Tom Waits, Nicolas Cage and the bizarre comic origins of a 1999 song: “It was inspiring”
Tom Waits’s 1999 song “Eyeball Kid” grew from actor Nicolas Cage introducing him to Eddie Campbell’s comic character, a humanoid covered in eyeballs. Waits was drawn to the character’s strange mythology and used it to explore difference, show business and his own outsider sensibility.
Cage showed Waits the three-part comic in 1992, and Waits first referenced its character in “Such a Scream”. On Mule Variations, he imagined the Eyeball Kid entering show business, invoking the vanished Barnum & Bailey circus; he shared the character’s 7 December 1949 birthday, but called that a coincidence. Waits said the song made light of show business rather than people with physical deformities, and described it as partly autobiographical.
- Nicolas Cage introduced Waits to the Eyeball Kid comic.
- The character inspired a song on Mule Variations.
- Waits framed the song as a reflection on show business and difference.
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Tom Waits is an American singer-songwriter known for songs that draw on unusual characters and offbeat stories. Nicolas Cage, the American actor, introduced him to Eddie Campbell’s comic about the Eyeball Kid, a fictional humanoid covered in eyes.
The character became a way for Waits to explore what it means to be different and to enter show business as an outsider. The song also refers to the Barnum & Bailey circus, once a major American touring attraction, and Waits described parts of it as autobiographical.