Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits
- ISBN-10
- 0767931467
- ISBN-13
- 9780767931465
- Category
- Biography & Autobiography
- Pages
- 640
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2009-05-19
- Publisher
- Crown
- Author
- Barney Hoskyns
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 Waits’s 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 “jazzbo” 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 Waits’s life and art step by step, album by album. Barney Hoskyns has written a rock biography—much like the subject himself—unlike any other. It is a unique take on one of rock’s great enigmas.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits
By Jay S JacobsWild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits retraces the long road that Waits has traveled and explores the music that made him a legend. Jay S. Jacobs looks at the towering myth that Waits has created for himself.
-
Tom Waits by Matt Mahurin
By Matt MahurinA collection of wildly inventive portraits of musician Tom Waits, the result of a 30-year collaboration with photographer and illustrator Matt Mahurin This visually arresting book is a testament to the unique collaboration, going back three ...
-
Tom Waits on Tom Waits: Interviews and Encounters
By Paul MaherSo I get exposed to a lot at home, and then, you know, I weave it all together. JV: Have you ever thought about messing around with electronics more, maybe deconstructing some of your old stuff? TW: I don't know if that's my culture.
-
Major Dudes: A Steely Dan Companion
By Barney HoskynsCompiled by leading music critic and writer Barney Hoskyns, Major Dudes features contributions from Chris Van Ness, Steven Rosen, and the late Robert Palmer, and pieces including rare interviews and reviews of Steely Dan’s early albums ...
-
The Road
By Cormac McCarthyNATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive, this "tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master.
-
Innocent when You Dream: Tom Waits, the Collected Interviews
By Mac Montandon, Tom WaitsTom Waits in his own words: a collection of three decades' worth of interviews with Tom Waits
-
God Is in the Radio: Writings on Music 1984-2018
By Barney HoskinsCovering nearly 40 years of his career as arguably the UK's leading music writer this collection pulls together the best pieces about the music he's loved the most - the singers and players whose records have shaped him, and who he's ...
-
The Ride So Far: Tales from a Motorcycling Life
By Lance OliverFew paint a more vivid or varied picture of the joys of riding than this collection of stories from a motorcycling life by Lance Oliver, who has spent more time than most of us thinking about and writing about the art and practicalities of ...
-
The Lyrics of Tom Waits: The Early Years
By Tom WaitsThe Early Years collects the lyrics—formative and classic—from the first ten albums of this true bard of hard living.
-
Across the Great Divide: The Band and America
By Barney Hoskynsshow at Manchester's Free Trade Hall on 17 May - not the Royal Albert Hall, as originally believed - the bootleg featured the electric set in its eight-song entirety, commencing with 'Tell Me, Momma' and climaxing in a furious, ...