Tom Waits on meeting Charles Bukowski

It’d be hard to find a more book-devouring savage in the music world than the great Tom Waits. Of course, we all know Waits as a gravel-voiced poet of the back alleys and broken-down bars, but he was also a bookworm with an insatiable thirst for the written word.

He’d spent much of his life reading late into the night and into the raw hours of dawn. His girlfriend in an early time in his life once said that: “He’d tell me how inspired he was by some short story or other,” she recalled, “and I think that was the source of his muse.”

Like many other artists, he was inspired by the Beats, especially Kerouac and Burroughs, but his literary “Godfather” was the Los Angeles poet, Charles Bukowski, whom he believed to be one of the greatest American poets. The man “levels me,” he once said.

Below is Waits’ answer to an interview question about meeting his literary Godfather, Charles Bukowski.

---

Did you meet Bukowski?

Tom Waits:

“A couple of times. It’s like when I met Keith Richards, you try to match them drink for drink. But you’re a novice, you’re a child. You’re drinking with a roaring pirate. Whatever you know about holding your liquor, you’d better let go of it right now.

So I thought I could hang in there, but I wasn’t able to hang in there with either one of them. They’re made out of different stock. They’re like dockworkers. But it was interesting.

I met Bukowski at his house. Barbet Schroeder was a friend of mine, and they tried to get me to be in that movie, Barfly, playing Bukowski. They offered a lot of money, but I just couldn’t do it, plus I didn’t consider myself a good enough actor to do something like that. But Bukowski... I guess everybody when you’re young and you enter the arts you find father figures.

For me it was more profound because I had no father - no operating father - so I found other men that supplied all that for me. I was looking for those guys all the time.”

---

Below, you can hear Tom Waits reading "Nirvana," one of Bukowski’s more sentimental poems. It’s beautiful. Check it out.

---

If Poetic Outlaws has become a welcome part of your reading life, I hope you’ll consider becoming a PAID subscriber. Your support does more than unlock additional essays, recommendations, and exclusive content—it makes this work possible.

Paid subscriptions give me the time to read more deeply, write more thoughtfully, and continue uncovering the poets, artists, and literary rebels who deserve to be remembered. In a culture that rewards speed, distraction, and nonsense, you’re helping sustain a space devoted to careful reading, beautiful language, and enduring ideas.

If this newsletter has informed, inspired, or simply given you a moment of joy each week, becoming a paid subscriber is one of the most meaningful ways you can help keep Poetic Outlaws thriving.

Thank you all so much.