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Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits |  | Author: Barney Hoskyns
Publisher: Broadway
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $19.77
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Seller: Amazon.com
Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 311925
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 640
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.8
ISBN: 0767927087
Dewey Decimal Number: 921
EAN: 9780767927086
ASIN: 0767927087
Publication Date: May 19, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| • | ISBN13: 9780767927086 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
With his trademark growl, carnival-madman persona, haunting music, and unforgettable lyrics, Tom Waits is one of the most revered and critically acclaimed singer-songwriters alive today. After beginning his career on the margins of the 1970s Los Angeles rock scene, Waits has spent the last thirty years carving out a place for himself among such greats as Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Like them, he is a chameleonic survivor who has achieved long-term success while retaining cult credibility and outsider mystique. But although his songs can seem deeply personal and somewhat autobiographical, fans still know very little about the man himself. Notoriously private, Waits has consistently and deliberately blurred the line between fact and fiction, public and private personas, until it has become impossible to delineate between truth and self-fabricated legend.
Lowside of the Road is the first serious biography to cut through the myths and make sense of the life and career of this beloved icon. Barney Hoskyns has gained unprecedented access to Waitsâs inner circle and also draws on interviews he has done with Waits over the years. Spanning his extraordinary forty-year career from Closing Time to Orphans, from his perilous âjazzboâ years in 1970s LA to such shape-shifting albums as Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs to the Grammy Award winners of recent years, this definitive biography charts Waitsâs life and art step by step, album by album.
Barney Hoskyns has written a rock biographyâmuch like the subject himselfâunlike any other. It is a unique take on one of rockâs great enigmas.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
 Certainly not what I'd call a "biography". December 22, 2009
Cootermarsh Jones (The US, North America, Earth, the Milky Way)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
If you are looking for a 500 page review of Tom Waits' albums, this is the book for you. If you are looking for a good biography of Tom Waits, I'd look elsewhere. While this book does indeed include some biographical material, it is more a list of the songs on his albums, and some conjecture about what they mean. Really this is more a reviewer's take on Tom Waits then a biographers. I'm not really interested in being told which songs are the best on his albums and that his later work doesn't stand up to his early work. I'm also not interested in hearing the author's opinion on whether or not Kathleen Brennan ruined him, which he goes on at length to talk about. If you enjoy having your own opinions on the subject of Tom Waits, this is not the book for you.
A Life of Tom Waits? November 23, 2009
D. French
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
More like a fraction of his life. It's a good account of Waits's younger days, but soon turns from a biography into the author's interminable opinions of the music--song by song by song--since he couldn't find out much of anything about his subject's adult life. Which apparently made him resentful, because we get a lot of foolish innuendo about the sinister control the Waits's have over their friends, and the even more sinister control Kathleen has over Tom. SUCH a wanker.
Worthy for fans with some misgivings July 28, 2009
Random Dude (Seattle)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you are a "big time" Waits fan, then this book is worth reading. It doesn't poke any substantial holes in Waitsian mythology and folklore by protesting too much, although I admit that I felt a bit sheepish reading it with the knowledge that Waits would not approve. There are some that might say biographies are always fundamentally flawed from subjectivity, point of view, and the effect of time on recollection. If so, the only true biography for Tom Waits is an auto-biography, which will never happen. And if it did, it'd be deliberately more apocryphal then this effort, but certainly more fun. It'd be a raconteur's treasure trove of wonderful metaphors and tall tales. Tom's truth is not factual.
As it is, to classify this book as an (unauthorized) biography is a stretch---it's less a biography than a very long (borderline tabloid) essay with the author too-often upstaging his subject matter. We are forced to read what Barney Hoskyns personally thinks about Waits and his music with specific judgments of which songs work and those that don't, which is very questionable given this book is supposedly about Tom's life---it's even in the title. As another reviewer mentioned, I don't want to know what Hoskyns thinks about the album Real Gone or the song Lucinda, and I don't care. This information doesn't belong here. These are regrettable flaws to what is, overall, a decent and difficult effort given the subject matter. It's certainly better than all of the other bio-Waits attempts save Jay S. Jacobs's book Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits, who is a more disciplined writer overall and leaves far fewer traces of himself. Jacobs has more respect for the subject and the subject matter, and takes more of a tack toward the music than on Waits's personal details.
Biographies have their place, but it's better to focus on Wait's music. And with this approach, I'd say David Smay's review of Swordfishtrombones in the 33 1/3 book series is probably the best Waitsian book out there so far next to Jacobs', and at only 7" x 6" and 126 pages. This is because Smay doesn't try to infiltrate the artist or his confidants, or lackadasically accept every anecdote he stumbles upon, which are presumptuous at best and filler at worst. Smay addresses the art itself, which is all you really need when it comes to Waits. He respectfully separates the artist from the man. And Smay doesn't present his book as anything other than his own editorial POV, unlike Hoskyns, who veers into literary paparazzi territory from time to time.
Still, I'd wager that the curious id in each Raindog wants to know more about Tom and even more about the mysterious Kathleen, as if deconstructing the duo might reveal some secrets or a little more of Tom's unique soul to us. Much of Lowside does indeed offer much more than other Waits biographies, and for this reason the curious cat in me did find it satisfying overall, if only superficially so. How accurate is it? We'll never know, and in a way I'm glad for that.
Consumer bottom line: Buy a used version of Lowside after reading David Smay's and Jay S. Jacob's books first.
I had high hopes July 17, 2009
default_test_string (Eugene, OR)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
Some good anecdotes contained within but it was rather annoying to have to read Barney's opinion on nearly every Waits song ever released. No offence intended to Mr. Hoskyns but I am not interested.
He doesn't seems to enjoy Tom's most recent work, says things like "was Tom Waits finally chasing his own musical tail?" in regards to Real Gone [long answer: No], and when he went out of the way to slam songs like "Make It Rain" & "Lucinda" I tossed it into the trash.
 A Serious Critical Work July 16, 2009
Frankfurt Critic (Frankfurt on the Main)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Well, ooh... okay, here it is. It is not a gossip biography but a book on Tom Waits' work, as a song-writer, singer, musician, producer, on-and-off actor. It's a work full of paradox as Waits does not want a biography written, but if there is one written, this is at least the type of book he must accept, one that shows that he is sort of a meta-musician, a real master of songs and traditions. The writer is in a very difficult position because if he gets you to identify with Waits you will hate the writer. Actually, the book does give you some insight into Waits' life, as you learn that his father left the family when he was ten, Waits struggled with adapting to the communal freedom of the Sixties (he, in a way, did not participate), and that he finally found his role as both an intellectual (I mean thinking, and responsible) musician and very playful performer. With lots of "sweating" rockers around, many thought his show was fake, and Hoskyns makes several attempts to describe how difficult it was for Waits to demonstrate that his music was scenic, visual, related to more than songs, without making listeners think they would not have to listen. Waits has been fiercely protecting his private life, most of the time, and even more since he met Kathleen Brennan. Hoskyns, again, is in dire straits here as he thinks this is right, and he even gets the counter-point: how Waits, finally, does find his political voice fighting phonyness and being "private" in public - so close to Hollywood, sometimes getting a kick from it, but turning against the pornographic family show that has become the custom, pseudo-revealing your "intimate" life and thus killing your work. Because nobody needs your work if they think they know you. There are many non-readers, non-listeners, and they are being served. Waits is no part of that, and to some degree, Hoskyns is the loser here, because he is both a listener and a reader, and his book is not for the mainstream audience anyhow.
As for Waits' big turn away from Elektra, away from swing, into rhythmic music and bizarre arrangements, Hoskyns gives much credit to Kathleen Brennan, too much I think, regarding the fact that he knows very little about her. He pictures Kathleen as saving Tom's life (he finally gets sober which might be the reason we still have him around), getting control of his musical production, and having a family with kids who actually play with him - on stage! - as they are beyond age 15. Which can mean a lot, and one might not like that too much, but then, it obviously means that Tom Waits is a rock star with a family, I mean ONE FAMILY and not five of them. Still, I think that Hoskyns is too generous with accepting all those credits for Brennan, and the trick is that when the book closes he confesses that he likes Waits' earlier work better! So he's all caught up in that paradox of life and music, interpreting both. Brennan gets all the credit but without her Waits' music was better?
Still, it is a good book, with phantastic quotes, unlikely observations, actually going through the recordings of every single album, describing who did it and why, and which song came out and how they relate to others. This is what critics do. It is a bit of a pity that Waits kept musicians from talking to the writer, as Hoskyns is not distracting us but getting us closer to the sounds, the feel, the energy. It does become clear how Waits is singular.
Of course, you can never get all the details, and some of Waits' musical life takes place in Europe. What if you cannot read Danish or German? Just one example: "Kommienezuspadt" is for Hoskyns "a piece of cod-German gibberish that Waits invented" - actually, it is an almost accurate rendition of "Komme nie zu spät", meaning "Never be tardy". I would have liked to get more to know about the Kurt Weill thing, about Waits connection to European traditions, musique concrete; even Astor Piazolla's name does not turn up, the connection to modern tango being rather obvious. - Hoskyns, as many British writers, is so very good exactly writing about North America.
Of course, with a great critical work you have a thousand reasons to say that you're of a different opinion - that is what critical works are for. Does it get you much closer to the man Waits? Well, not that you'd want to know him personally after reading the book. Not me, at least. But you would want to know all of his work, understand every song, and enjoy the sighs and coughs in between. This is what this book is about. It also contains some very nice black-and-white photographs, some old, some taken of former locations and witnesses as they are now. I read it within two weeks, listening to Waits' music in between. I now hear better. (Ulf Erdmann Ziegler, writer, Germany)
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
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