance of a grass lawn is a sign of a homeowner's responsibility to the overall appearance of their neighborhood. One work credits lawn maintenance to,

Many municipalities and homeowner's associations have rules which require lawns to be maintained to certain specifications, sanctioning those who allow the grass to grow too long. In communities with drought problems, watering of lawns may be restricted to certain times of day or days of the week.^[5]

The smell of the freshly cut grass is produced mainly by cis-3-Hexenal.^[6]

Sports turf[link]

Forms of grass are used to cover baseball fields, like this one in Citi Field, home of the Mets.

Grass is important in many sports, notably with those played on fields such as American football, Association football, baseball, cricket, and rugby. In some sports facilities, including indoor domes and other places where maintenance of a grass field would be difficult, grass may be replaced with artificial turf, a synthetic grass-like substitute. Sports such as golf, tennis and cricket are particularly dependent on the quality of the grass on which the sport is played.

Cricket[link]

The gray area is the cricket pitch currently in use. Parallel to it are other pitches in various states of preparation which could be used in other matches.

In cricket, the pitch is the strip of carefully mowed and rolled grass where the bowler bowls. In the days leading up to the match it is repeatedly mowed and rolled to produce a very hard, flat surface for the ball to bounce off. The quality of the preparation can have a considerable influence on the game; a relatively grassy pitch will favor bowlers and a hard and dryer pitch, with less grass remaining, will typically favor batsmen (at least initially). As the grass dries out and is damaged over the course of the match the pitch's characteristics will change, resulting in batting on the first day of a test match being vastly different to batting on the same pitch after 7 days of play.

Golf[link]

Golf is very dependent on a quality grass surface. Grass on golf courses is kept in three distinct conditions: that of the rough, the fairway, and the putting green. Grass on the fairway is short and even, allowing the player to cleanly strike the ball. Playing from the rough is a disadvantage because the grass is generally much longer, which may affect the flight of the ball. Grass on the putting green is the shortest and most even, ideally allowing the ball to roll smoothly over the surface. An entire industry revolves around the development and marketing of grasses for golf courses.

Tennis[link]

In tennis, grass is grown on very hard-packed soil, and the bounce of a tennis-ball may vary depending on the grass's health, how recently it has been mowed, and the wear and tear of recent play. The surface is softer than hard courts and clay (other tennis surfaces), so the ball bounces lower, and players must reach the ball faster resulting in a different style of play which may suit some players more than others. The most famous grass tennis court in the world is Centre Court at Wimbledon located in England, home of the Wimbledon Championship. This is considered the most expensive lawn in the world.

Fiction[link]

Grass plays a central role in two important science fiction catastrophe novels from the 1940s and 1950s, Ward Moore's Greener Than You Think, in which the world is slowly taken over by unstoppable Bermuda Grass, and John Christopher's The Death of Grass, in which a plague that kills off all forms of grass threatens the survival of the human species.

Gallery[link]

• 

  A sea of neatly cut grass surrounds the bunkers at Filton Golf Club, Bristol.

• 

  Tall grass growing wild at Lyme Park

• 

  In some places, even small areas of grass are valuable. These steps were built to access grass for animal feed. Swiss-Italian region near Bignasco.

• 

  Grasses play an important role in agriculture.

• 

  Wild grasses in India.

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

• Chapman, G.P. and W.E. Peat. 1992. An Introduction to the Grasses. CAB Internat., Oxon, UK.
• Cheplick, G.P. 1998. Population Biology of Grasses. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Milne, L. and M. Milne. 1967. Living Plants of the World. Chaticleer Press, N.Y.
• Soderstrom, T.R., K.W. Hilu, C.S. Campbell, and M.E. Barkworth, eds. 1987. Grass Systematics and Evolution. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
• Went, Frits W. 1963. The Plants. Time-Life Books, N.Y.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Grass

• Need a Definition of Grass?
• Interactive Key to the Grasses of the Columbia Basin
• Vegetative Key to Grasses

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (May 2010)

The Basics
The Basics at the Oxford Art Factory, 2010
Background information
Origin	Melbourne, Australia
Genres	Rock
Years active	2002–present
Labels	Independent, Albert Records
Associated acts	Gotye, Down Hills Home, Dog With Wheels, Blood Red Bird
Website	The Basics Official Website
Members
Wally De Backer Kris Schroeder Tim Heath
Past members
Michael Hubbard
Notable instruments
Lead guitar, drums, bass guitar.

The Basics ( /ˈbæzɪtʃ/ BAZZ-ich) are a three-piece band from Melbourne, Australia, formed by Wally De Backer and Kris Schroeder in 2002. Their style has been described as anything from 'indie-pop' to 'rock'n'roll' to 'pop-rock', though their records show they span a wide range of genres, including reggae, ska, country, and electro-pop. They are "recognised as one of Australia's hardest-working bands".^[1]

With close to 1000 shows in their ten-year career, their live performances are well-known for their sense of humour and energy.^[2]

Formation[link]

The Basics were formed after Kris met Wally at a party in Melbourne.^[3] The event was to see off the young aspiring producer, who was about to depart for Los Angeles, and together with a number of musician friends, the two jammed on some blues-rock standards. Later that night, they bonded over a mutual love of The Beatles, 70s and 80s cartoon theme songs and old Sierra adventure games.

Initially, they played around Melbourne as an acoustic guitar/drums combo, starting at The Opposition in Frankston and the House of Fools in Footscray, where in late 2002 they met Michael Hubbard and later invited him to join them on electric guitar.^[4] Though lacking any real experience with the instrument, Kris willingly purchased his first bass guitar, and the trio was born. During this time, the group start performing songs with more complicated three-part harmony.

During late 2002 and early 2003, The Basics recorded and released an album called Get Back through MGM Distribution. They began what was to become regular tours of the East and West coasts of Australia.

2004-2005: Current lineup[link]

Tim Heath joined the group in June 2004, after Michael decided to pursue his solo career, which has included being one half of Down Hills Home.^[4] Tim was reportedly the only person to reply to an advertisement in Melbourne's Beat Magazine looking for a new guitarist. Tim apparently answered the advertisement - which said the applicant "must have a love of 50s and 60s rock'n'roll" - thinking that he would be meeting "a couple of old guys to play with on the weekends over some beers". They soon recorded For Girls Like You.

The Basics in 2005 continued to tour and play small festivals, and after releasing For Girls Like You through MGM Distribution, they departed for a national tour of Australia, which lasted for two months and took them to every Australian state and territory. Stuart Padbury, a young Melbourne sound engineer, joined them on much of this tour. On returning, the band began demonstrating songs for a new album.

2006-2009: Touring and soundtracks[link]

In 2006, The Basics began recording what was to become known as Stand Out/Fit In. Taking several months, it was not completed until the end of the year, despite intentions to have it released in June. Instead, they held a successful 'album preview', where each of the tracks was demonstrated in 'rough form' accompanied by a music video for each (produced by Melbourne photographic artist James Bryans). The band also talked about the origins of the songs. This event brought a lot of attention to the band for the idea's originality. They pre-released a radio single 'Just Hold On' from the album. The band were invited to play the hugely popular Homebake Festival in Sydney, where they received a great response, after being introduced onto the stage by a short stocky Asian guy with big calves ("one of the highlights" wrote The Daily Telegraph).

In 2007, the band departed on a tri-state residency which saw them play Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane every week for the month of April - a bold move which brought further attention to the band for its original idea.^[5] Riding on the wave of this tour, Schroeder, De Backer and Heath departed on their first overseas tour which saw them performing 26 shows around Japan, Norway and the United Kingdom.^[6] They also toured twice more up the East Coast, one of which was with popular Japanese band The Bawdies. Their song 'Rattle My Chain' was used in a series of commercials for Volvo Australia. The song 'Hey There!' featured in the British film The Bank Job - starring Jason Statham - and was used as the backing for a February 2007 short film directed by Tim Longhurst called The Rip. Their song 'Better' was featured in a surfing documentary about the invention of the shortboard in 1967.

In 2008, the band appeared on Australia's Channel 9 for Australia Day celebrations, performing two of their songs - 'Just Hold On' and 'Hey There!' - to an estimated audience of 2 million. Securing an Australian Government grant, they embarked on a two-month tour of Australia, specifically targeting "culturally underprivileged groups" in rural and regional schoolchildren and Indigenous communities. The programme had them holding masterclasses and performing alongside Indigenous groups in the remote Northern Territory and Queensland.^[7][8] Their initiative also had them raising money for the charity Lifeline^{[disambiguation needed ]}, their contribution to which was recognised with a plaque at the end of the tour. Season two of Californication starring David Duchovny featured their cover of the classic 'Have Love, Will Travel', most famously covered by 'The Sonics'.

In 2009, The Basics for the first time enjoyed the support of Australian radio network Triple J, which had reportedly snubbed the band's previous material.^[9] The singles 'With This Ship' and 'Like A Brother' were added to the station's playlist, and momentum carried The Basics overseas for a second tour of the United Kingdom and Norway, and also a series of shows in Dublin, Ireland. They were joined by the longtime front-of-house engineer Stuart Padbury, who had been mixing them since 2005. The band was often seen in the Grafton Street Mall in Dublin, busking to promote their concerts there. Their second show in Oslo, Norway, saw the band perform with Hot Tub, one of the members of the Norwegian boy band "Boyzvoice", in his first performance for several years. Season Eight of Scrubs featured the song 'Lookin' Over My Shoulder'.

Despite all this promise, the band's album Keep Your Friends Close - produced and part-recorded by Peter Cobbin at London's Abbey Road Studios - though enjoying many favourable reviews,^{[10][11][12][13]} failed to impress Richard Kingsmill, music director of Triple J. This effectively ended the band's apparent upward spiral and the resulting album launch tour was reportedly "trying".

2010: Hiatus and live album[link]

In 2010, following the band's fourth stint at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, and the recording of a yet-unreleased live album, an indefinite hiatus was announced on the band's websites. This was in part due to the impending release of a new album produced by Wally for his Gotye project, and also to reported tensions within the band following the previous year's disappointments.

However, this hiatus was soon broken with a two-month residency at the Northcote Social Club in Melbourne, which saw an apparent return to form.^[14] The band's EP "Wait For You" enjoys airplay on Triple J.^[15] The Basics also played a one-off show at Sydney's Oxford Art Factory.^[16]

On 20 August 2010, The Basics released their fourth LP /ðəˈbæzɪtʃ/, available free and exclusively from their website for digital download^[17]. The band had reportedly moved to expand their listenership through this free giveaway, though 300 "Deluxe" CD/vinyl versions have been printed. /ðəˈbæzɪtʃ/ was recorded at the Northcote Social Club on 6 February, "in front of a live studio audience", and like the previous record, was mixed by Peter Cobbin at Abbey Road Studios. Technically a self-titled album, the phonetics spell out the accurate pronunciation of the band’s name. Kris Schroeder: "For years we’ve worked at bringing our live energy into the studio and thus far it’s been a bit hit-and-miss. Our trick this time was to pull a switcheroo and bring the studio to us instead; the result is the best and closest to us we’ve sounded yet."

Melbourne thespian and Dog With Wheels bassist David Bramble - friends with Heath from university days - has occasionally joined the band on tour, playing keys, often while sporting a large moustache. Other guests have included Jake Mason (saxophone), also of Cookin' on 3 Burners and The Bamboos^{[disambiguation needed ]}, Gideon Brazil (saxophone, flute), Simon Imrei (guitar and vocals) and Monty MacKenzie (saxophone).

Covers have often made an appearance from various sources: to date, some of the bands covered have been Cream, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Police, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, New Kids on the Block, Richard Berry, Sonny Curtis and The Crickets, JJ Cale, Harry Nilsson, Bill Scott, Ryan Adams and The Coasters (via The Beatles for their cover of Three Cool Cats).

Members[link]

Current

• Wally De Backer - drums, vocals (2002-present)
• Kris Schroeder - bass, vocals (2002-present)
• Tim Heath - guitar, vocals (2004-present)

Former

• Michael Hubbard - guitar, vocals (2002-2004)

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• Get Back (15 January 2004)
• Stand Out/Fit In (5 May 2007)
• Keep Your Friends Close (25 September 2009)
• /ðəˈbæzɪtʃ/ (20 August 2010)

EP[link]

• For Girls Like You (11 July 2005)
• Lookin' Over My Shoulder (10 February 2007)
• Like A Brother (5 June 2009)
• Wait For You (21 May 2010)

Singles[link]

• Call It Rhythm & Blues (20 August 2004)
• Just Hold On
• With This Ship (22 February 2009)

Upcoming projects[link]

The band is taking a three year hiatus, with an announced return to the stage together in early 2014. Wally De Backer launched Making Mirrors under his Gotye act in August 2011, Tim Heath will be touring and recording with Blood Red Bird, and Kris Schroeder recorded a solo EP titled, Patience in the Face of Control, before leaving Australia to work with the Red Cross in Kenya for a two year sabbatical.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Website
• Myspace Website

Tom Waits
Waits during an interview in Buenos Aires, Argentina, April 2007
Background information
Birth name	Thomas Alan Waits
Born	(1949-12-07) December 7, 1949 (age 62) Pomona, California, United States
Genres	Rock, experimental
Occupations	Singer-songwriter, musician, actor, composer
Instruments	Vocals, piano, guitar
Years active	1972–present
Labels	Asylum Records, Island Records, ANTI-
Website	Official website

Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."^[1] With this trademark growl, his incorporation of pre-rock music styles such as blues, jazz, and vaudeville, and experimental tendencies verging on industrial music,^[2] Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona. He has worked as a composer for movies and musical plays and has acted in supporting roles in films including Paradise Alley and Bram Stoker's Dracula; he also starred in the 1986 film Down by Law. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his soundtrack work on One from the Heart.

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. He has a cult following and has influenced subsequent songwriters despite having little radio or music video support. His songs are best-known through cover versions by more commercial artists: "Jersey Girl", performed by Bruce Springsteen, "Ol' '55", performed by the Eagles, and "Downtown Train", performed by Rod Stewart. Although Waits' albums have met with mixed commercial success in his native United States, they have occasionally achieved gold album sales status in other countries. He has been nominated for a number of major music awards and has won Grammy Awards for two albums, Bone Machine and Mule Variations. In 2011, Waits was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.^[3][4]

Waits lives in Sonoma County, California with his wife, Kathleen Brennan, and three children.

Origins and musical beginnings[link]

Waits was born at Park Avenue Hospital in Pomona, California to Jesse Frank Waits and Alma Johnson McMurray, both schoolteachers.^[5][6] His father was of Scots-Irish descent and his mother was a Norwegian American. After Waits' parents divorced in 1960, he lived with his mother in Whittier, and then moved to National City, in San Diego County, near the Mexico–United States border.^[6] 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."^[7]

By 1965, while attending Hilltop High School within the Sweetwater Union High School District, Chula Vista,^[6] 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).^[5] He later admitted that he was not a fan of the 1960s music scene, stating, "I wasn't thrilled by Blue Cheer, so I found an alternative, even if it was Bing Crosby."^[8] Five years later, he was working as a doorman at the Heritage nightclub in San Diego—where artists of every genre performed—when he did his first paid gig for $6.^[5] A fan of Bob Dylan, Lord Buckley, Jack Kerouac, Louis Armstrong, Howlin' Wolf, and Charles Bukowski, Waits began developing his own idiosyncratic musical style.

After serving with the United States Coast Guard,^[9] he took his newly formed act to Monday nights at The Troubadour in Los Angeles, where musicians would line up all day for the opportunity to perform on stage that night. In 1971, Waits moved to the Echo Park neighborhood of L.A. (at the time, also home to musicians Glenn Frey of the Eagles, J. D. Souther, Jackson Browne, and Frank Zappa) and signed with Herb Cohen at the age of 21. 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. These early tracks were released twenty years later on The Early Years, Volume One and Volume Two.

1970s[link]

Waits signed to Asylum Records in 1972,^[10] and after numerous abortive recording sessions, his first record—the jazzy, folk-tinged Closing Time—was released in 1973. The album, which was produced and arranged by former Lovin' Spoonful member Jerry Yester, received positive reviews, but Waits did not gain widespread attention until a number of the album's tracks were covered by more prominent artists. Later in 1973, Tim Buckley released the album Sefronia, which contained a cover version of Waits' song "Martha" from Closing Time, the first-ever cover of a Tom Waits song by a known artist.^[11] This cover later appeared in the 1995 compilation Step Right Up: The Songs of Tom Waits. The album's opening track, "Ol' '55", was recorded by the Eagles in 1974 for their On the Border album.^[11]

He began touring and opening for such artists as Charlie Rich, Martha and the Vandellas, and Frank Zappa. Waits received increasing critical acclaim and gathered a loyal cult following with his subsequent albums. The Heart of Saturday Night (1974), featuring the song "(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night", revealed Waits's roots as a nightclub performer, with half-spoken and half-crooned ballads often accompanied by a jazz backup band.^[12] Waits described the album as:

...a comprehensive study of a number of aspects of this search for the center of Saturday night, which Jack Kerouac relentlessly chased from one end of this country to the other, and I've attempted to scoop up a few diamonds of this magic that I see.^[13]

In 1975, Waits moved to the Tropicana Motel on Santa Monica Boulevard^[14] 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. The record exemplifies this phase of his career, including the lengthy spoken interludes between songs that punctuated his live act. That year, he also contributed backing vocals to Bonnie Raitt's "Your Sweet and Shiny Eyes", from her album Home Plate.

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. I'd been traveling quite a bit, living in hotels, eating bad food, drinking a lot — too much. There's a lifestyle that's there before you arrive and you're introduced to it. It's unavoidable.^[15]

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)". With the album, Waits asserted that he "tried to resolve a few things as far as this cocktail lounge, maudlin, crying-in-your-beer image that I have. There ain't nothin' funny about a drunk [...] I was really starting to believe that there was something amusing and wonderfully American about being a drunk. I ended up telling myself to cut that shit out."^[16] The album, which also included long-time fan favorite "Tom Traubert's Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)", featured famed drummer Shelly Manne and was, like his previous albums, heavily influenced by jazz.

Small Change, which was accompanied by the double A-side single "Step Right Up"/"The Piano Has Been Drinking", was a critical and commercial success and far outsold any of Waits's previous albums. With it, Waits broke onto Billboard's Top 100 Albums chart for the first time in his career (a feat Waits would not repeat until 1999 with the release of Mule Variations).^[17] This resulted in a much higher public profile, which brought with it interviews and articles in Time, Newsweek, and Vogue. 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,^[17] including a performance of "The Piano Has Been Drinking" on cult BBC2 television music show the Old Grey Whistle Test in May 1976.^[18]

Foreign Affairs (1977) was musically in a similar vein to Small Change, but showed further artistic refinement and exploration into jazz and blues styles. Particularly noteworthy is the long cinematic spoken-word piece, "Potter's Field", set to an orchestral score. The album also features Bette Midler singing a duet with Waits on "I Never Talk to Strangers." The album Blue Valentine (1978) displayed Waits's biggest musical departure to date, with much more focus on electric guitar and keyboards than on previous albums and hardly any strings (with the exception of album-opener "Somewhere" — a cover of Leonard Bernstein's song from West Side Story — and "Kentucky Avenue") for a darker, more blues-oriented sound. The song "Blue Valentines" was also unique for Waits in that it featured a desolate arrangement of solo electric guitar played by Ray Crawford, accompanied by Waits' vocal. Around this time, Waits had a relationship with Rickie Lee Jones^{[citation needed]} (who appears on the sleeve art of the Blue Valentine album). In 1978, Waits also appeared in his first film role, in Paradise Alley as Mumbles the pianist, and contributed the original compositions "(Meet Me in) Paradise Alley" and "Annie's Back in Town" to the film's soundtrack.^[19]

Heartattack and Vine, Waits's last studio album for Asylum, was released in 1980, featuring a developing sound that included both ballads ("Jersey Girl") and rougher-edged rhythm and blues. The same year, he began a long working relationship with Francis Ford Coppola, who asked Waits to provide music for his film One from the Heart. For Coppola's film, Waits originally wanted to work with Bette Midler; she was unavailable due to prior engagements, however. Waits ended up working with singer/songwriter Crystal Gayle as his vocal foil for the album.

1980s[link]

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. She introduced him to the music of Captain Beefheart. Despite having shared a manager with Beefheart in the 1970s, Waits says, "I became more acquainted with him when I got married."^[20] Waits would later describe his relationship with Brennan as a paradigm shift in his musical development. After leaving Asylum, the label released the first Tom Waits "Best of" album in 1981, a collection called Bounced Checks, notable for including an alternate, stripped down version of "Jersey Girl" and the otherwise unreleased "Mr. Henry", as well as an alternate master of "Whistlin' Past the Graveyard" and a live performance of "The Piano Has Been Drinking". 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. One from the Heart received its official theatrical release in 1982, with Waits appearing in a cameo as a trumpet player as well as receiving an Oscar nomination for Original Song Score (eventually losing out to Victor Victoria, by Henry Mancini and Leslie Bricusse). This marked the first in a series of collaborations between Waits and Coppola, with Waits appearing in cameos in Coppola's movies The Outsiders (1983), Rumble Fish (1983), and The Cotton Club (1984), and a major role in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Waits also contributed two songs to the documentary Streetwise (1984), "Rat's Theme" and "Take Care of All My Children".

After leaving Asylum for Island Records, Waits released Swordfishtrombones in 1983, a record that marked a sharp turn in his musical direction. While Waits had before played either piano or guitar, he now gravitated towards less common instruments, saying, "Your hands are like dogs, going to the same places they've been. You have to be careful when playing is no longer in the mind but in the fingers, going to happy places. You have to break them of their habits or you don't explore; you only play what is confident and pleasing. I'm learning to break those habits by playing instruments I know absolutely nothing about, like a bassoon or a waterphone."^[21] Swordfishtrombones also introduced instruments such as bagpipes ("Town with No Cheer") and marimba ("Shore Leave") to Waits' repertoire, as well as pump organs, percussion (sometimes reminiscent of the music of Harry Partch), horn sections (often featuring Ralph Carney playing in the style of brass bands or soul music), experimental guitar, and obsolete instruments (many of Waits' albums have featured a damaged, unpredictable Chamberlin, and more recent albums have included the little-used Stroh violin).

His songwriting shifted as well, moving away from the traditional piano-and-strings ballad sound of his 1970s output towards a number of styles largely ignored in pop music, including primal blues, cabaret stylings, rumbas, theatrical approaches in the style of Kurt Weill, tango music, early country music and European folk music as well as the Tin Pan Alley-era songs that influenced his early output. He also recorded a spoken word piece, "Frank's Wild Years", influenced by Ken Nordine's "word jazz" records of the 1950s. Apart from Captain Beefheart and some of Dr. John's early output, there was little precedent in popular music.

Waits's new emphasis on experimenting with various styles and instrumentation continued on 1985's Rain Dogs, a sprawling, 19-song collection which received glowing reviews (the album was ranked #21 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s. In 2003, the album was ranked number 397 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.) 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. The album also spawned the 12" single "Downtown Train/Tango Till They're Sore/Jockey Full of Bourbon", with Jean Baptiste Mondino filming a promotional music video for "Downtown Train" (which would later become a hit for Rod Stewart), featuring a cameo from boxing legend Jake LaMotta. The album peaked at #188 on Billboard's Top 200 albums chart; however, its reputation has come to far outshine low initial sales.

Franks Wild Years, a musical play by Waits and Brennan, was staged as an Off-Broadway musical in 1986, directed by Gary Sinise,^[22] in a successful run at Chicago's famed Steppenwolf Theater. Waits himself played the lead role. 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. In the same year, Waits also contributed vocals to the song "Harlem Shuffle" on The Rolling Stones' album Dirty Work.^[23]

In 1987, he released Franks Wild Years (subtitled "Un Operachi Romantico in Two Acts"), which included studio versions from Waits' play of the same name. Rolling Stone summed up the album's myriad styles this way: "Everything from sleazy strip-show blues to cheesy waltzes to supercilious lounge lizardry is given spare, jarring arrangements using various combinations of squawking horns, bashed drums, plucked banjo, snaky double bass, carnival organ and jaunty accordion."^[24] Waits also continued to further his acting career with a supporting role as Rudy the Kraut in Ironweed (an adaptation of William Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel) alongside Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, in which Waits performed the song "Big Rock Candy Mountain", as well as a part in Robert Frank's Candy Mountain, in which Waits also performed "Once More Before I Go." In 1988, Waits performed in Big Time, a surreal concert movie and soundtrack which he cowrote with his wife.

In 1989, Waits appeared in his final theatrical stage role to date, appearing as Curly in Thomas Babe's Demon Wine, alongside Bill Pullman, Philip Baker Hall, Carol Kane, and Bud Cort. The play opened at the Los Angeles Theater Center in February 1989 to mixed reviews, although Waits' performance was singled out by a number of critics, including John C. Mahoney, who described it as "mesmerizing."^[25] Waits finished the decade with appearances in three movies: as the voice of a radio DJ in Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train; as Kenny the Hitman in Robert Dornhelm's Cold Feet; and the lead role of Punch & Judy man Silva in Bearskin: An Urban Fairytale. His only musical output of the year consisted of contributing his cover of Phil Phillips' "Sea of Love" to the soundtrack of the Al Pacino movie of the same name^[26] and contributing vocals to The Replacements song "Date to Church", which appeared as a B-side to their single "I'll Be You".

1990s[link]

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. The project was based on a German folktale called Der Freischütz, with Wilson responsible for the design and direction, Burroughs for writing the book, and Waits for music and lyrics, which were heavily influenced by the works of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.^[27] In the same year, Waits contributed a cover of Cole Porter's "It's All Right with Me" to Red Hot + Blue, the first in the series of compilation albums from the Red Hot Organization — one of the first major AIDS benefits in the music business—which sold over a million copies worldwide. Jim Jarmusch directed a promotional music video for the song.^[28] Waits also collaborated with photographer Sylvia Plachy in the same year; her book Sylvia Plachy's Unguided Tour includes a short Waits record to accompany the photographs and text.

The following year, Waits was extremely busy working on movie soundtracks, acting, and contributing to a number of music projects by other artists. First, Waits appeared on the Primus album Sailing the Seas of Cheese as the voice of "Tommy the Cat", which exposed him to a new audience in alternative rock. This was the first of several collaborations between Waits and the group; Frontman Les Claypool would appear on several subsequent Waits releases. 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." Waits also contributed vocals to a duet with singer Bob Forrest on the song "Adios Lounge" on the Thelonious Monster album Beautiful Mess. He also contributed vocals to two songs ("Little Man" and "I'm Not Your Fool Anymore") on jazz tenor saxophonist Teddy Edwards' album Mississippi Lad. Edwards was extremely complimentary of Waits' contributions, saying:

Tom Waits is the one who got me my contract [sic] with PolyGram. He's wonderful, he's America's best lyricist since Johnny Mercer. He came down to the studio on the Mississippi Lad album, that's the first one I did for PolyGram, and he sang two of my songs, wouldn't accept any money, just trying to give me the best boost that he could.^[29]

The only collection of exclusively Waits-performed material of 1991 appeared when Waits composed and conducted the almost exclusively instrumental music for Jim Jarmusch's 1991 film Night on Earth, which was released as an album the following year. In July 1991, Screamin' Jay Hawkins released the album Black Music for White People, which features covers of two Waits compositions: "Heartattack & Vine" (which later that year was used in a European Levi's advertisement without Waits' permission, resulting in a lawsuit) and "Ice Cream Man". 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. He also appeared alongside Kevin Bacon, John Malkovich, and Jamie Lee Curtis in Steve Rash's Queens Logic, and opposite Tom Berenger and Kathy Bates in Hector Babenco's film At Play in the Fields of the Lord, adapted from Peter Matthiessen's 1965 novel.

Bone Machine, Waits's first studio album in five years, was released in 1992. The stark record featured a great deal of percussion and guitar (with little piano or sax), marking another change in Waits' sound. 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."^[30] Bone Machine was awarded a Grammy in the Best Alternative Album category. On December 19, 1992 Alice, Waits's second theatrical project with Robert Wilson, premiered at the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg. 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.^[31] 1992 also saw Waits featuring in Francis Ford Coppola's film Bram Stoker's Dracula, as the possessed lunatic Renfield.

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. William S. Burroughs also guests on vocals on "'Tain't No Sin". In the same year, Waits lent his vocals to Gavin Bryars' 75-minute reworking of his 1971 classical music piece Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet; appeared in Robert Altman's film version of Raymond Carver's stories Short Cuts and Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes: Somewhere in California, a short black-and-white movie with Iggy Pop; and his third child, Sullivan, was born. In 1997, Waits and Brennan wrote and performed the music for Bunny the animated short film by 20th Century Fox's Blue Sky Studios, which was awarded Best Animated Short Film by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In 1995, Holly Cole released Temptation, a tribute album consisting entirely of Waits covers.

Another Waits cover was released in 1996, as Meat Loaf covered Martha for his concept album Welcome to the Neighborhood.

In 1998, after Island Records released the compilation Beautiful Maladies: The Island Years, Waits left the label for Epitaph, whose president, Andy Kaulkin, said the label was "...blown away that Tom would even consider us. We are huge fans."^[32] Waits himself was full of praise for the label, saying "Epitaph is rare for being owned and operated by musicians. They have good taste and a load of enthusiasm, plus they're nice people. And they gave me a brand-new Cadillac, of course."^[32]

Waits's first album on his new label, Mule Variations, was issued in 1999. Billboard described the album as musically melding "backwoods blues, skewed gospel, and unruly art stomp into a sublime piece of junkyard sound sculpture."^[33] The album was Waits' first release to feature a turntablist. The album won a Grammy in 2000; as an indicator of how difficult it is to classify Waits's music, he was nominated simultaneously for Best Contemporary Folk Album (which he won) and Best Male Rock Vocal Performance (for the song "Hold On"), both different from the genre for which he won his previous Grammy. The album was also his highest-charting album in the U.S. to date, reaching #30.

The same year, Waits made a foray into producing music for other artists, teaming up with his old friend Chuck E. Weiss to coproduce (with his wife, Kathleen Brennan) Extremely Cool, as well as appearing on the record as a guest vocalist and guitarist. He also contributed a cover of Skip Spence's "Books of Moses" to More Oar: A Tribute to the Skip Spence Album, a collection of covers of the singer's songs on Birdman Records.^[26] The same year, Waits appeared in the comedy Mystery Men.

2000s[link]

John Hammond's Wicked Grin, a collection of Waits cover songs, was released in 2001. Waits appears on most songs, playing guitar, piano, and/or offering backing vocals. The album also includes the traditional hymn "I Know I've Been Changed", performed as a duet by Hammond and Waits.

Tori Amos included a cover of the song "Time", from Rain Dogs on her 2001 album Strange Little Girls.

Tom Waits in Prague in 2008

In 2002, Waits simultaneously released two albums, Alice and Blood Money. Both collections had been written almost 10 years previously and were based on theatrical collaborations with Robert Wilson; the former a musical play about Lewis Carroll, and the latter an interpretation of Georg Büchner's play fragment Woyzeck. Both albums revisit the tango, Tin Pan Alley, and spoken-word influences of Swordfishtrombones, while the lyrics are both profoundly cynical and melancholic, exemplified by "Misery is the River of the World" and "Everything Goes to Hell." "Diamond in Your Mind", which Waits wrote for Wilson's Woyzeck, did not appear on Blood Money; however, it did emerge on Solomon Burke's album Don't Give Up on Me of the same year. While Waits has played the song live a number of times,^[34][35] an official version would not be released until 2007. The same year, Waits contributed a version of "The Return of Jackie and Judy"^[26] by The Ramones to the compilation album We're a Happy Family: A Tribute to Ramones, which was released in 2003 on Columbia Records. That same year, Waits was also a judge for the 2nd annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.^[36] Waits was also a judge for the 10th annual Independent Music Awards.^[36]

Waits released Real Gone, his first nontheatrical studio album since Mule Variations, in 2004. It is Waits's only album to date to feature absolutely no piano on any of its tracks. Waits beatboxes on the opening track, "Top of the Hill", and most of the album's songs begin with Waits's "vocal percussion" improvisations. It is also more rock-oriented, with less blues influence than he has previously demonstrated. The same year, Waits contributed backing vocals to the track "Go Tell It on the Mountain" on the Grammy Award (Best Traditional Gospel Album)-winning album of the same name by The Blind Boys of Alabama. He also contributed a version of Daniel Johnston's "King Kong"^[26] to the tribute album The Late Great Daniel Johnston: Discovered Covered, released on Gammon Records.

At this time, Waits made a return to acting after a five-year break, marked at first by the re-release of his 1993 Jim Jarmusch-directed short Coffee and Cigarettes: Somewhere in California, costarring Iggy Pop, compiled in Coffee and Cigarettes. In 2005, Waits appeared in the Tony Scott film Domino as a soothsayer. In the same year, Waits appeared as himself in Roberto Benigni's romantic comedy La Tigre e la Neve, set in occupied Baghdad during the Iraq War. In the movie, Waits appears in a dream scene as himself, singing the ballad "You Can Never Hold Back Spring"^[26] and accompanying himself at the piano.

A 54-song three-disc box set of rarities, unreleased tracks, and brand-new compositions called Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards was released in November 2006. The three discs are subdivided relating to their content: "Brawlers" features Waits's more upbeat rock and blues songs; "Bawlers", his ballads and love songs; and "Bastards", songs that fit in neither category, including a number of spoken-word tracks. A video for the song "Lie to Me" was produced as a promotion for the collection. Orphans also continues Waits's newfound interest in politics with "Road to Peace", a song about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. 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". Waits' albums Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards and Alice are both included in metacritic.com's list of the "Top 200: Best-Reviewed Albums"^[37] since 2000 at #10 and #20, respectively (as of November 2009). The same years, Waits appeared on Sparklehorse's album Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain, playing piano on the track "Morning Hollow."

Five different versions of Waits's song "Way Down in the Hole" have been used as the opening theme songs for the HBO television show The Wire. Waits's own version, from Frank's Wild Years, was used for season two. The other versions used for the series were performed by, in season order, The Blind Boys of Alabama, The Neville Brothers, "DoMaJe" and Steve Earle.

Waits made a number of high-profile television and concert appearances between 2006 and 2010. In November 2006, Waits appeared on The Daily Show and performed "The Day After Tomorrow." This was significant for his having been only the third performing guest on the show, the first being Tenacious D and the second The White Stripes. On May 4, 2007, Waits performed "Lucinda" and "Ain't Goin' Down to the Well" from Orphans on the last show of a week Late Night with Conan O'Brien spent in San Francisco. There was a short interview after the last performance. Waits also played in the Bridge School Benefit on October 27–28, 2007 with Kronos Quartet.

On July 10, 2007, Waits released the download-only digital single "Diamond In Your Mind". The version of the song was recorded with Kronos Quartet, with Greg Cohen, Philip Glass, and The Dalai Lama at the benefit concert "Healing The Divide: A Concert for Peace and Reconciliation" at Avery Fisher Hall, recorded on September 21, 2003.

Waits's song "Trampled Rose" (from Real Gone) appeared on the critically acclaimed album Raising Sand, a collaboration between Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. Waits also provided guest vocals on the song "Pray" by fellow ANTI- artists The Book of Knots on their album Traineater.^[38]

He played the role of Kneller in the film Wristcutters: A Love Story, which opened in November 2007.

On January 22, 2008, Waits made a rare live appearance in Los Angeles, performing at a benefit for Bet Tzedek Legal Services—The House of Justice, a nonprofit poverty law center.^[39]

On May 7, 2008, Waits announced the Glitter and Doom Tour starting in June 2008, touring cities in the southern United States and subsequently announced a series of dates in the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe.^[40] Waits was awarded the key to the city of El Paso, Texas during a concert on June 20, 2008.^[41] In his generally positive review of the opening show of the tour, The Wall Street Journal critic Jim Fusilli described Waits' music thus:

The 58-year-old Mr. Waits ... has composed a body of work that's at least comparable to any songwriter's in pop today. A keen, sensitive and sympathetic chronicler of the adrift and downtrodden, Mr. Waits creates three-dimensional characters who, even in their confusion and despair, are capable of insight and startling points of view. Their stories are accompanied by music that's unlike any other in pop history.^[42]

On May 20, 2008 Scarlett Johansson's debut album, entitled Anywhere I Lay My Head, featured covers of ten Tom Waits songs. Waits made an appearance on the album The Spirit of Apollo by alternative hip hop project N.A.S.A., on the track "Spacious Thoughts."

Waits wrote the following introduction for the Tompkins Square compilation People Take Warning – Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913–1938:

In the late 1920's and early 1930's, the Depression gripped the Nation. It was a time when songs were tools for living. A whole community would turn out to mourn the loss of a member and to sow their songs like seeds. This collection is a wild garden grown from those seeds.

In late 2009, Terry Gilliam's film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus was released, with Waits in the role of Mr. Nick.^[43][44] Production began in December 2007 in London.^[45] Star Heath Ledger's death in January 2008 cast doubt on the film's future, but the production was salvaged with the addition of new actors playing his character in scenes he did not complete.^[46]

2010s[link]

Waits played the role of "The Engineer" in the film The Book of Eli, opposite Denzel Washington, which opened in January 2010.

He is working on a new stage musical with director and long-time collaborator Robert Wilson and playwright Martin McDonagh.^[47]

In early 2011, Tom Waits completed a set of 23 poems entitled Seeds on Hard Ground, which were inspired by Michael O'Brien's portraits of the homeless in his upcoming book, Hard Ground, which will include the poems alongside the portraits. In anticipation of the book release, Waits and Anti- printed limited edition chapbooks of the poems to raise money for Redwood Empire Food Bank, a homeless referral and family support service in Sonoma County, California. As of January 26, 2011, four editions, each limited to a thousand copies costing $24.99US each, sold out, raising $90,000 for the food bank.^[48]

It was announced on February 9, 2011, that Waits was to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Neil Young. The ceremony was held at the Waldorf-Astoria on Monday, March 14, 2011, at 8:30pm EST.^[49] Waits accepted the award with his customary humor, stating, "They say I have no hits and that I'm difficult to work with... like it's a bad thing."^[50]

On February 24, 2011, it was announced via Waits' official website that he has begun work on his next studio album.^[51]

Waits said through his website that on August 23 he would "set the record straight" in regards to rumors of a new release.^[52] On August 23, the title of the new album was revealed to be Bad as Me,^[53] and a new single, also titled "Bad as Me," started being offered via Amazon.com and other sites.^[54] The album was released on October 24.

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.

Lawsuits[link]

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?"). He has filed several lawsuits against advertisers who used his material without permission. He has been quoted as saying, "Apparently, the highest compliment our culture grants artists nowadays is to be in an ad — ideally, naked and purring on the hood of a new car", he said in a statement, referring to the Mercury Cougar. "I have adamantly and repeatedly refused this dubious honor."

Waits filed his first lawsuit in 1988 against Frito-Lay. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an award of $2.375 million in his favor (Waits v. Frito-Lay, 978 F. 2d 1093 (9th Cir. 1992)).^[55] Frito-Lay had approached Waits to use one of his songs in an advertisement. Waits declined the offer, and Frito-Lay hired a Waits soundalike to sing a jingle similar to Small Change's "Step Right Up", which is, ironically, a song Waits has called "an indictment of advertising". Waits won the lawsuit, becoming one of the first artists to successfully sue a company for using an impersonator without permission.

In 1993, Levi's used Screamin' Jay Hawkins' version of Waits' "Heartattack and Vine" in a commercial. Waits sued, and Levi's agreed to cease all use of the song and offered a full page apology in Billboard.^[56] Waits found himself in a situation similar to his earlier one with Frito Lay in 2000 when Audi approached him, asking to use "Innocent When You Dream" (from Franks Wild Years) for a commercial broadcast in Spain. Waits declined, but the commercial ultimately featured music very similar to that song. Waits undertook legal action, and a Spanish court recognized that there had been a violation of Waits's moral rights in addition to the infringement of copyright. The production company, Tandem Campany Guasch, was ordered to pay compensation to Waits through his Spanish publisher. Waits was later quoted as jokingly saying the company got the name of the song wrong, thinking it was called "Innocent When You Scheme".^[57]

In 2005, Waits sued Adam Opel AG, claiming that, after having failed to sign him to sing in their Scandinavian commercials, they had hired a sound-alike singer. In 2007, the suit was settled, and Waits gave the sum to charity.^[58]

Waits has also filed a lawsuit unrelated to his music. He was arrested in 1977 outside Duke's Tropicana Coffee Shop in Los Angeles. Waits and a friend were trying to stop some men from bullying other patrons. The men were plainclothes police, and Waits and his friend were taken into custody and charged with disturbing the peace. The jury found Waits not guilty; he took the police department to court and was awarded $7,500 compensation.^[59]

Discography and filmography[link]

Tours[link]

• 1973: Closing Time touring
• 1974–1975: The Heart of Saturday Night touring
• 1975–1976: Small Change touring
• 1977: Foreign Affairs touring
• 1978–1979: Blue Valentine touring
• 1980–1982: Heartattack and Vine touring
• 1985: Rain Dogs touring
• 1987: Big Time touring
• 1999: Get Behind the Mule Tour
• 2004: Real Gone Tour
• 2006: The Orphans Tour
• 2008: Glitter and Doom Tour^[60]

Further reading[link]

• Humphries, Patrick (2007). The Many Lives of Tom Waits. Omnibus. ISBN 1-84449-585-X. 
• Jacobs, Jay S. (2006). Wild Years The Music and Myth of Tom Waits. ECW Press. ISBN 1-55022-716-5. 
• Montandon, Mac (ed.) (2006). Innocent When You Dream: Tom Waits – The Collected Interviews. Orion. ISBN 0-7528-7394-6. 
• Hoskyns, Barney (2009). Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits. Faber and Faber. 
• Smay, David (2007). Swordfishtrombones. Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-2782-0. 

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tom Waits

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Tom Waits

• Official website
• Tom Waits at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Tom Waits in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Discography at the Tom Waits Library
• Interview with Amanda Petrusich, Pitchfork Media, November 27, 2006
• Interview with Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, November 28, 2006
• Tom Waits at NPR Music, contains interviews
• Tom Waits on Twitter
• Interview with Tim Adams, The Guardian, October 23, 2011

Joan Baez
Baez performing in 2003
Background information
Birth name	Joan Chandos Báez
Born	(1941-01-09) January 9, 1941 (age 71)
Origin	Staten Island, New York City, New York, United States
Genres	Folk, folk rock, country
Occupations	Musician, songwriter, activist
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, piano, ukulele
Years active	1958–present
Labels	Vanguard (1960–1971) A&M (1972–1977) Portrait/CBS (1977–1981) Gold Castle (1987–1991) Virgin (1991–1993) Guardian (1995–2002) Koch (2003–present)
Associated acts	Jackson Browne, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Judy Collins, Donovan, Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, Mimi Fariña, the Grateful Dead, Janis Ian, the Indigo Girls, Odetta, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Rocker T, Dar Williams
Website	joanbaez.com

Joan Chandos Baez ( /ˈbaɪ.ɛz/) (born January 9, 1941 as Joan Chandos Báez) is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice.

Baez has a distinctive vocal style, with a strong vibrato.^[1] Her recordings include many topical songs and material dealing with social issues.

Baez began her career performing in coffeehouses in Boston and Cambridge, and rose to fame as an unbilled performer at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. She began her recording career in 1960, and achieved immediate success. Her first three albums, Joan Baez, Joan Baez, Vol. 2, and Joan Baez in Concert all achieved gold record status, and stayed on the charts for two years.^[2]

Baez has had a popular hit song with "Diamonds & Rust" and hit covers of Phil Ochs's "There but for Fortune" and The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down". Other songs associated with Baez include "Farewell, Angelina", "Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word", "Joe Hill", "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "We Shall Overcome". She performed three of the songs at the 1969 Woodstock Festival, helped to bring the songs of Bob Dylan to national prominence, and has displayed a lifelong commitment to political and social activism in the fields of nonviolence, civil rights, human rights and the environment.^[3]

Baez has performed publicly for over 53 years, releasing over 30 albums. Fluent in Spanish as well as in English, she has also recorded songs in at least six other languages. She is regarded as a folk singer, although her music has diversified since the 1960s, encompassing everything from folk rock and pop to country and gospel music. Although a songwriter herself, Baez is generally regarded as an interpreter of other people's work, having recorded songs by The Allman Brothers Band, The Beatles, Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan, Violeta Parra, Woody Guthrie, The Rolling Stones, Pete Seeger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Leonard Cohen, and many others. In recent years, she has found success interpreting songs of modern songwriters such as Ryan Adams, Josh Ritter, Steve Earle and Natalie Merchant.

Early life[link]

Baez was born on Staten Island, New York in 1941.^[4] Her father, Albert Baez, was born in 1912 in Puebla, Puebla, Mexico, and died March 20, 2007.^[5] His father, Joan's grandfather, the Reverend Alberto Baez, left Catholicism to become a Methodist minister and moved to the U.S. when Albert was two years old. Albert grew up in Brooklyn, New York, where his father preached to—and advocated for—a Spanish-speaking congregation.^[6] Albert first considered becoming a minister but instead he turned to the study of mathematics and physics, where he later became a co-inventor of the x-ray microscope^[7][8][9] and author of one of the most widely used physics textbooks^[10] in the U.S. The Baez family converted to Quakerism during Joan's early childhood, and she has continued to identify with the tradition, particularly in her commitment to pacifism and social issues.

Her mother, Joan (Bridge) Baez, referred to as Joan Senior or "Big Joan", was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the second daughter of an English Anglican priest descended from the Dukes of Chandos.^[11] Joan Senior and Albert met at a high-school dance in Madison, New Jersey, and quickly fell in love. After their marriage, the newlyweds moved to California.

Baez had two sisters — the elder, Pauline, and the younger, Mimi Fariña. Mimi died of cancer in California in 2001.

Because of her father's work in health care and with UNESCO, the family moved many times, living in towns across the U.S, as well as in England, France, Switzerland, Spain, Canada, and the Middle East, including Iraq, where they were in 1951. Joan became involved with a variety of social causes early in her career, including civil rights and non-violence.^[12] Social justice, she stated in the PBS series American Masters, is the true core of [her] life, looming larger than music.'^[13]

Music career[link]

Early years[link]

A friend of Joan's father gave her a ukulele. She learned four chords, which enabled her to play rhythm and blues, the music she was listening to at the time. Her parents, however, were fearful that the music would lead her into a life of drug addiction.^[14] When she was 8, at her aunt's behest, Baez attended a concert by folk musician Pete Seeger, and found herself strongly moved by his music.^[14] She soon began practicing the songs of his repertoire and performing them publicly. One of her very earliest public performances was at a retreat in Saratoga, California, for a youth group from Temple Beth Jacob, a Redwood City, California, congregation. In 1957, Baez bought her first Gibson acoustic guitar.

College music scene in Massachusetts[link]

In 1958, her father accepted a faculty position at MIT, and moved his family to Massachusetts. At that time, it was within the center of the up-and-coming folk-music scene, and Baez began walking near home in Boston and nearby Cambridge. She also performed in clubs, and attended Boston University for about six weeks.^[13] In 1958, at the Club 47 in Cambridge, she gave her first concert. When designing the poster for the performance, Baez considered changing her performing name to either Rachel Sandperl, the surname of her long-time mentor, Ira Sandperl or Maria from the song "They Call the Wind Maria". She later opted against it, fearing that people would accuse her of changing her last name because it was Spanish. The audience consisted of her parents, her sister Mimi, and a small group of friends to a total of eight patrons. She was paid ten dollars. Baez was later asked back and began performing twice a week for $25 per show.^[15]

A few months later, Baez and two other folk enthusiasts made plans to record an album in the cellar of a friend's house. The three sang solos and duets, a family friend designed the album cover, and it was released on Veritas Records that same year as Folksingers 'Round Harvard Square. Baez later met Bob Gibson and Odetta, who was at the time one of the most prominent vocalists singing folk and gospel music. Baez cites Odetta as a primary influence along with Marian Anderson and Seeger.^[16] Gibson invited Baez to perform with him at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, where the two sang two duets, "Virgin Mary Had One Son" and "We Are Crossing Jordan River". The performance generated substantial praise for the "barefoot Madonna" with the otherworldly voice, and it was this appearance that led to Baez signing with Vanguard Records the following year^[17] although Columbia Records tried to sign her first.^[18] Baez later claimed that she felt she would be given more artistic license at a more "low key" label.^[19]

First albums and 1960s breakthrough[link]

Joan Baez at the March on Washington in August 1963.

Her true professional career began at that 1959 Newport Folk Festival; following that appearance, she recorded her first album for Vanguard, Joan Baez (1960), produced by Fred Hellerman of The Weavers, who produced many albums by folk artists. The collection of traditional folk ballads, blues and laments sung to her own guitar accompaniment sold moderately well. It featured many popular Child Ballads of the day, such as "Mary Hamilton" and was recorded in only four days in the ballroom of New York City's Manhattan Towers Hotel. The album also included "El Preso Numero Nueve", a song sung entirely in Spanish. That same song later appeared on her Spanish-language album, Gracias a la Vida (1974).

Her second release, Joan Baez, Vol. 2 (1961) went "gold", as did Joan Baez in Concert, Part 1 (1962) and Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2 (1963). Like its immediate predecessor, Joan Baez, Vol. 2 contained strictly traditional material. Her two albums of live material, Joan Baez in Concert, Part 1 and its second counterpart, were unique in that, unlike most live albums, they contained only new songs, rather than established favorites. It was Joan Baez in Concert, Part 2 that featured Baez's first-ever Dylan cover. From the early-to-mid-1960s, Baez emerged at the forefront of the American roots revival, where she introduced her audiences to the then-unknown Bob Dylan (the two became romantically involved in late 1962, remaining together through early 1965), and was emulated by artists such as Judy Collins, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell and Bonnie Raitt.

Though primarily an albums artist, several of Baez' singles have charted and the first being her 1965 cover of Phil Ochs' "There but for Fortune", which became a mid-level chart hit in the U.S. and a top-ten single in the United Kingdom. Baez added other instruments to her recordings on Farewell, Angelina (1965), which features several Dylan songs interspersed with more traditional fare. Deciding to experiment after having exhausted the folksinger-with-guitar format, Baez turned to Peter Schickele, a classical music composer, who provided classical orchestration for her next three albums: Noël (1966), Joan (1967) and Baptism: A Journey Through Our Time (1968). Noël was a Christmas album of traditional material, while Baptism was akin to a concept album, featuring Baez reading and singing poems written by celebrated poets such as James Joyce, Federico García Lorca and Walt Whitman.

In 1968, Baez traveled to Nashville, Tennessee, where a marathon recording session resulted in two albums. The first, Any Day Now (1968), consists exclusively of Dylan covers. The other, the country-music-infused David's Album (1969) was recorded for husband David Harris, a prominent anti-Vietnam War protester eventually imprisoned for draft resistance. Harris, a country-music fan, turned Baez toward more complex country-rock influences beginning with David's Album. Later in 1968, she published her first memoir, Daybreak (by Dial Press). In 1969, her appearance at Woodstock in upstate New York afforded her an international musical and political podium, particularly upon the successful release of the documentary film Woodstock (1970). Beginning in the late 1960s, Baez began writing many of her own songs, beginning with "Sweet Sir Galahad" and "A Song For David", both songs appearing on her 1970 (I Live) One Day at a Time album; the former song was written about her sister Mimi's second marriage, while the later was a tribute to Harris.

Baez's distinctive vocal style and political activism had a significant impact on popular music. She was one of the first musicians to use her popularity as a vehicle for social protest, singing and marching for human rights and peace. Baez came to be considered the "most accomplished interpretive folksinger/songwriter of the 1960s."^[20] Her appeal extended far beyond the folk-music audience.^[20] Of her fourteen Vanguard albums, thirteen made the top 100 of Billboard's mainstream pop chart, eleven made the top forty, eight made the top twenty, and four made the top ten.^[21]

1970s and the end of Vanguard years[link]

Baez playing in Hamburg, 1973

After eleven years with Vanguard, Baez decided in 1971 to cut ties with the label that had released her albums since 1960. She delivered them one last success with the gold-selling album Blessed Are... (1971) which spawned a top-ten hit in Robbie Robertson's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", her cover of The Band's signature song. With Come from the Shadows (1972), Baez switched to A&M Records, where she remained for four years and six albums.

Joan Baez wrote and performed "The Story of Bangladesh" at the Concert for Bangladesh, Madison Square Garden in 1971. This song was based on the Pakistan Army crackdown on unarmed sleeping Bengali students at Dhaka University on March 25, 1971, which ignited the prolonged nine-month Bangladesh Liberation War.^[22] The song was later entitled "The Song of Bangladesh" and released in a 1972 album from Chandos Music.^[23]

During this period, in late 1971, she reunited with Schickele to record two tracks, "Rejoice in the Sun" and "Silent Running" for the science-fiction film, Silent Running. The two songs were issued as a single on Decca (32890). In addition, another LP was released on Decca (DL 7-9188), and was later reissued by Varese Sarabande on black (STV-81072) and green (VC-81072) vinyl. In 1998 a limited release on CD by the "Valley Forge Record Groupe" was released.

Where Are You Now, My Son? (1973) featured a 23-minute title song which took up all of the B-side of the album. Half spoken word poem and half tape-recorded sounds, the song documented Baez's visit to Hanoi, North Vietnam, in December 1972, during which she and her traveling companions survived the 11-day long Christmas Bombings campaign over Hanoi and Haiphong.^[24] (See Vietnam War in Civil rights section below.)

Gracias a la Vida (1974) (the title song written and first performed by Chilean folk singer Violeta Parra) followed and was a success in both the U.S. and Latin America. It included the song "Cucurrucucú paloma". Flirting with mainstream pop music as well as writing her own songs for Diamonds & Rust (1975), the album became the highest selling of Baez's career and spawned a second top-ten single in the form of the title track.

After Gulf Winds (1976), an album of entirely self-composed songs, and From Every Stage (1976), a live album that had Baez performing songs "from every stage" of her career, Baez again parted ways with a record label when she moved to CBS Records for Blowin' Away (1977) and Honest Lullaby (1979).

1980s and 1990s[link]

In 1980, Baez was given honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees by Antioch University and Rutgers University for her political activism and the "universality of her music". In 1983, she appeared on the Grammy Awards, performing Dylan's anthemic "Blowin' in the Wind", a song she first performed twenty years earlier.

Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Carlos Santana, performing in May 1984, Hamburg.

Baez also played a significant role in the 1985 Live Aid concert for African famine relief, opening the U.S. segment of the show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has toured on behalf of many other causes, including Amnesty International's 1986 A Conspiracy of Hope tour and a guest spot on their subsequent Human Rights Now! tour.

Baez found herself without an American label for the release of Live Europe 83 (1984), which was released in Europe and Canada, but not released commercially in the U.S. She did not have an American release until the album Recently (1987) on Gold Castle Records.

In 1987, Baez's second autobiography called And a Voice to Sing With was published and became a New York Times bestseller. That same year, she traveled to the Middle East to visit with and sing songs of peace for Israel and the Palestinians.

In May 1989, Baez performed at a music festival in communist Czechoslovakia, called Bratislavská lýra. While there, she met future Czechoslovakian president Václav Havel, whom she let carry her guitar so as to prevent his arrest by government agents. During her performance, she greeted members of Charter 77, a dissident human-rights group, which resulted in her microphone being shut off abruptly. Baez then proceeded to sing a cappella for the nearly four thousand gathered. Havel cited her as a great inspiration and influence in that country's Velvet Revolution, the revolution in which the Soviet-dominated communist government there was overthrown.

Baez recorded two more albums with Gold Castle, Speaking of Dreams, (1989) and Brothers in Arms (1991). She then landed a contract with a major label, Virgin Records, recording Play Me Backwards (1992) for Virgin shortly before the company was purchased by EMI. She then switched to Guardian, with whom she produced a live album, Ring Them Bells (1995), and a studio album, Gone from Danger (1997).

In 1993, at the invitation of Refugees International and sponsored by the Soros Foundation, she traveled to the war-torn Bosnia and Herzegovina region of then-Yugoslavia in an effort to help bring more attention to the suffering there. She was the first major artist to perform in Sarajevo since the outbreak of the Yugoslav civil war.

In October of that year, Baez became the first major artist to perform in a professional concert presentation on Alcatraz Island (a former U.S. federal prison) in San Francisco, California, in a benefit for her sister Mimi's Bread and Roses organization. She later returned for another concert in 1996.

2000 to present[link]

Beginning in 2001, Baez has had several successful long-term engagements as a lead character at San Francisco's Teatro ZinZanni.^[25] In August 2001, Vanguard began re-releasing Baez's first 13 albums, which she recorded for the label between 1960 and 1971. The reissues, being released through Vanguard's Original Master Series, feature digitally restored sound, unreleased bonus songs, new and original artwork, and new liner-note essays written by Arthur Levy. Likewise, her six A&M albums were reissued in 2003.

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival 2005 at Golden Gate Park.

In 2003, Baez was also a judge for the third annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.^[26] Her album, Dark Chords on a Big Guitar (2003), features songs by composers half her age, while a November 2004 performance at New York City's Bowery Ballroom was recorded for a live release, Bowery Songs (2005).

On October 1, 2005, she performed at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. Then, on January 13, 2006, Baez performed at the funeral of Lou Rawls, where she led Jesse Jackson, Sr., Wonder, and others in the singing of "Amazing Grace". On June 6, 2006, Baez joined Bruce Springsteen on stage at his San Francisco concert, where the two performed the rolling anthem "Pay Me My Money Down". In September 2006, Baez contributed a live, retooled version of her classic song "Sweet Sir Galahad" to a Starbucks's exclusive XM Artist Confidential album. In the new version, she changed the lyric "here's to the dawn of their days" to "here's to the dawn of her days", as a tribute to her late sister Mimi, about whom Baez wrote the song in 1969. Later on, October 8, 2006, she appeared as a special surprise guest at the opening ceremony of the Forum 2000 international conference in Prague, Czech Republic. Her performance was kept secret from former Czech Republic President Havel until the moment she appeared on stage. Havel was a great admirer of both Baez and her work. During Baez's next visit to Prague, in April 2007, the two met again when she performed in front of a sold-out house at Prague's Lucerna Hall, a building erected by Havel's grandfather. On December 2, 2006, she made a guest appearance at the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir's Christmas Concert at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California. Her participation included versions of "Let Us Break Bread Together" and "Amazing Grace". She also joined the choir in the finale of "O Holy Night".

Joan Baez concert in Dresden, Germany, July 2008

In February 2007, Proper Records reissued her live album Ring Them Bells (1995), which featured duets with artists ranging from Dar Williams and Mimi Fariña to the Indigo Girls and Mary Chapin Carpenter. The reissue features a 16-page booklet and six unreleased live tracks from the original recording sessions, including "Love Song to a Stranger", "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere", "Geordie", "Gracias a la Vida", "The Water Is Wide" and "Stones in the Road", bringing the total tracklisting to 21 songs (on two discs). In addition, Baez recorded a duet of "Jim Crow" with John Mellencamp which appears on his album Freedom's Road (2007). He has called the album a "Woody Guthrie rock album". The recording was heavily influenced by albums from the 1960s, which is why he invited an icon from that era to appear with him.^{[citation needed]} Also in February 2007, she received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. The day after receiving the honor, she appeared at the Grammy Awards ceremony and introduced a performance by the Dixie Chicks.^{[citation needed]}

August 13, 2009, Seattle.

September 9, 2008, saw the release of the studio album Day After Tomorrow, produced by Steve Earle and featuring three of his songs.^[27][28] On June 29, 2008, Baez performed on the Acoustic Stage at the Glastonbury Festival in Glastonbury, U.K.,^[29] playing out the final set to a packed audience.^{[citation needed]} On July 6, 2008, she played at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland. During the concert's finale, she spontaneously danced on stage with a band of African percussionists.^[30]

On August 2, 2009, Baez played at the 50th Newport Folk Festival, which also marked the 50th anniversary of her breakthrough performance at the first festival.^[31] On October 14, 2009, PBS aired an episode of its documentary series, American Masters, entitled, Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound. It was produced and directed by Mary Wharton. A DVD and CD of the sound track were released at the same time.^[13]

Social and political involvement[link]

1950s[link]

In 1956, Baez first heard Martin Luther King, Jr. speak about nonviolence, civil rights and social change which brought tears to her eyes.^[13] Several years later, the two became friends,^[13] with Baez participating in many of the demonstrations that King had planned and organized.

In 1957, at age 16, Joan committed her first act of civil disobedience by refusing to leave her Palo Alto High School classroom in Palo Alto, California for an air-raid drill. After the bells rang, students were to leave the school, make their way to their home air-raid shelters, and pretend they were surviving an atomic blast. Protesting what she believed to be misleading government propaganda, Baez refused to leave her seat when instructed and continued reading a book. For this act she was punished by school officials, and was ostracized by the local population for being a supposed "Communist infiltrator."

Civil Rights[link]

The early years of Joan Baez's career saw the civil-rights movement in the U.S. become a prominent issue. Her performance of "We Shall Overcome", the civil-rights anthem, at King's 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom permanently linked her to the song. Baez again sang "We Shall Overcome" in Sproul Plaza during the mid-1960s Free Speech Movement demonstrations at the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, California, and at many other rallies and protests.

Her recording of the song "Birmingham Sunday" (1964),written by her brother-in-law, Richard Fariña, was used in the opening of 4 Little Girls (1997), Spike Lee's documentary film about the four young victims killed in the 1963 bombing.

Baez joined King on his 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, singing for the marchers in the town of St. Jude, Alabama, as they camped the night before arriving in Montgomery. She linked arms with King to protect African-American schoolchildren in Grenada, Mississippi who were trying to attend "white" schools.^{[clarification needed]}

In 1966, she stood in the fields alongside César Chávez and California's migrant farm workers as they fought for fair wages and safe working conditions and performed at a benefit on behalf of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union in December of that year. In 1972, she was at Chávez's side during his 24-day fast to draw attention to the farmworkers struggle and can be seen singing "We Shall Overcome" during that fast in the film about the UFW, "Si Se Puede" ("It can be done").^{[clarification needed]}

Vietnam War[link]

Highly visible in civil-rights marches, Baez became more vocal about her disagreement with the Vietnam War. In 1964, she publicly endorsed resisting taxes by withholding sixty percent of her 1963 income taxes. In 1964, she founded the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence (along with her mentor Sandperl) and encouraged draft resistance at her concerts.

Baez was arrested twice in 1967^[33] for blocking the entrance of the Armed Forces Induction Center in Oakland, California and spent over a month in jail. (See also David Harris section below.)

She was a frequent participant in anti-war marches and rallies, including:

• numerous protests in New York City organized by the Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee, starting with the March 1966 Fifth Avenue Peace Parade,^[34]
• a free 1967 concert at the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., that had been opposed by the Daughters of the American Revolution which attracted a crowd of 30,000 to hear her anti-war message,^[35]
• the 1969 Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam protests.

There were many others, culminating in Ochs's The War Is Over celebration in New York City in May 1975.^[36]

During the Christmas season 1972, Baez joined a peace delegation traveling to North Vietnam, both to address human rights in the region, and to deliver Christmas mail to American prisoners of war. During her time there, she was caught in the U.S. military's "Christmas bombing" of Hanoi, North Vietnam, during which the city was bombed for eleven straight days.

Her disquiet at the human-rights violations of communist Vietnam made her increasingly critical of its government and she organized the May 30, 1979, publication, of a full-page advertisement (published in four major U.S. newspapers)^[37] in which the communists were described as having created a nightmare.

Human rights[link]

Baez was instrumental in founding the USA section of Amnesty International in the 1970s, and has remained an active supporter of the organization.

Baez' experiences regarding Vietnam's human-rights violations ultimately led her to found her own human-rights group, Humanitas International, whose focus was to target oppression wherever it occurred, criticizing right and left-wing régimes equally.

In 1976, she was awarded the Thomas Merton Award for her ongoing activism.^[38]

She toured Chile, Brazil and Argentina in 1981, but was prevented from performing in any of the three countries, for fear her criticism of their human-rights practices would reach mass audiences if she were given a podium. While there, she was kept under surveillance and subjected to death threats. A film of the ill-fated tour, There but for Fortune, was shown on PBS in 1982.

In 1989, after the Tiananmen Massacre in Beijing Baez wrote and released the song "China" to condemn the Chinese Communist Party for its bloody slaughter of thousands of student protesters who called for establishment of democratic republicanism.

In a second trip to Southeast Asia, Baez assisted in an effort to take food and medicine into the western regions of Cambodia, and participated in a United Nations Humanitarian Conference on Kampuchea.

On July 17, 2006, Baez received the Distinguished Leadership Award from the Legal Community Against Violence. At the annual dinner event they honored her for her lifetime of work against violence of all kinds.

Opposing death penalty[link]

In December 2005, Baez appeared and sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" at the California protest at the San Quentin State Prison against the execution of Tookie Williams.^[39][40] She had previously performed the same song at San Quentin at the 1992 vigil protesting the execution of Robert Alton Harris, the first man to be executed in California after the death penalty was reinstated. She subsequently lent her prestige to the campaign opposing execution of Troy Davis by the State of Georgia.^[41][42]

Gay and lesbian rights[link]

Baez has also been prominent in the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. In 1978, she performed at several benefit concerts to defeat the Briggs Initiative, which proposed banning all gay people from teaching in the public schools of California. Later that same year, she participated in memorial marches for the assassinated San Francisco city supervisor, Harvey Milk, who was openly gay.

In the 1990s, she appeared with her friend Janis Ian at a benefit for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a gay lobbying organization, and performed at the San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride March.

Her song "Altar Boy and the Thief" from Blowin' Away (1977) was written as a dedication to her gay fanbase.^{[citation needed]}

Iran's people[link]

On June 25, 2009, Baez created a special version of "We Shall Overcome" with a few lines of Persian lyrics in support of peaceful protests by Iranian people. She recorded it in her home and posted the video on YouTube^[43] and on her personal website. She dedicated the song "Joe Hill", to the people of Iran during her concert at Merrill Auditorium, Portland, Maine on July 31, 2009.

Environmental causes[link]

On Earth Day 1999, Baez and Bonnie Raitt honored environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill with Raitt's Arthur M. Sohcot Award in person on her 180-foot (55 m)-high redwood treetop platform, where Hill had camped to protect ancient redwoods in the Headwaters Forest from logging.^[44]

War in Iraq[link]

In early 2003, Baez performed at two rallies of hundreds of thousands of people in San Francisco protesting the U.S. invasion of Iraq (as she had earlier done before smaller crowds in 1991 to protest the Gulf War).

In August 2003, she was invited by Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle to join them in London, U.K., at the Concert For a Landmine-Free World.

In the summer of 2004, Joan joined Michael Moore's "Slacker Uprising Tour" on American college campuses, encouraging young people to get out and vote for peace candidates in the upcoming national election.

In August 2005, Baez appeared at the Texas anti-war protest that had been started by Cindy Sheehan.

Poverty[link]

On May 23, 2006, Baez once again joined Julia "Butterfly" Hill, this time in a "tree sit" in a giant tree on the site of the South Central Farm in a poor neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles, California. Baez and Hill were hoisted into the tree, where they remained overnight. The women, in addition to many other activists and celebrities, were protesting the imminent eviction of the community farmers and demolition of the site, which is the largest urban farm in the state. Because many of the South Central Farmers are immigrants from Central America, Baez sang several songs from her 1974 Spanish-language album, Gracias a la Vida, including the title track and "No Nos Moverán" ("We Shall Not Be Moved").

2008 Presidential election[link]

	"We Shall Overcome" Joan Baez performs "We Shall Overcome" at the White House in front of President Barack Obama, at a celebration of music from the civil rights era (February 9, 2010). "We Shall Overcome" Audio Only
Problems listening to these files? See media help.

Throughout most of her career, Baez remained apprehensive about involving herself in party politics. However, on February 3, 2008, Baez wrote a letter to the editor at the San Francisco Chronicle endorsing Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. She noted: "Through all those years, I chose not to engage in party politics.... At this time, however, changing that posture feels like the responsible thing to do. If anyone can navigate the contaminated waters of Washington, lift up the poor, and appeal to the rich to share their wealth, it is Sen. Barack Obama."^[45]

Playing at the Glastonbury Festival in June, Baez said during the introduction of a song that one reason she likes Obama is because he reminds her of another old friend of hers: Martin Luther King, Jr.^[46]

Although a highly political figure throughout most of her career, Baez had never publicly endorsed a major political party candidate prior to Obama. She performed at The White House on February 10, 2010 as part of an evening celebrating the music associated with the civil rights movement, performing "We Shall Overcome".^[47]

Joan Baez Award[link]

On March 18, 2011 Joan Baez was honored by Amnesty International at their 50th Anniversary Annual General Meeting in San Francisco. The tribute to Joan Baez was the inaugural event for the Amnesty International Joan Baez Award ^[48] for Outstanding Inspirational Service in the Global Fight for Human Rights. Joan Baez was presented with the first award in recognition of her human rights work with Amnesty International and beyond, and the inspiration she has given activists around the world. In future years, the award is to be presented to an artist - music, film, sculpture, paint or other medium - who has similarly helped advance human rights.

Occupy Wall Street[link]

On November 11, 2011, Joan Baez played as part of a musical concert for the protestors at Occupy Wall Street.^[49] Her three-song set included "Joe Hill", a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Salt of the Earth" and her own composition "Where's My Apple Pie?".

Personal life[link]

Early relationships[link]

Baez's first real boyfriend was Michael New, a young man whom she met at college. Years later in 1979, he inspired her song "Michael". New was a fellow student from Trinidad, West Indies, who, like Baez, attended classes only occasionally. The two spent a considerable amount of time together, but Baez was unable to balance her blossoming career and her relationship. The two bickered and made up repeatedly, but it was apparent to Baez that New was beginning to resent her success and new-found local celebrity. One night she saw him kissing another woman on a street corner. Despite this, the relationship remained intact for several years, long after the two moved to California together in 1960.

Bob Dylan[link]

Joan Baez with Bob Dylan at the civil rights March on Washington, August 28, 1963.

Baez first met Dylan in 1961 at Gerde's Folk City in New York City's Greenwich Village. At the time, Baez had already released her debut album and her popularity as the emerging "Queen of Folk" was on the rise. Baez was initially unimpressed with the "urban hillbilly", but was impressed with one of Dylan's first compositions, "Song to Woody", and remarked that she would like to record it.

At the start, Dylan was more interested in Baez's younger sister, Mimi, but under the glare of media scrutiny that began to surround Baez and Dylan, their relationship began to develop into something more.

By 1963, Baez had already released three albums, two of which had been certified gold, and she invited Dylan on stage to perform alongside her at the Newport Folk Festival. The two performed the Dylan composition "With God on Our Side", a performance that set the stage for many more duets like it in the months and years to come. Typically while on tour, Baez would invite Dylan to sing on stage partly by himself and partly with her, much to the chagrin of her fans.^[13]

Before meeting Dylan, Baez's topical songs were very few: "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream", "We Shall Overcome", and an assortment of negro spirituals. Baez would later say that Dylan's songs seemed to update the topics of protest and justice.

By the time of Dylan's 1965 tour of the U.K., their relationship had slowly begun to fizzle out after they had been romantically involved off and on for nearly two years. The tour and simultaneous disintegration of their relationship was documented in D.A. Pennebaker's documentary film Dont Look Back (1967).

Baez toured with Dylan as a performer on his Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975–76. She sang four songs with Dylan on the live album of the tour, The Bootleg Series Vol. 5: Bob Dylan Live 1975, The Rolling Thunder Revue, released in 2002. Baez appeared with Dylan in the one hour TV special, Hard Rain, filmed at Fort Collins, Colorado, in May 1976. Baez also starred as 'The Woman In White' in the film Renaldo and Clara (1978), directed by Bob Dylan and filmed during the Rolling Thunder Revue. Dylan and Baez toured together again in 1984 along with Carlos Santana.

Baez discussed her relationship with Dylan in Martin Scorsese's documentary film No Direction Home (2005), and in the PBS American Masters biography of Baez, How Sweet the Sound (2009).

Baez penned at least three songs about Dylan. In "To Bobby", written in 1972, she urged Dylan to return to political activism, while in "Diamonds & Rust", the title track from her 1975 album, she revisited her feelings for him in warm, yet direct terms.^[50] "Winds of the Old Days", also on the Diamonds & Rust album, is a bittersweet reminiscence about her time with "Bobby".

References to Baez in Dylan's songs are far less clear. Baez herself has suggested that she was the subject of both "Visions of Johanna" and "Mama, You Been on My Mind", although the latter was more likely about his relationship with Suze Rotolo.^[51][52] As for "Visions of Johanna", "She Belongs to Me" and other songs alleged to have been written about Baez, neither Dylan nor biographers such as Clinton Heylin and Michael Gray have had anything definitive to say one way or the other regarding the subject of these songs.

David Harris[link]

In October 1967, Baez, her mother, and nearly 70 other women were arrested at the Oakland, California, Armed Forces Induction Center for blocking the doorways of the building to prevent entrance by young inductees, and in support of young men who refused military induction. They were incarcerated in the Santa Rita Jail, and it was here that Baez met David Harris, who was kept on the men's side but who still managed to visit with Baez regularly.

The two formed a close bond upon their release and Baez moved into his draft-resistance commune in the hills above Stanford, California. The pair had known each other for three months when they decided to wed. After confirming the news to The Associated Press, media outlets began dedicating ample press to the impending nuptials (at one point, Time magazine referred to it as the "Wedding of the Century").

After finding a pacifist preacher, a church outfitted with peace signs and writing a blend of Episcopalian and Quaker wedding vows, Baez and Harris married each other in New York City on March 26, 1968. Her friend Judy Collins sang at the ceremony. After the wedding, Baez and Harris moved into a home in the Los Altos Hills on 10 acres (40,000 m²) of land called Struggle Mountain, part of a commune, where they tended gardens and were strict vegetarians.

A short time later, Harris refused induction to the armed forces and was indicted. On July 16, 1969, Harris was taken by federal marshals to prison.^[53] Baez was visibly pregnant in public in the months that followed, most notably at Woodstock Festival, where she performed a handful of songs in the early morning. The documentary film Carry It On was produced during this period, and was released in 1970.^[54] The film's behind-the-scenes looks at Harris's views and arrest and Baez on her subsequent performance tour was positively reviewed in Time Magazine and the New York Times.^[55][56]

Among the songs Baez wrote about this period of her life are "A Song for David", "Myths", "Prison Trilogy (Billy Rose)" and "Fifteen Months" (the amount of time Harris was imprisoned).

Their son, Gabriel, was born in December 1969. Harris was released from Texas prison after 15 months, but the relationship began to dissolve and the couple divorced amicably in 1973. They shared custody of Gabriel, who primarily lived with Baez.^[57] Explaining the split, Baez wrote in her autobiography, "I am made to live alone."^[58] Baez and Harris remained on friendly terms throughout the years; they reunited on-camera for the 2009 American Masters documentary for PBS. As of 2012^[update], she has not remarried. Their son Gabriel is a drummer and occasionally tours with his mother.

Later-life relationships[link]

She dated Apple Computer cofounder Steve Jobs during the early 1980s.^[59] A number of sources have stated that Jobs had considered asking Baez to marry him, except that her age at the time (early 40s) made the possibility of their having children unlikely.^[60] Baez mentioned Jobs in the acknowledgments in her 1987 memoir, And a Voice to Sing With, and performed at the memorial for him in 2011.

Recent years[link]

Baez is a resident of Woodside, California, and lives with her mother in a house that has a backyard tree house in which she spends a good deal of time meditating, writing, and "being close to nature."^[61]

Baez's son, percussionist Gabriel Harris, has been a member of her touring band in recent years; he and his wife Pamela live with their daughter Jasmine, in close proximity to Baez' home in Woodside.

Popular culture[link]

• The comedy album National Lampoon's Radio Dinner (1972) includes a Baez parody, "Pull the Triggers, Niggers" (deliberately misspelled as "Pull the Tregroes" on the album's outside liner notes), performed by Baez sound-alike Diana Reed. The satiric song made specific reference to Baez's ex-boyfriend Dylan's defense of Black Panther and convicted murderer, George Jackson.
• A character based on Baez appears in I'm Not There and is portrayed by Julianne Moore.
• "Here's to You" (music by Ennio Morricone, lyrics by Baez), a song Baez originally performed for the Italian film Sacco e Vanzetti (1971), became a hymn for the 1960s and 1970s civil-rights movement. It also appears on the soundtrack for the film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004). The song is also played over the credits of the quasi-documentary film Deutschland im Herbst (1977) and was recently used in the video game Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
• Cartoonist Al Capp, creator of the comic strip Li'l Abner, during the 1960s satirized Baez as "Joanie Phoanie". Joanie was an unabashed communist radical who sang songs of class warfare while hypocritically traveling in a limousine and charging outrageous performance fees to impoverished orphans.^[62] Capp had this character singing bizarre songs such as "A Tale of Bagels and Bacon" and "Molotov Cocktails for Two". Although Baez was upset by the parody in 1966, she admits to being more amused in recent years. "I wish I could have laughed at this at the time", she wrote in a caption under one of the strips, reprinted in her autobiography. "Mr. Capp confused me considerably. I'm sorry he's not alive to read this, it would make him chuckle".^[63] Capp stated at the time, ""Joanie Phoanie is a repulsive, egomaniacal, un-American, non-taxpaying horror, I see no resemblance to Joan Baez whatsoever, but if Miss Baez wants to prove it, let her."^[64]
• Baez was featured in the Joan Didion essay "Where the Kissing Never Stops" (1966), in Didion's compilation Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968).
• Baez has been lampooned multiple times on Saturday Night Live by comedienne Nora Dunn. One skit features a game show entitled Make Joan Baez Laugh! where a dour Baez is ushered onstage while celebrity guests try their hand at getting her to a crack a smile.

Discography[link]

References[link]

Steave Beeve Rashondolla

Further reading[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Joan Baez

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Joan Baez

Main links

• Joan Baez — official website
• Joan Baez in Vietnam 1972
• Joan Baez page by Richard L. Hess
• "Joan Baez: The Folk Heroine Mellows With Age" 1984 article and interview, reprinted in 2007 by Crawdaddy!
• Ira Sandperl's web site including photos with Baez
• “Carry It On”, 1970 documentary film of Joan Baez and David Harris produced by The New Film Company, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Joan Baez in Palo Alto

Video links

• It Ain't Me Babe (Live 1965)
• End of tour interview with Youth Peace Ambassador (November 21, 2008)
• Joan Baez BBC Concert Live 1965

Audio links

• Joan Baez interviewed on the Pop Chronicles (1969).