Tom Waits, a singer composer from California, is a mixture of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen — the former he’s covered and the latter who covered him with “Jersey Girl.” Waits seems to be a likable sort; Hal Willner, a friend of his, had him on his Disney theme, Stay Awake — I’ve highlighted some of his songs for week forecasts, so finally I am doing his chart…it is his birthday.
Read more: C427, The Sounds of Tom WaitsThe right sound and the scruffy look
His father is Irish, his mother Norwegian, a close approximation of Jackson Browne, another balladeer who is German- Norwegian, but the sound and looks are far different. He was born December 7, 1949 in Pomona, California.
I have pegged Tom at 23 Leo 47 that Gavin McClung’s Hyperion symbols give the keyword of Presentation, which is just about perfect for Tom. McClung writes that his degree is a “painted saucer made with craft and skill.” There is a lot of truth of that in Tom’s presentation, a scraggly thin musician singing ballads in a scratchy baritone, thus his music is more about the sound of the song than its beauty. That was intentional, for Tom once said in an interview, from where I do not remember, that he was listening for a “sound” for his music, when he caught his uncle talking, telling a story. He realized, like a thunderbolt (Uranus in the eleventh) that was the sound (Asteroid Siva is trine to Uranus in the third). he wanted and then working with his uncle. He practiced it until he got a sound that fit the tenor of his music. It was undoubtedly a brilliant move.
His wild curly hair is the visual clue to his leonine demeanor. — like a scruffy cat one adopts and thinks “we need to clean you up,” only to realize the cat, like Tom, has other ideas; for it is his persona, his look, hence the Asteroid Photographica at 18 Capricorn 14 in the sixth house is opposite his Moon at 16 Cancer in the twelfth. There is a grand square hiding in there, with Neptune at 16 Libra 52 opposite his North Node 14 Aries 34 — the South Node conjunction to Neptune in the third gives him a powerful imagination he can easily convert into his music.
His yod point, following Joan Kellogg’s method, is Neptune to the Sun in the fifth house of creative pursuits with the yod foot at the Midheaven with a yod point at Ceres, showing how the characters in his songs are people he cares for and protects. Listening to Waits is always a story-telling experience, and one finds in unexpected ways, they connect with his characters, just like they would with any short story writer — probably why Fixed Star Albireo (the head of the swan Cygnus) is conjunct his Venus in the sixth house and also conjunct Altair — for the courage of doing it his way.