BEATS WORKING
Tom Waits’ debt to Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs et al, and how he repaid it, by SYLVIE SIMMONS.
WHEN TOM WAITS discovered the Beats, he bought some black shades and a subscription to Downbeat magazine.
He was curious about the style more than anything, he said.
As for poetry, Waits hated being called a poet. The word had a “stigma”, he said, doubtless a hangover from school days. It was in the role of “storyteller”, he insisted, that he started attending the Wednesday night Poetry Workshops at Beyond Baroque in Venice Beach, LA.