In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie. The term is also used for feature length, direct-to-video and television movie productions.

Description

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute, and the British Film Institute all define a feature as a film with a running time of 40 minutes or longer. The Centre National de la Cinématographie in France defines it as a 35 mm film longer than 1,600 metres, which is exactly 58 minutes and 29 seconds for sound films, and the Screen Actors Guild gives a minimum running time of at least 80 minutes. Today, a feature film is usually between 80 and 210 minutes; a children's film is usually between 60 and 120 minutes. An anthology film is a fixed sequence of short subjects with a common theme, combined into a feature film.

History

The term evolved from when there was a series of short subjects before the main film. The shorts would typically include newsreels, serials, animated cartoons and live-action comedies and documentaries. These types of short films would precede the featured presentation - the film given the most prominent billing and running multiple reels. There was no sudden jump in the running times of films to the present-day definitions of feature-length; the "featured" film on a film program in the early 1910s gradually expanded from two to three to four reels.

Early proto-features had been produced in America and France, but were released in individual scenes, leaving the exhibitor the option of running them together. The American company S. Lubin released a Passion Play in January 1903 in 31 parts, totaling about 60 minutes. The French company Pathé Frères released a different Passion Play, ''La Vie et la passion de Jésus Christ'', in May 1903 in 32 parts running about 44 minutes. There were also full-length records of boxing matches, such as ''The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight'' (1897).

Defined by length, the first dramatic feature film was the Australian 70-minute film ''The Story of the Kelly Gang'' (1906). Similarly, the first European feature was the 90-minute film ''L'Enfant prodigue'' (France, 1907), although that was an unmodified record of a stage play; Europe's first feature adapted directly for the screen, ''Les Misérables'', came from France in 1909. The first Russian feature was ''Defence of Sevastopol'' in 1911. The first UK features were the documentary ''With Our King and Queen Through India'' (1912), filmed in Kinemacolor, and ''Oliver Twist'' (1912). The first American features were a different production of ''Oliver Twist'' (1912), ''From the Manger to the Cross'' (1912), and ''Richard III'' (1912), the latter starring actor Frederick Warde. The first Asian feature was Japan's ''The Life Story of Tasuke Shiobara'' (1912), the first Indian feature was ''Raja Harishchandra'' (1913), the first South American feature was Brazil's ''O Crime dos Banhados'' (1913), and the first African feature was South Africa's ''Die Voortrekkers'' (1916). 1913 also saw China's first feature film, Zhang Shichuan's ''Nan Fu Nan Qi''.

By 1915 over 600 features were produced annually in the United States. The most prolific year of U.S. feature production was 1921, with 682 releases; the lowest number of releases was in 1963, with 213. Between 1922 and 1970, the U.S. and Japan alternated as leaders in the quantity of feature film production. Since 1971, the country with the highest feature output has been India, which produces a thousand films in more than twelve Indian languages each year.

See also

Films considered the greatest ever

List of films considered the worst

Feature length

Film preservation

References

Category:Film production Category:Films by type

az:Bədii film da:Spillefilm de:Spielfilm es:Largometraje fr:Long métrage it:Lungometraggio hu:Játékfilm nl:Langspeelfilm ja:フィーチャー映画 no:Spillefilm pt:Longa-metragem ro:Film de lung metraj ru:Полнометражный фильм sv:Spelfilm uk:Повнометражний фільм

name	Mikhail Prokhorov
birth place	Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
residence	Moscow, Russia
citizenship	Russia
alma mater	Moscow Finance Institute
occupation	Businessman
known for	owner of the New Jersey Nets
networth	$18 billion.
height	}}

Mikhail Dmitrievitch Prokhorov (Russian: Михаил Дмитриевич Прохоров; born May 3, 1965) is a Russian billionaire entrepreneur and owner of the American basketball team, the New Jersey Nets. After graduating from the Moscow Finance Institute he made his name in the financial sector and went on to become one of Russia's leading industrialists in the precious metals sector. While he was running Norilsk Nickel, the company became the world's largest producer of nickel and palladium. He is currently chairman of Polyus Gold, Russia's largest gold producer, and President of ONEXIM Group.

Prokhorov is the third richest man from Russia and the 39th richest man in the world according to the 2010 Forbes list with a fortune estimated at $18 billion as per the ''Forbes Billionaire List''.

Family

Born in Moscow to Dmitry and Tamara Prokhorov, he has one sibling, an elder sister, Irina. His paternal grandparents were impoverished kulaks. His maternal grandmother, Anna Belkina, was a microbiologist. His father was the head of the international department of the Soviet Sports Committee, which gave him the rare privilege of traveling abroad. His mother grew up in Moscow and worked as an engineer for a university research group specializing in plastics. Prokhorov's father and mother died within a year of each other from heart disease; both were in their late 50s.

Career

Early years

In 1989, he graduated with honours from the Finance University under the Government of the Russian Federation, known at the time as the Moscow Finance Institute. From 1989 to 1992, Prokhorov worked in a management position at the International Bank for Economic Cooperation, and afterwards shortly served as head of Management Board of the International Finance Company (MFK). In 1993, aged 28, during the largely un-regulated privatization of former state-controlled industries after the collapse of the USSR, Prokhorov (together with Vladimir Potanin) engineered the acquisition of Norilsk Nickel by Onexim Bank, of which he was then chairman of the board.

Norilsk Nickel

After selling off most of Norilsk's non-mining assets, Prokhorov moved to modernize a complicated, expensive business venture which required icebreakers to transport metal over the frozen Arctic region. Prokhorov invested in an innovative Finnish freighter that did not require icebreakers. Norilsk Nickel is headquartered in the Siberian city of the same name. Environmental and labor conditions are harsh there, and pollution remains a problem; Prokhorov has invested heavily in pollution control. He converted Norilsk Nickel's gold-mining interests into the $8.5 billion corporation Polyus Gold, Russia's largest gold producer, of which he is chairman of the board.

Prokhorov resigned as Norilsk CEO in February 2007 and declared his intention to separate his assets from those of long-time partner Vladimir Potanin. The two engaged in protracted negotiations to separate the conglomerate Interros, co-owned by the two, into separate holdings. By the end of 2009, the only major asset jointly owned by the two remains the development company JSC Open Investments, which is hard to value due to a volatile situation on the Moscow real estate market.

ONEXIM Group

In May 2007, following the decision to exit Interros, Prokhorov launched the private investment fund ONEXIM Group, with assets valued at $17 billion at the time. As the de-merger from Interros proceeded, and as other industries caught Prokhorov's attention, the group rapidly changed its investment profile. In April 2008, Prokhorov sold his most valuable asset - a 25% plus two shares stake in Norilsk Nickel - to United Company RUSAL, another mining conglomerate controlled by fellow billionaire Oleg Deripaska, in exchange for some 14% of Rusal stock, about $5 billion in cash and an obligation to pay over $2 billion more. The deal has been singled out as a major success for Prokhorov as only three months later, following a dip in oil prices, a disastrous stock market crash halved the value of most Russian companies, including Norilsk. He emerged as one of the very few businessmen to have cashed out in time. However, his wealth has also been affected, as the value of his remaining interests in various companies (including Rusal and Open Investments) declined sharply, and as the remaining payment from Rusal had to be postponed.

In September 2008, ONEXIM Group acquired 50% of Renaissance Capital, a major Russian investment bank which has reportedly encountered liquidity problems. ONEXIM also purchased a small bank, renaming it IFC (for the bank which Prokhorov had run in the early 1990s).

One of ONEXIM Group's divisions focuses on the development of nanotechnology investing in high-technology projects such as white LEDs. One of the key areas of development is the production of materials with ultra–tiny structures used in energy generation and medicine. In that purpose in 2008 ONEXIM purchased Optogan.

In June 2007, then-Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov announced the formation of the Government Council for Nanotechnology, to oversee the development of nanotechnology in the country. Prokhorov was one of 15 individuals appointed to the council, which was to be chaired by then-First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov.

A high-profile media venture is JV!, a media group led by the publisher of ''Kommersant'', Vladimir Yakovlev; the group publishes, among other things, such magazines targeted at the wealthy as ''Snob'' and ''Russian Pioneer''.

In July 2009, the shareholders of RBC Information Systems agreed with ONEXIM Group of Mikhail Prokhorov to sell the latest issue of the additional 51% stake for $80 million, half of which went to pay off debts. The deal was closed in 2010. Prokhorov has business interests in mining and metallurgy (Polyus Gold, stake in Rusal), financial services (IFC-Bank, Soglassye insurance company, half of Renaissance Capital), utilities (stake in Quadra), nanotech, media (JV!) and real estate development (stake in Open Investments).

Sports and patronage

In March 2004 he founded the Cultural Initiatives Foundation (as part of the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation). It is headed by Prokhorov's elder sister, Irina, a prominent Russian publisher. At one time, he financially supported CSKA Moscow's basketball, hockey and football clubs, and is a member of the Supreme Council of the Sport Russia organisation. Prokhorov currently serves as president of the Russian Biathlon Union.

In September 2009 he made an offer to buy a controlling interest in the New Jersey Nets of the National Basketball Association and half of a project to build a new arena in Brooklyn. On May 11, 2010, the NBA approved the sale of the Nets to Prokhorov, making him majority owner of the team with an 80% stake, as well as a 45% interest in their new Barclays Center. He thus became the first non-North American and tallest (he stands 6'8") NBA owner.

A martial arts enthusiast, Prokhorov is, as of 2011, an Ambassador for Peace and Sport, a Monaco-based international organization, committed to serving peace in the world through sport.

Controversies

At a Christmas party for the Russian rich at the French Alpine resort of Courchevel in January 2007, he was arrested for allegedly arranging prostitutes for his guests. After four days he was released without charge. In September 2009, Prokhorov was officially cleared from this charge and the judicial case was dismissed. According to his blog, he even received apologies from French officials during his visit to France in November 2009.

Prokhorov made headlines in early March 2010 when he was forced to forfeit a £36 million deposit he placed on the £360 million Villa Leopolda in the French Riviera in 2008. Under French property law, once an initial sale contract has been signed, a deposit can only be refunded during a seven day cooling-off period. On March 2, 2010, a court in Nice, France ruled that the villa's owner, 71-year-old Lily Safra, widow of deceased billionaire banker Edmund Safra, could keep the £36 million deposit, plus £1 million in interest.

Regarding Prokhorov's political efforts and the Right Cause party, critical commentators claim that the entire endeavor is just a project of the Kremlin closely curated by Vladislav Surkov and that Prokorov was effectively appointed a party leader. According to them, the "puppet party" was designed to divert opposition voters by using liberal rhetoric.

Awards

In August 2006 he was awarded the Order of Friendship for his significant contribution to the growth of Russia’s economic potential, when the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, signed an order for the granting of state honours on August 18, 2006. In March 2011, he was bestowed with the French Legion of Honour. France's ambassador to Moscow, Jean de Gliniastrance, presented it at the French embassy in Moscow.

Russian politics

In May, 2011, Prokhorov announced a plan to join the leadership of the Russian pro-business political party Right Cause. While not antagonistic to the Kremlin, the party is likely to support President Dmitry Medvedev rather than Prime Minister Vladimir Putin if the latter enters the 2012 presidential race. On June 25, 2011, Prokhorov was elected to the leadership of the party at the Right Cause Party Congress of 2011. At the acceptance ceremony, Prokhorov officially criticized the present ruling tandem of Medvedev-Putin, the structure of Russia, and vowed to bring Russia back to a stable development course.

See also

List of billionaires

Ё-mobile

References

External links

Forbes billionaire topic page on Mikhail Prokhorov. Forbes.com. Accessed April 2010.

Article about his January 12, 2007 arrest

2007 ''Kommersant'' article about Prokhorov standing down as Norilsk CEO

"Mikhail Prokhorov: The Russian Is Coming", ''60 Minutes'', CBS-TV, March 28, 2010

"The N.B.A.'s Oligarch and His Power Games", ''The New York Times Magazine'', October 28, 2010

Category:1965 births Category:Living people Category:Businesspeople in metals Category:People from Moscow Category:Russian businesspeople Category:Russian billionaires Category:Russian mass media owners Category:New Jersey Nets owners Category:National Basketball Association owners

be:Міхаіл Дзмітрыевіч Прохараў be-x-old:Міхаіл Прохараў de:Michail Dmitrijewitsch Prochorow et:Mihhail Prohhorov fa:میخائیل پروکوروف fr:Mikhaïl Prokhorov ko:미하일 프로호로프 it:Michail Prochorov he:מיכאיל פרוכורוב lt:Michailas Prochorovas mk:Михаил Прохоров my:မီခေး ပရိုခိုရော့ဗ် nl:Michail Prochorov ja:ミハイル・プロホロフ pt:Mikhail Prokhorov ru:Прохоров, Михаил Дмитриевич fi:Mihail Prohorov

name	Lauren Bennett
background	solo_singer
birth name
born	June 23, 1989Kent, United Kingdom
genre	Pop, R&B
occupation	Singer, model, dancer
association acts	LMFAO, Pitbull
years active	2007–present
label	Interscope Records, Will.i.am music group
website	www.lauren-bennett.com }}

Lauren Bennett (born 23 June 1989) is a British singer, dancer, painter, photographer, and model. She is best known for her involvement with girl groups the Paradiso Girls and Pussycat Dolls and her work with Cee Lo Green and LMFAO.

Early life

Bennett was raised in Meopham, Kent and went to a song and dance school in Tunbridge Wells. She also auditioned for the third series of ''The X Factor'' in 2006 and made it to bootcamp, but got sent home.

Career

Paradiso Girls (2007–2010)

Bennett was part of a girl group called Paradiso Girls. The group consisted of seven members at its formation in 2007, but by 2008 it had dropped to five. Each member comes from a different country: Chelsea Korka from the United States, Aria Crescendo from France, Kelly Beckett from Barbados, Shar Mae Amo from the Philippines and Lauren herself from the United Kingdom. The band was signed to Interscope Records. Their debut single "Patron Tequila" featuring Lil’ Jon and Eve was released on 12 May 2009 and reached 3 on the Hot Dance Club Play Chart and 82 in Canadian Hot 100. After their second single, "Who's My B***" was unsuccessful, the group was put on an indefinite hiatus in 2010.

Solo career and The Pussycat Dolls (2010–present)

After the group split in 2010, she then went on to pursue a solo career. She featured in a remix of will.i.am's "I Got It from My Mama". She also joined in the Party Rock Tour with LMFAO. Later on that year she met Cee Lo Green, she was then featured on his album ''The Lady Killer'' on the track "Love Gun".

The following year, she was featured on LMFAO's international hit "Party Rock Anthem", which has sold over 5,000,000 digital downloads in the United States and reached number one in the U.S. for six weeks. She also is modeling for ViolentLips.

Bennett still works with Robin Antin and is featured in the Pussycat Dolls' second fitness DVD. It was confirmed on Pussycat Dolls' official Facebook that Lauren and Vanessa Curry (former Lakers Girl) are two of the new members in the group. Kristal "Lyndriette" Smith, Tiffany "Taz" Zavala are also rumored to be part of the new group. Talking to Billboard.com on the red carpet at the American Music Awards, Bennett confirmed herself as a part of the newly regrouped recording group. This makes her the first member of a brand new lineup that creator Robin Antin confirmed to Billboard was in the process of being built. "We're currently figuring out who's in the group and we're working on an album," Bennett says of the Pussycat Dolls.

Her debut solo single "I Wish I Wish" was released on 21 November 2011 via Interscope Records. The track was written by Esmée Denters, Billy Mann and produced by David Schuler.

Discography

With Paradiso Girls

Solo singles

!Year	Single	!Format	!Notes	Album
2011		Digital download		TBA

As a featured artist

Year

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Single

Chart Positions

Album

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!style="width:3em;font-size:85%"

2010

"Love Gun" (Cee Lo Green featuring Lauren Bennett)

The Lady Killer (album)>The Lady Killer''

2011

''Sorry for Party Rocking''

References

External links

Category:1989 births Category:British female singers Category:British pop singers Category:Living people Category:Pussycat Dolls members Category:Interscope Records artists

es:Lauren Bennett fa:لارن بنت fr:Lauren Bennett hu:Lauren Bennett pt:Lauren Bennett vi:Lauren Bennett

Name	Kim Jong-il
Office	Supreme Leader of North Korea
President	Kim Yong-nam
Premier	Hong Song-namPak Pong-juKim Yong-ilChoe Yong-rim
Term start	8 July 1994
Predecessor	Kim Il-sung
Office2	Chairman of the National Defence Commission of North Korea
Deputy2	Jo Myong-rok (1993–2010) Chang Sung-taek (2010–)
Term start2	9 April 1993
Predecessor2	Position established
Office3	Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army
Term start3	24 December 1991
Predecessor3	Kim Il-sung
Office4	General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea
Term start4	8 October 1997
Predecessor4	Kim Il-sung
Office5	Chairman of the Central Military Commission of Worker's Party of Korea
Term start5	8 October 1997
Predecessor5	Kim Il-sung
Birth date	February 16, 1941Vyatskoye, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (Soviet records)February 16, 1942Baekdu Mountain, Japanese Korea (North Korean records)
Party	Workers' Party of Korea
Spouse	Kim Young-sookSong Hye-rimKo Young-heeKim Ok
Children	Kim Sul-songKim Jong-namKim Jong-chulKim Jong-un
Relations	Kim Il-sung (father, deceased)Kim Jong-suk (mother, deceased)
Alma mater	Kim Il-sung UniversityUniversity of Malta
Signature	Kim Jong-il Signature.png }}

Context	north
Hangul	김정일
Hanja
Rr	Gim Jeong(-)il
Mr	Kim Chŏngil }}

Kim Jong-il, also written as Kim Jong Il, born 16 February 1941 (Soviet records) or 16 February 1942 (North Korean records), is the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). He is the Chairman of the National Defense Commission, General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, the ruling party since 1948, and the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, the fourth largest standing army in the world. In April 2009, North Korea's constitution was amended and now implicitly refers to him as the "''Supreme Leader''". He is also referred to as the "''Dear Leader''", "''our Father''", "''the General''" and "''Generalissimo''". His son Kim Jong-un was promoted to a senior position in the ruling Worker's Party and is heir apparent.

Childhood

Birth

Soviet records show that Kim Jong-il was born in the village of Vyatskoye, near Khabarovsk, in 1941, where his father, Kim Il-sung, commanded the 1st Battalion of the Soviet 88th Brigade, made up of Chinese and Korean exiles. Kim Jong-il's mother, Kim Jong-suk, was Kim Il-sung's first wife.

Kim Jong-il's official biography states that he was born in a secret military camp on Baekdu Mountain in Japanese Korea on 16 February 1942. Official biographers claim that his birth at Baekdu Mountain was foretold by a swallow, and heralded by the appearance of a double rainbow over the mountain and a new star in the heavens.

In 1945, Kim was three or four years old (depending on his birth year) when World War II ended and Korea regained independence from Japan. His father returned to Pyongyang that September, and in late November Kim returned to Korea via a Soviet ship, landing at Sonbong (선봉군, also Unggi). The family moved into a former Japanese officer's mansion in Pyongyang, with a garden and pool. Kim Jong-il's brother, "Shura" Kim (the first Kim Jong-il, but known by his Russian nickname), drowned there in 1948. Unconfirmed reports suggest that 5 year old Kim Jong-il might have caused the accident. In 1949, his mother died in childbirth. Unconfirmed reports suggest that his mother might have been shot and left to bleed to death.

Education

According to his official biography, Kim completed the course of general education between September 1950 and August 1960. He attended Primary School No. 4 and Middle School No. 1 (Namsan Higher Middle School) in Pyongyang This is contested by foreign academics, who believe he is more likely to have received his early education in the People's Republic of China as a precaution to ensure his safety during the Korean War.

Throughout his schooling, Kim was involved in politics. He was active in the Children's Union and the Democratic Youth League (DYL), taking part in study groups of Marxist political theory and other literature. In September 1957 he became vice-chairman of his middle school's DYL branch. He pursued a programme of anti-factionalism and attempted to encourage greater ideological education among his classmates.

Kim is also said to have received English language education at the University of Malta in the early 1970s, on his infrequent holidays in Malta as guest of Prime Minister Dom Mintoff.

The elder Kim had meanwhile remarried and had another son, Kim Pyong-il (named after Kim Jong-il's drowned brother). Since 1988, Kim Pyong-il has served in a series of North Korean embassies in Europe and is currently the North Korean ambassador to Poland. Foreign commentators suspect that Kim Pyong-il was sent to these distant posts by his father in order to avoid a power struggle between his two sons.

Presidium member and party secretary (1980–1994)

By the time of the Sixth Party Congress in October 1980, Kim Jong-il's control of the Party operation was complete. He was given senior posts in the Politburo, the Military Commission and the party Secretariat. When he was made a member of the Seventh Supreme People's Assembly in February 1982, international observers deemed him the heir apparent of North Korea.

At this time Kim assumed the title "Dear Leader" (친애하는 지도자, ''chinaehaneun jidoja'') the government began building a personality cult around him patterned after that of his father, the "Great Leader". Kim Jong-il was regularly hailed by the media as the "fearless leader" and "the great successor to the revolutionary cause". He emerged as the most powerful figure behind his father in North Korea.

On 24 December 1991, Kim was also named supreme commander of the North Korean armed forces. Since the Army is the real foundation of power in North Korea, this was a vital step. Defense Minister Oh Jin-wu, one of Kim Il-sung's most loyal subordinates, engineered Kim Jong-il's acceptance by the Army as the next leader of North Korea, despite his lack of military service. The only other possible leadership candidate, Prime Minister Kim Il (no relation), was removed from his posts in 1976. In 1992, Kim Il-sung publicly stated that his son was in charge of all internal affairs in the Democratic People's Republic.

In 1992, radio broadcasts started referring to him as the "Dear Father", instead of the "Dear Leader", suggesting a promotion. His 50th birthday in February was the occasion for massive celebrations, exceeded only by those for the 80th birthday of Kim Il Sung himself on 15 April.

According to defector Hwang Jang-yop, the North Korean goverment system became even more centralized and autocratic during the 1980s and 1990s under Kim Jong-il than it had been under his father. In one example explained by Hwang, although Kim Il-sung required his ministers to be loyal to him, he nonetheless and frequently sought their advice during decision-making. In contrast, Kim Jong-il demands absolute obedience and agreement from his ministers and party officals with no advice or compromise, and he views any slight deviation from his thinking as a sign of disloyalty. According to Hwang, Kim Jong-il personally directs even minor details of state affairs, such as the size of houses for party secretaries and the delivery of gifts to his subordinates.

By the 1980s, North Korea began to experience severe economic stagnation. Kim Il-sung's policy of ''juche'' (self-reliance) cut the country off from almost all external trade, even with its traditional partners, the Soviet Union and China.

South Korea accused Kim of ordering the 1983 bombing in Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar), which killed 17 visiting South Korean officials, including four cabinet members, and another in 1987 which killed all 115 on board Korean Air Flight 858. A North Korean agent, Kim Hyon Hui, confessed to planting a bomb in the case of the second, saying the operation was ordered by Kim Jong-il personally.

In 1992, Kim Jong-il's voice was broadcast within North Korea for the first time during a military parade for the KPA's 60th year anniversary in Pyongyang's then Central Square (Kim Il-sung Square at present), in which Kim Il-sung attended with Kim Jong-il by his side. After Kim Il-sung's speech, his son approached the microphone at the grandstand and simply said: "Glory to the heroic soldiers of the Korean People's Army!" Everyone in the audience clapped and the parade participants at the square grounds (which included veteran soldiers and officers of the KPA) shouted "ten thousand years" three times after that.

Ruler of North Korea

On 8 July 1994, Kim Il-sung died, at the age of 82 from a heart attack. However, it took three years for Kim Jong-il to consolidate his power. He officially took the titles of General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and chairman of the National Defense Commission on 8 October 1997. In 1998, his Defense Commission chairmanship was declared to be "the highest post of the state", so Kim may be regarded as North Korea's head of state from that date. Also in 1998, the Supreme People's Assembly wrote the president's post out of the constitution in memory of Kim Il-Sung, who was designated the country's "Eternal President". It can be argued, though, that he became the country's leader when he became leader of the Workers' Party; in most Communist countries the party leader is the most powerful person in the country.

Officially, Kim is part of a triumvirate heading the executive branch of the North Korean government along with Premier Choe Yong-rim and parliament chairman Kim Yong-nam (no relations). Each nominally has powers equivalent to a third of a president's powers in most other presidential systems. Kim Jong-il is commander of the armed forces, Choe Yong-rim heads the government and Kim Yong-nam handles foreign relations. In practice, however, Kim Jong-il exercises absolute control over the government and the country.

Although Kim is not required to stand for popular election to his key offices, he is unanimously elected to the Supreme People's Assembly every five years, representing a military constituency, due to his concurrent capacities as KPA Supreme Commander and Chairman of the DPRK NDC.

Economic policies

The state-controlled economy of North Korea struggled throughout the 1990s, primarily due to the loss of strategic trade arrangements with the Soviet Union and strained relations with China following China's normalization with South Korea in 1992. In addition, North Korea experienced record-breaking floods (1995 and 1996) followed by several years of equally severe drought beginning in 1997. This, compounded with only 18% arable land and an inability to import the goods necessary to sustain industry, led to an immense famine and left North Korea in economic shambles. Faced with a country in decay, Kim adopted a "Military-First" policy (선군정치, Sŏn'gun chŏngch'i) to strengthen the country and reinforce the regime. On the national scale, this policy has produced a positive growth rate for the country since 1996, and the implementation of "landmark socialist-type market economic practices" in 2002 kept the North afloat despite a continued dependency on foreign aid for food.

In the wake of the devastation of the 1990s, the government began formally approving some activity of small-scale bartering and trade. As observed by Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at the Stanford University Asia-Pacific Research Center, this flirtation with capitalism is "fairly limited, but — especially compared to the past — there are now remarkable markets that create the semblance of a free market system." In 2002, Kim Jong-il declared that "money should be capable of measuring the worth of all commodities." These gestures toward economic reform mirror similar actions taken by China's Deng Xiaoping in the late 1980s and early 90s. During a rare visit in 2006, Kim expressed admiration for China's rapid economic progress.

Foreign relations

In 1998, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung implemented the "Sunshine Policy" to improve North-South relations and to allow South Korean companies to start projects in the North. Kim Jong-il announced plans to import and develop new technologies to develop North Korea's fledgling software industry. As a result of the new policy, the Kaesong Industrial Park was constructed in 2003 just north of the de-militarized zone, with the planned participation of 250 South Korean companies, employing 100,000 North Koreans, by 2007. However, by March 2007, the Park contained only 21 companies — employing 12,000 North Korean workers. As of May 2010 the park employs over 40,000 North Korean workers.

In 1994, North Korea and the United States signed an Agreed Framework which was designed to freeze and eventually dismantle the North's nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid in producing two power-generating nuclear reactors. In 2002, Kim Jong-il's government admitted to having produced nuclear weapons since the 1994 agreement. Kim's regime argued the secret production was necessary for security purposes — citing the presence of United States-owned nuclear weapons in South Korea and the new tensions with the US under President George W. Bush. On 9 October 2006, North Korea's Korean Central News Agency announced that it had successfully conducted an underground nuclear test.

2008 health and waning power rumors

In an August 2008 issue of the Japanese newsweekly Shukan Gendai, Waseda University professor Toshimitsu Shigemura, an authority on the Korean Peninsula, claimed that Kim Jong-il died of diabetes in late 2003 and had been replaced in public appearances by one or more stand-ins previously employed to protect him from assassination attempts. In a subsequent best-selling book, ''The True Character of Kim Jong-il'', Shigemura cited apparently un-named people close to Kim's family along with Japanese and South Korean intelligence sources, claiming they confirmed Kim's diabetes took a turn for the worse early in 2000 and from then until his supposed death three and a half years later he was using a wheelchair. Shigemura moreover claimed a voiceprint analysis of Kim speaking in 2004 did not match a known earlier recording. It was also noted that Kim Jong-il did not appear in public for the Olympic torch relay in Pyongyang on 28 April 2008. The question had reportedly "baffled foreign intelligence agencies for years."

On 9 September 2008, various sources reported that after he did not show up that day for a military parade celebrating North Korea's 60th anniversary, US intelligence agencies believed Kim might be "gravely ill" after having suffered a stroke. He had last been seen in public a month earlier. A former CIA official said earlier reports of a health crisis were likely to be accurate. North Korean media remained silent on the issue. An Associated Press report said analysts believed Kim had been supporting moderates in the foreign ministry, while North Korea's powerful military was against so-called "Six-Party" negotiations with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States aimed towards ridding North Korea of nuclear weapons. Some US officials noted that soon after rumours about Kim's health were publicized a month before, North Korea had taken a "tougher line in nuclear negotiations." In late August North Korea's official news agency reported the government would "consider soon a step to restore the nuclear facilities in Yongbyon to their original state as strongly requested by its relevant institutions." Analysts said this meant "the military may have taken the upper hand and that Kim might no longer be wielding absolute authority."

By 10 September there were conflicting reports. Unidentified South Korean government officials said Kim had undergone surgery after suffering a minor stroke and had apparently "intended to attend 9 September event in the afternoon but decided not to because of the aftermath of the surgery." High ranking North Korean official Kim Yong-nam said, "While we wanted to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the country with General Secretary Kim Jong-Il, we celebrated on our own." Song Il-Ho, North Korea's ambassador said, "We see such reports as not only worthless, but rather as a conspiracy plot." Seoul's ''Chosun Ilbo'' newspaper reported that "the South Korean embassy in Beijing had received an intelligence report that Kim collapsed on 22 August." The ''New York Times'' reported Kim was "very ill and most likely suffered a stroke a few weeks ago, but US intelligence authorities do not think his death is imminent." The BBC noted that the North Korean government denied these reports, stating that Kim's health problems were "not serious enough to threaten his life," although they did confirm that he had suffered from a stroke on 15 August.

Japan's Kyodo news agency reported on 14 September that "Kim collapsed on 14 August due to stroke or a cerebral hemorrhage, and that Beijing dispatched five military doctors at the request of Pyongyang. Kim will require a long period of rest and rehabilitation before he fully recovers and has complete command of his limbs again, as with typical stroke victims." Japan's Mainichi Shimbun said Kim occasionally lost consciousness since April. Japan's ''Tokyo Shimbun'' on 15 September added that Kim was staying at the Bongwha State Guest House. He was apparently conscious "but he needs some time to recuperate from the recent stroke, with some parts of his hands and feet paralyzed". It cited Chinese sources which claimed that one cause for the stroke could have been stress brought about by the US delay to remove North Korea from its list of state sponsors of terrorism.

On 19 October, North Korea reportedly ordered its diplomats to stay near their embassies to await “an important message”, according to Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun, setting off renewed speculation about the health of the ailing leader.

By 29 October 2008, reports stated Kim suffered a serious setback and had been taken back to hospital. The New York Times reported that Taro Aso, on 28 October 2008, stated in a parliamentary session that Kim had been hospitalized: "His condition is not so good. However, I don't think he is totally incapable of making decisions." Aso further said a French neurosurgeon was aboard a plane for Beijing, en route to North Korea. Further, Kim Sung-ho, director of South Korea's National Intelligence Service, told lawmakers in a closed parliamentary session in Seoul that "Kim appeared to be recovering quickly enough to start performing his daily duties." The Dong-a Ilbo newspaper reported "a serious problem" with Kim's health. Japan's Fuji Television Network reported that Kim's eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, traveled to Paris to hire a neurosurgeon for his father, and showed footage where the surgeon boarded flight CA121 bound for Pyongyang from Beijing on 24 October. The French weekly ''Le Point'' identified him as Francois-Xavier Roux, neurosurgery director of Paris' Sainte-Anne Hospital, but Roux himself stated he was in Beijing for several days and not North Korea.

On 5 November 2008, the North's Korean Central News Agency published 2 photos showing Kim posing with dozens of Korean People's Army (KPA) soldiers on a visit to military Unit 2200 and sub-unit of Unit 534. Shown with his usual bouffant hairstyle, with his trademark sunglasses and a white winter parka, Kim stood in front of trees with autumn foliage and a red-and-white banner. ''The Times'' questioned the authenticity of at least one of these photos.

In November 2008, Japan's TBS TV network reported that Kim had suffered a second stroke in October, which "affected the movement of his left arm and leg and also his ability to speak." However, South Korea's intelligence agency rejected this report.

In response to the rumors regarding Kim's health and supposed loss of power, in April 2009, North Korea released a video showing Kim visiting factories and other places around the country between November and December 2008. In July 2009, it was reported that Kim may be suffering from pancreatic cancer.

In 2010, documents released by Wikileaks stated that Kim suffers from epilepsy.

Successor

Kim's three sons and his son-in-law, along with O Kuk-ryol, an army general, have been noted as possible successors, but the North Korean government has been wholly silent on this matter. Kim Yong Hyun, a political expert at the Institute for North Korean Studies at Seoul's Dongguk University, has said, "Even the North Korean establishment would not advocate a continuation of the family dynasty at this point." Kim's eldest son Kim Jong-nam was earlier believed to be the designated heir but he appears to have fallen out of favor after being arrested at Narita International Airport near Tokyo in 2001 while traveling on a forged passport.

On 2 June 2009, it was reported that Kim Jong Il's youngest son, Jong Un, was to be North Korea's next leader. Like his father and grandfather, he has also been given an official sobriquet, The Brilliant Comrade. It has been reported that Kim Jong Il is expected to officially designate the son as his successor in 2012. However, there are reports that if leadership passes to one of the sons, Kim Jong Il's brother-in-law, Chang Sung-taek, could attempt to take power from him.

Re-election as DPRK leader

On 9 April 2009, Kim was re-elected as chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission, and made an appearance at the Supreme People's Assembly. This was the first time Kim was seen in public since August 2008. He was unanimously re-elected and given a standing ovation.

2009 imprisonment and pardoning of American journalists

In March 2009, the North Korean military detained two American journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who were working for the US independent cable television network Current TV, after they allegedly crossed into North Korea from the People's Republic of China without a visa. The two reporters were found guilty of illegal entry and subsequently sentenced to twelve years of hard labor. Reporters Without Borders characterized the trial and sentencing as a "sham trial", and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton initially stated that the charges against the journalists were "baseless".

On 4 August 2009, former US President Bill Clinton met with Kim Jong-il during a "solely private mission to secure the release of Euna Lee and Laura Ling." According to the KCNA, Clinton conveyed a verbal message to Kim from President Barack Obama, a claim denied by the Obama administration. Clinton and Kim had "an exhaustive conversation" that included "a wide-ranging exchange of views on the matters of common concern," KCNA reported. KCNA also reported that the National Defence Commission of North Korea, of which the Dear Leader is the Chairman, hosted a dinner in honor of Clinton, but did not go into detail about what was discussed at the reception. In the early morning hours (UTC+9) of 5 August, KCNA announced that Kim Jong-il had issued a pardon to Lee and Ling.

2010 and 2011 foreign visits

Kim was reported to have visited the People's Republic of China in May 2010. He entered the country by his personal train on 3 May, and stayed in a hotel in Dalian. Kim travelled to China again in August 2010, this time with his son, fueling speculation that he is ready to hand over power to son Kim Jong-un. He returned to China again in May 2011, marking the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance between China and the DPRK. In late August 2011, he travelled by train to the Russian Far East to meet with President Dmitri Medvedev for unspecified talks.

Cult of personality

Kim Jong-il is the centre of an elaborate personality cult inherited from his father and founder of the DPRK, Kim Il-sung. Defectors have been quoted as saying that North Korean schools deify both father and son. He is often the centre of attention throughout ordinary life in the DPRK. On his 60th birthday (based on his official date of birth), mass celebrations occurred throughout the country on the occasion of his Hwangap. Many North Koreans believe that he has the "magical" ability to "control the weather" based on his mood. In 2010, the North Korean media reported that Kim's distinctive clothing had set worldwide fashion trends.

One point of view is that Kim Jong Il's cult of personality is solely out of respect for Kim Il-sung or out of fear of punishment for failure to pay homage. Media and government sources from outside of North Korea generally support this view, while North Korean government sources say that it is genuine hero worship. The song "No Motherland Without You", sung by the KPA State Merited Choir, was created especially for Kim in 1992 and is frequently broadcasted on the radio and from loudspeakers on the streets of Pyongyang.

Personal life

Family

There is no official information available about Kim Jong-il's marital history, but he is believed to have been officially married once and to have had three mistresses. He has four known children:

Kim Sul-song (daughter)

Kim Jong-nam (son)

Kim Jong-chul (son)

Kim Jong-un (son)

Kim's first wife, Kim Young-sook, was the daughter of a high-ranking military official. His father Kim Il-Sung handpicked her to marry his son. They had one son, Kim Jong-nam (born 1971) who is Kim Jong-il's eldest son.

His second mistress, Ko Young-hee, was a Japanese-born ethnic Korean and a dancer. She had taken over the role of First Lady until her death — reportedly of cancer — in 2004. They had two sons, Kim Jong-chul, in 1981, and Kim Jong-un (also "Jong Woon" or "Jong Woong"), in 1983.

Since Ko's death, Kim has been living with Kim Ok, his third mistress, who had served as his personal secretary since the 1980s. She "virtually acts as North Korea's first lady" and frequently accompanies Kim on his visits to military bases and in meetings with visiting foreign dignitaries. She traveled with Kim Jong Il on a secretive trip to China in January 2006, where she was received by Chinese officials as Kim's wife.

Kim Jong-il is also reported to have a younger sister, Kim Kyong-Hui (김경희).

Personality

Like his father, Kim has a fear of flying, and has always traveled by private armored train for state visits to Russia and China. The BBC reported that Konstantin Pulikovsky, a Russian emissary who traveled with Kim across Russia by train, told reporters that Kim had live lobsters air-lifted to the train every day.

Kim is said to be a huge film fan, owning a collection of more than 20,000 video tapes and DVDs. His reported favorite movie franchises include ''Friday the 13th'', ''Rambo'', ''Godzilla'', and Hong Kong action cinema, and any movie starring Elizabeth Taylor. He is the author of the book ''On the Art of the Cinema''. In 1978, on Kim's orders, South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee were kidnapped in order to build a North Korean film industry. In 2006 he was involved in the production of the Juche-based movie ''Diary of a Girl Student'' – depicting the life of a girl whose parents are scientists – with a KCNA news report stating that Kim "improved its script and guided its production".

Although Kim enjoys many foreign forms of entertainment, according to former bodyguard Lee Young Kuk, he refused to consume any food or drink not produced in North Korea, with the exception of wine from France. His former sushi chef Kenji Fujimoto, however, has stated that Kim has sometimes sent him around the world to purchase a variety of foreign delicacies.

Kim reportedly also enjoys basketball. Former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright ended her summit with Kim by presenting him with a basketball signed by NBA legend Michael Jordan. Also an apparent golfer, North Korean state media reports that Kim routinely shoots three or four holes-in-one per round. His official biography also claims Kim has composed six operas and enjoys staging elaborate musicals. Kim also refers to himself as an Internet expert.

US Special Envoy for the Korean Peace Talks, Charles Kartman, who was involved in the 2000 Madeleine Albright summit with Kim, characterised Kim Jong-il as a reasonable man in negotiations, to the point, but with a sense of humor and personally attentive to the people he was hosting. However, psychological evaluations conclude that Kim Jong-il's antisocial features, such as his fearlessness in the face of sanctions and punishment, serve to make negotiations extraordinarily difficult.

The field of psychology has long been fascinated with the personality assessment of dictators, a notion that resulted in an extensive personality evaluation of Kim Jong-il. The report, compiled by Frederick L. Coolidge and Daniel L. Segal (with the assistance of a South Korean psychiatrist considered an expert on Kim Jong-il's behavior), concluded that the “big six” group of personality disorders shared by dictators Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Saddam Hussein (sadistic, paranoid, antisocial, narcissistic, schizoid and schizotypal) were also shared by Kim Jong-il—coinciding primarily with the profile of Saddam Hussein. The evaluation also finds that Kim Jong-il appears to pride himself on North Korea's independence, despite the extreme hardships it appears to place on the North Korean people—an attribute appearing to emanate from his antisocial personality pattern. This notion also encourages other cognitive issues, such as self-deception, as subsidiary components to Kim Jong-il's personality. Many of the stories about Kim Jong Il's eccentricities and decadent life-style are exaggerated, possibly circulated by South Korean intelligence to discredit the Northern regime. Defectors claim that Kim has 17 different palaces and residences all over North Korea, including a private resort near Baekdu Mountain, a seaside lodge in the city of Wonsan, and a palace complex northeast of Pyongyang surrounded with multiple fence lines, bunkers and anti-aircraft batteries.

Finances

According to the ''Sunday Telegraph'', Kim has US$4 billion on deposit in European banks in case he ever needs to flee North Korea. The Sunday Telegraph reported that most of the money was in banks in Luxembourg.

Official titles

Party Center of the WPK (1970's)

Vice-Chairman, WPK Central Committee (1972–80)

Dear Leader (''Chinaehanuen Jidoja'') (late 1970s-1994)

Intelligent Leader (1973–84)

Member, Presidum of the Supreme People's Assembly of the DPRK

Secretary of the Worker's Party of Korea (1980–94)

Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army (25 December 1991-)

Marshal of the DPRK (1993-)

Chairman, National Defense Commission of North Korea (born 1993)

Great Leader (''Widehan Ryongdoja'') (July 1994-)

General Secretary, Workers Party of Korea (born 1997)

Supreme Leader of the Republic (born 2009)

See also

List of Korea-related topics

Sinuiju North Korean Leader's Residence

North Korea

Notes and references

Further reading

Jasper Becker, "Rogue Regime: Kim John Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea", Oxford University Press (October 2006), Softcover, 328 pages, ISBN 0-19-530891-3

Michael Breen, ''Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader'', John Wiley and Sons (January 2004), hardcover, 228 pages, ISBN 0-470-82131-0

Bradley Martin, ''Under The Loving Care Of The Fatherly Leader: North Korea And The Kim Dynasty'', St. Martins (October 2004), hardcover, 868 pages, ISBN 0-312-32221-6

Kim Chol U, ''Army-Centred Politics Of Kim Jong Il'', Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 2002, Softcover, 98 pages

Kim Jong Il Brief History, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1998, Hardcover, 149 pages

Kim Jong Il Short Biography, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 2001, Hardcover, 215 pages

Pae Kyong Su, Kim Jong Il The Individual Thoughts And Leadership Vol. 1, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1993, Softcover, 225 pages

Pae Kyong Su, Kim Jong Il The Individual Thoughts And Leadership Vol. 2, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1995, Softcover, 164 pages

Nada Takashi, Korea In Kim Jong Il's Era, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 2000, Softcover, 163 pages

Li Il Bok, The Great Man Kim Jong Il, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1989, Softcover, 167 pages

Ri Il Bok, The Great Man Kim Jong Il Vol. 2, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1995, Softcover, 84 pages

Jo Song Baek, The Leadership Philosophy Of Kim Jong Il, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1999, Softcover, 261 pages

Guiding Light General Kim Jong Il, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang, North Korea, 1997, Softcover, 357 pages

External links

 – Foreign Languages Publishing House, Pyongyang DPR Korea (1998)

Born in the USSR – Kim Jong-il's childhood.

The many family secrets of Kim Jong Il

(also includes photos of Kim during his youth)

Kim's family tree

BBC, North Korea's secretive 'first family'

BBC, Profile: Kim Jong-il

BBC, Who will succeed N Korea's Kim Jong-il?

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Category:1941 births Category:Living people Category:Alumni of the University of Malta Category:Anti-Revisionists Category:Communist rulers Category:Current national leaders Category:Heads of state of North Korea Category:Leaders of political parties in North Korea Category:Members of the Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea Category:Military brats Category:North Korean billionaires Category:People from Khabarovsk Krai Category:People with epilepsy Category:Stroke survivors Category:Workers' Party of Korea politicians Category:Marxist theorists Category:Kim Il-sung family

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name	Tom Waits
background	solo_singer
birth name	Thomas Alan Waits
born	December 07, 1949Pomona, California, United States
instrument	Vocals, piano, guitar
genre	rock, experimental music
occupation	Singer-songwriter, musician, actor, composer
years active	1972–present
label	Asylum Records, Island Records, ANTI-
website	tomwaits.com }}

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." With this trademark growl, his incorporation of pre-rock music styles such as blues, jazz, and vaudeville, and experimental tendencies verging on industrial music, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona. He has worked as a composer for movies and musical plays and as a supporting actor in films, including ''Down By Law'' and ''Bram Stoker's Dracula''. 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 to the general public in the form of cover versions by more visible 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.

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

Origins and musical beginnings

Waits was born at Park Avenue Hospital in Pomona, California to Jesse Frank Waits and Alma Johnson McMurray, both schoolteachers. His father was of Scots-Irish descent and his mother was 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. Waits, who taught himself how to play the piano on a neighbor's instrument, often took trips to Mexico with his father, who taught Spanish; he would later say that he found his love of music during these trips through a Mexican ballad that was "probably a Ranchera, you know, on the car radio with my dad."

By 1965, while attending Hilltop High School within the Sweetwater Union High School District, Chula Vista, Waits was playing in an R&B/soul band called The Systems and had begun his first job at Napoleone Pizza House in National City (about which he would later sing on "I Can't Wait to Get Off Work (And See My Baby on Montgomery Avenue)" from ''Small Change'' and "The Ghosts of Saturday Night (After Hours at Napoleone's Pizza House)" on ''The Heart of Saturday Night''). 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." 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 $25. 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, 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 eventually to be released twenty years later on ''The Early Years, Volume One'' and ''Volume Two''.

1970s

Waits signed to Asylum Records in 1972, 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. 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.

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. 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.

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

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." 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''). 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, including a performance of "The Piano Has Been Drinking" on cult BBC2 television music show the ''Old Grey Whistle Test'' in May 1976.

''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 (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.

''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

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." 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." ''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, 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''.

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." 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." 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 and contributing vocals to The Replacements song "Date to Church", which appeared as a B-side to their single "I'll Be You".

1990s

''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. 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. 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 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.

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." ''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''. 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." 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."

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." 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. The same year, Waits appeared in the comedy ''Mystery Men''.

2000s

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''. 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, an official version would not be released until 2007. The same year, Waits contributed a version of "The Return of Jackie and Judy" 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. Waits was also a judge for the 10th annual Independent Music Awards.

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" 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" 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" 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''.

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.

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. Waits was awarded the key to the city of El Paso, Texas during a concert on June 20, 2008. In his generally positive review of the opening show of the tour, ''The Wall Street Journal'' critic Jim Fusilli described Waits' music thus: }}

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 late 2009, Terry Gilliam's film ''The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus'' was released, with Waits in the role of Mr. Nick. Production began in December 2007 in London. 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.

2010s

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

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

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.

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. 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."

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

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

Record companies

Waits has often switched to smaller independent record companies over the years; he signed to Asylum Records before they were bought out by Elektra Records and Warner Bros. During his time with Island Records, that label expanded from a small company to a music industry giant. He then signed to Anti Records, a division of Epitaph Records.

Lawsuits

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)). 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''. 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".

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.

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.

Discography and filmography

Tours

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''

Further reading

References

External links

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

Category:1949 births Category:Living people Category:American people of Norwegian descent Category:American composers Category:American film actors Category:American male singers Category:American multi-instrumentalists Category:American musicians of Norwegian descent Category:American people of Scotch-Irish descent Category:American rock singers Category:American blues singers Category:American singer-songwriters Category:Eels (band) members Category:English-language singers Category:Epitaph Records artists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:People from Chula Vista, California Category:People from Pomona, California Category:People from the San Fernando Valley Category:People from Sonoma County, California Category:Singers from California Category:Songwriters from California Category:Writers from California Category:Sebastopol, California Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:People from Echo Park, Los Angeles

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