Tom Waits: What’s the most curious record in your collection?Tom Waits: In the seventies a record company in LA issued a record called The Best of Marcel Marceau. It had forty minutes of silence followed by applause and it sold really well. I like to put it on for company. It really bothers me, though, when people talk through it. You’ve always enjoyed the connection between fashion and history…talk to me about that. Okay, let’s take the two-piece bathing suit, produced in 1947 by a French fashion designer. The sight of the first woman in the minimal two-piece was as explosive as the detonation of the atomic bomb by the US at Bikini Island in the Marshall Isles, hence the naming of the bikini. List some artists who have shaped your creative life. Okay, here are a few that just come to me for now: Kerouac, Dylan, Bukowski, Rod Serling, Don Van Vliet, Cantinflas, James Brown, Harry Belafonte, Ma Rainey, Big Mama Thorton, Howlin Wolf, Lead Belly, Lord Buckley, Mabel Mercer, Lee Marvin, Thelonious Monk, John Ford, Fellini, Weegee, Jagger, Richards, Willie Dixion, John McCormick, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Robert Johnson, Hoagy Carmichael, Eurico Caruso. List some songs that were beacons for you. Again, for now…but if you ask me tomorrow the list would change, of course. Gershwin’s second prelude, “Pathatique Sonata”, “El Paso”, “You’ve Really Got Me” (Kinks), “Solider Boy” (Shirelles), “Lean Back” (Fat Joe), “Night train”, “Come In My Kitchen” (R.J.), “Sad Eyed Lady”, “Rite of Spring Ode to Billy Joe”, “Louie Louie”, “Just a Fool” (Ike and Tina), “Prisoner of Love” (J.B.) “Pitch a Wing Dan Doodlec (all night long)” H. Wolf, “Ringo” (Lorne Green), “Ball and Chain”, “Deportee”, “Strange Fruit”, “Sophisticated Lady”, “Georgia On My Mind”, “Can’t Stop Loving You”, “Just Like A Woman”, “So Lonesome I Could Cry”, “Who’ll Stop The Rain?”, “Moon River”, “Autumn Leaves”, “Danny Boy”, “Dirty Ol’ Town”, “Waltzing Mathilda”, “Train Keeps a Rollin”, “Boris the Spider”, “You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me”, “Red Right Hand”, “All Shook Up”, “Cause Of It All”, “Shenandoah”, “China Pig”, “Summertime”, “Without a Song”, “Auld Lang Syne”, “This Is a Man’s World”, “Crawlin King Snake”, “Nassun Dorma”, “Bring it on Home to Me”, “Hound Dog”, “Hello Walls”, “You Win Again”, “Sunday Morn’ Coming Down”, “Almost Blue”, “Pump It Up”, “Greensleeves”, “Just Wanna See His Face” (Stones), “Restless Farewell”, “Fairytale of NY”, “Bring Me A Little Water Sylvie”, “Raglan Road”, “96 Tears”, “In Dreams” (R. Orbison), “Substitute”, “Good Time Charlie’s Got The Blues”, Theme from Rawhide, “Same Thing”, “Walk Away Rene”, “For What it’s Worth”, theme from Once Upon A Time In America, “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing”, “Oh Holy Night”, “Mass in E Minor”, “Harlem Shuffle”, “Trouble Man”, “Wade in The Water”, “Empty Bed Blues”, “Havanagila”. What’s heaven for you? Me and my wife on Route 66 with a pot of coffee, a cheap guitar, pawnshop tape recorder in a Motel 6, and a car that runs good parked right by the door.