In 1979, a future member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Tom Waits, made his first music video. Directed by John Lamb two years before the debut of MTV, the pioneering short film, titled Tom Waits For No One, was entered into a Los Angeles film festival and took first prize.
But when MTV powered up on October 1, 1981, Tom Waits For No One was nowhere to be seen. In the following years, Lamb and the team of young animators would independently be nominated for two Academy Awards, win one Academy Award, and go on to studios like Disney, Warner Bros, Universal, Fox Broadcasting Company and Electronic Arts.
Tom Waits For No One: The Illustrated Scrapbook is a collection of the art and artifacts from the film's production, and includes stunning drawings of Tom Waits, storyboards and backgrounds. The book is an eclectic documentation of the era, and includes articles, artifacts and period-centric tales about Saturday Night Live, The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, Frank Zappa, Apocalypse Now, The Blues Brothers, Cadillac Ranch and other pop culture phenomena.
The book features a full-color, hard-bound collection of rare interviews with Tom Waits and tells the story about the wet-behind-the-ears animators, and how they came together to create a milestone in music video history.
35 years since the film opened, John Lamb has now reopened the film's archive to publish a beautiful art book to tell this nearly forgotten story through Tom Waits For No One: The Illustrated Scrapbook.
