There can be few performers in any branch of the arts more adept than Tom Waits at creating a sense of occasion. His first trick was to get his audience over a barrel. His only two shows in Scotland for more than 20 years were also the only UK shows on his current Glitter and Doom tour. Tickets were £102, and even at that extortionate price, photo ID was required of every ticket-holder to prevent a bonanza for the touts.

The stage on the first night had been turned into an extension of Waits’s universe, dressed like a music shop junkyard with an installation of old speaker cones that looked like an alien tree. Waits, 58, took up position on a raised platform in the centre, surrounded by a clutter of strange musical objects and instruments of uncertain provenance. A slight figure, in a battered suit and hat, he looked like a leprechaun as he took an exaggerated bow and then launched into the opening number, Lucinda. “They call me William the Pleaser/ I sold opium, fireworks and lead/ Now I’m telling my troubles to strangers/ When the shadows get long I’ll be dead,” he bellowed like a huckster announcing his arrival in a new town, which was pretty much what he was doing. He emphasised each beat with a stamp of the foot that raised a cloud of theatrical dust from the floor.

During the two-hour performance that followed, Waits wove a spell as intricate and engaging as that of any performer I can remember seeing on a musical stage.

Times Archive, 1981: Tom Waits at the Apollo Victoria

Croaking, bawling, growling formlessly, his voice is the grotesque sound of a drunk attempting a Tony Bennett impersonation

A cross between a rag-and-bone bluesman and a lounge-bar crooner on a ghostly pirate ship, he sang and told his stories (and jokes) in a voice that was unbelievably harsh and guttural but also capable of great tenderness and quirky charm – as if Captain Beefheart and Louis Armstrong had somehow morphed into a single vaudeville character.

His band, which included two of his sons (Casey on drums and Sullivan on clarinet) were not only supremely gifted musicians, but also in on the act. The sound was wobbly and wheezing, like a rusted, old music box, but Vincent Henry’s sensational harmonica break in Get Behind the Mule, and Omar Torrez’s exquisite flamenco guitar solo towards the end of On the Other Side of the World both prompted spontaneous bursts of applause, as did many other moments of pure musical brilliance.

It was a generally less frantic and more reflective show than when Waits last played London in 2004, and included a substantial stretch in the middle when the singer sat behind a piano and performed some of his most tender songs with a truly poignant touch: Picture in a Frame, Invitation to the Blues and a spine-tingling Innocent When You Dream. Then it was back to centre stage, the clouds of dust rising around his ankles, as he navigated a swaying passage through a marvellously syncopated Way Down in the Hole, a mournful Dirt in the Ground and the big, bluesy finale of Make It Rain.

Many Lives Of Tom Waits, Buy the book

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