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Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Tom Waits on songs and songwriters | Far Out Magazine

Tom Waits picked his 20 favourite albums of all time


FAROUT Magazine 2023

 "For a songwriter, Dylan is as essential as a hammer and nails and a saw are to a carpenter. I like my music with the rinds and the seeds and pulp left in – so the bootlegs I obtained in the sixties and seventies, where the noise and grit of the tapes became inseparable from the music, are essential to me.” 

Tom Waits

Tom Waits’ 20 favourite albums:

In the Wee Small Hours – Frank Sinatra

Solo Monk – Thelonious Monk

Trout Mask Replica – Captain Beefheart 

Exile On Main Street – The Rolling Stones

The Sinking of the Titanic – Gavin Bryers

The Basement Tapes – Bob Dylan

Lounge Lizards – Lounge Lizards

Rum Sodomy and the Lash – The Pogues

I’m Your Man – Leonard Cohen

The Specialty Sessions – Little Richard

Startime – James Brown

Bohemian-Moravian Bands – Texas-Czech

The Yellow Shark – Frank Zappa

Passion for Opera Aria

Rant in E Minor – Bill Hicks

Prison Songs: Murderous Home – Alan Lomax Collection

Cubanos Postizos – Marc Ribot

Houndog – Houndog

Purple Onion – Les Claypool

The Delivery Man – Elvis Costello

"Being inspired by Bob Dylan and The Beat Generation, Waits would later move to Los Angeles, where he signed his first recording contract with Asylum Records. The development of Waits’ sound would gradually move closer to rock, blues and experimental genres, so it was clear that he would cite Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart as an album that had a significant impact on his life.

“The roughest diamond in the mine, his musical inventions are made of bone and mud,” Waits said of Beefheart’s album. “Enter the strange matrix of his mind and lose yours. This is indispensable for the serious listener. An expedition into the centre of the earth, this is the high jump record that’ll never be beat, it’s a merlot reduction sauce. He takes da bait. Dante doing the buck and wing at a Skip James suku jump. Drink once and thirst no more.” 

Tue 31 October 2023 15:56, UK 




I have eight of these amongst the collection down in the vaults (down past the dungeon and turn right by the Ha-ha) Despite my tutor at Art School being on his list I have to disagree with Lee here as "perfectly balanced” “neatly constructed”  a list as its possible to get? 
Nope it is ODD!
 Marc Ribot? Les Claypool? Lounge Lizards? ( I own this one but top twenty in anyone’s collection? I think not?! 
Despite the mention of Dylan being as indispensable as "a hammer and nails" - the Basement Tapes? Odd and perverse choice I thought . . . . .

How about you? Discuss . . . .aaaaaand GO!
Gavin Bryars - Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet (feat. Tom Waits)

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