page_title: Tom Waits
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Tom Waits / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: English: tom waits concert
context_page_description: Thomas Alan Waits is an American singer, songwriter, musician, composer, and actor. His lyrics often focus on the underbelly of society and are delivered in his trademark deep, gravelly voice. He worked primarily in jazz during the 1970s, but his music since the 1980s has reflected greater influence from blues, rock, vaudeville, and experimental genres.
  Waits was born and raised in a middle-class family in Pomona, California. Inspired by the work of Bob Dylan and the Beat Generation, he began singing on the San Diego folk music circuit as a teenager. He relocated to Los Angeles in 1972, where he worked as a songwriter before signing a recording contract with Asylum Records. His first albums were the jazz-oriented Closing Time and The Heart of Saturday Night, which reflected his lyrical interest in nightlife, poverty, and criminality. He repeatedly toured the United States, Europe, and Japan, and attracted greater critical recognition and commercial success with Small Change, Blue Valentine, and Heartattack and Vine. He produced the soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola's film One from the Heart, and subsequently made cameo appearances in several Coppola films.
context_section_description: During the 1970s, he had a brief relationship with the comedian Elayne Boosler, an intermittent relationship with Bette Midler, as well as a relationship with Rickie Lee Jones.
  In 1980, Waits married his wife and frequent collaborator, Kathleen Brennan. They live in Sonoma County, California,  and have three children: Kellesimone (born 1983), Casey (born 1985) and Sullivan (born 1993). After he married and had children, Waits became increasingly reclusive. Safeguarding the privacy of his family life became very important to him.
  During interviews, he deflected questions about his personal life, and refused to sanction any biography. When Barney Hoskyns was researching his unauthorized 2009 biography "Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits", Waits and his wife asked people not to talk to him. Hoskyns believed that it was Brennan who was responsible for the "wall of inaccessibility" surrounding Waits.
caption: Waits performing in 2008
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