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Review
Just about the most absorbing satisfying and (whisper it) important biography of a modern artist that I can recall reading. Absolutely outstanding. --Danny Baker
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Review
Comprehensive and judicious... [Waits] could not have found a more respectful, sympathetic and knowledgeable biographer if he'd chosen him himself.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Barney Hoskyns begins his 500 page biography of Tom Waits with a prologue. In it he explains how much Waits, and his wife Kathleen Brennan, loathe people enquiring about their lives - and how they had tried to prevent Hoskyns writing this book. He also describes Waits' deep conviction that truth is very overrated - and how Waits deliberately created confusion and mystique about his past.
It's a fascinating set-up, and one might expect it would be followed by a revealing account of Hoskyn's much impeded search for the elusively real Tom Waits. Disappointingly this is far from the case. Instead what we get is a meticulous, chronological account of every documented Waits move and comment, every song and every performance.
For Waits fans this thoroughness makes Hoskyn's book a must-buy. It is like a text book for those who want to enrol in the University of Waits. And once completed it acts as an excellent reference book: the tiresome precision with which Hoskyns describes every single track on every single album comes into its own if one wants to look up a particular song.
But it also gives the book a pedantry and small-mindedness that Waits himself would despise; and one can almost feel Hoskyn's self-consciousness that he himself knows this would be the case, but he just cant stop himself from sharing every last fragment of Waitsabilia.
For that we should in some ways be grateful. For instance, I had no idea before reading this book how unsuccessful Waits perceived himself to be until very late into his career - and inded how little esteem he was held in by his original record label, Asylum. Nor did I know just how much Waits seemed to regard his life as a piece of performance in its own right. I was fascinated to learn that the young Waits modelled himself so closely on Bob Dylan he wore a harmomica around his neck - even though he couldn't play it. And there is an unavoidable pleasure in finding that every Waits gig one has been to is, of course, decribed here - with tracklists.
So if, like me, you love Waits' music but have only a hazy sense of the man and his history, you will be gripped by this huge brick of a book. But you may find it a business-like rather than inspiring read. And by the time you get to Hoskyn's appendix in which he lists his top forty Waits tracks, you may, like me, find it irritatingly self-important: Hoskyn's earns our respect as a researcher, but not as a critic.
It's a fascinating set-up, and one might expect it would be followed by a revealing account of Hoskyn's much impeded search for the elusively real Tom Waits. Disappointingly this is far from the case. Instead what we get is a meticulous, chronological account of every documented Waits move and comment, every song and every performance.
For Waits fans this thoroughness makes Hoskyn's book a must-buy. It is like a text book for those who want to enrol in the University of Waits. And once completed it acts as an excellent reference book: the tiresome precision with which Hoskyns describes every single track on every single album comes into its own if one wants to look up a particular song.
But it also gives the book a pedantry and small-mindedness that Waits himself would despise; and one can almost feel Hoskyn's self-consciousness that he himself knows this would be the case, but he just cant stop himself from sharing every last fragment of Waitsabilia.
For that we should in some ways be grateful. For instance, I had no idea before reading this book how unsuccessful Waits perceived himself to be until very late into his career - and inded how little esteem he was held in by his original record label, Asylum. Nor did I know just how much Waits seemed to regard his life as a piece of performance in its own right. I was fascinated to learn that the young Waits modelled himself so closely on Bob Dylan he wore a harmomica around his neck - even though he couldn't play it. And there is an unavoidable pleasure in finding that every Waits gig one has been to is, of course, decribed here - with tracklists.
So if, like me, you love Waits' music but have only a hazy sense of the man and his history, you will be gripped by this huge brick of a book. But you may find it a business-like rather than inspiring read. And by the time you get to Hoskyn's appendix in which he lists his top forty Waits tracks, you may, like me, find it irritatingly self-important: Hoskyn's earns our respect as a researcher, but not as a critic.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an excellent and comprehensive career biography of Tom Waits. It is exceptionally well researched, and well-written from the viewpoint of a fan. However the fact that Hoskyns is a fan doesn't prevent him from being critical and objective. He also resists the temptation to speculate that many biographers succumb to, preferring to stick largely to information that is in some way verifiable, or at least backed up by sources close to Waits. For Tom Waits fans and fanatics alike this is a very enlightening and entertaining book.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Hoskyns does an excellent and very thorough job on the ornery old curmudgeon that is Tom Waits. It was interesting to read about Hoskyns as ageing 'fan-boy', trying to catch glimpse of his hero outside the Edinburgh Playhouse, just a year or two back. I was at that gig (indeed, it cost me a small fortune to make the pilgrimage to see the artist who's undoubtedly amongst my very favourites), but I decided against trying to buttonhole my hero.
On this very subject, there's an appropriately melancholy note running though the book, like a musical theme, or refrain, that keeps returning: the sad blue note of those who've worked with Waits, or admired him, and yet have found themselves out of the orbit of the great man, and sadder for it, including, in some respects the author himself. This list of former buddies and associates left behind also includes such important collaborators as 'Bones' Howe, the producer who put Waits together with such jazz cats as Jack Sheldon, Jim Hughart, and Shelly manne, to such fantastic effect, on a run of 70s recordings that for me are the high water mark of Waits long and distinguished career.
It was reading about this period, from his youth and early beginnings, up to and including the period around Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, and Jim Jarmusch's excellent film Down By Law (in which Waits delivers his career-best acting role, basically caricaturing himself, with John Lurie and Roberto Bernigni making up the central trio of lovably dysfunctional rogues, on the lamb from the law), that really excited me the most. But, like the true pro he is, Hoskyns continues the tale right up to date, and there's loads more that's of great interest.
Perhaps the pivotal point in the tale that Hoskyns relates so well is when Waits is recording the soundtrack to Coppola's bizarre movie One From The Heart [DVD], a film built around Waits' brilliant music (which, like the film, is also available under the title One From The Heart), which sadly, although it has a certain strange charm, fails to match the music Waits came up with. It was on this project - in which Waits achieved an apotheosis of the lounge-jazz/tin pan alley vibe he had always flirted with (in an odd but highly successful coupling with the very beautiful country singer Crystal Gayle), creating a lush, boozily cinematic effect, whose power is strangely more filmic and evocative than the movie it was supposed to be created for, working at the Zoetrope studio - that Waits met Kathleen Brennan, and the two became, quite soon after meeting I believe, man and wife.
How did this change Waits and the evolution of his magnificent body of work? Well, read Hoskyns fabulous book to find out. The cast of characters is large and colourful, the research diligent and thorough, and the end result excitingly readable. Very highly recommended.
On this very subject, there's an appropriately melancholy note running though the book, like a musical theme, or refrain, that keeps returning: the sad blue note of those who've worked with Waits, or admired him, and yet have found themselves out of the orbit of the great man, and sadder for it, including, in some respects the author himself. This list of former buddies and associates left behind also includes such important collaborators as 'Bones' Howe, the producer who put Waits together with such jazz cats as Jack Sheldon, Jim Hughart, and Shelly manne, to such fantastic effect, on a run of 70s recordings that for me are the high water mark of Waits long and distinguished career.
It was reading about this period, from his youth and early beginnings, up to and including the period around Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs, and Jim Jarmusch's excellent film Down By Law (in which Waits delivers his career-best acting role, basically caricaturing himself, with John Lurie and Roberto Bernigni making up the central trio of lovably dysfunctional rogues, on the lamb from the law), that really excited me the most. But, like the true pro he is, Hoskyns continues the tale right up to date, and there's loads more that's of great interest.
Perhaps the pivotal point in the tale that Hoskyns relates so well is when Waits is recording the soundtrack to Coppola's bizarre movie One From The Heart [DVD], a film built around Waits' brilliant music (which, like the film, is also available under the title One From The Heart), which sadly, although it has a certain strange charm, fails to match the music Waits came up with. It was on this project - in which Waits achieved an apotheosis of the lounge-jazz/tin pan alley vibe he had always flirted with (in an odd but highly successful coupling with the very beautiful country singer Crystal Gayle), creating a lush, boozily cinematic effect, whose power is strangely more filmic and evocative than the movie it was supposed to be created for, working at the Zoetrope studio - that Waits met Kathleen Brennan, and the two became, quite soon after meeting I believe, man and wife.
How did this change Waits and the evolution of his magnificent body of work? Well, read Hoskyns fabulous book to find out. The cast of characters is large and colourful, the research diligent and thorough, and the end result excitingly readable. Very highly recommended.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
good insight into the man and his music
It is widely acknowledged that Waits is difficult to interpret as a result of his reluctance to divulge details of his private life. Read more
Published 3 months ago by C. Northfield
Great pressie
Book delivered promptly. Little wrap up pressie for my husband - who's a big Tom Waits fan. He was very pleased with it.
Published 9 months ago by chris
The Heart of Tom Waits
I've just read this on holiday with all of Tom Waits' albums on my mp3 so I could have the soundtrack to the book playing as I read. Read more
Published 13 months ago by D Paterson
Well Worth The Wait
An important read, though I don't envy the Author in having a crack at writing such a tome. Waits has done all he can to smoke-screen who he is. Read more
Published on 27 Mar 2010 by Mr. Simon P. Casson
A Flawed But Fascinating Insight
Barney Hoskyns must of had his work cut out for him. As any Tom Waits fan would know, the great man is a fiercely private individual, ever since his union with wife and... Read more
Published on 16 Jan 2010 by R. Thompson
Excellent, as one would expect
If you are looking for a rock journalist who will deliver the goods, then you need look no further than Barney Hoskyns. Read more
Published on 14 Nov 2009 by Gypsy Davey
Barney does the business without Tom's blessing!
A Brilliant account of waits work in music and film over the years in spite not having the subject's blessing due to his protective wife who allegedly got Waits; circle of friends... Read more
Published on 1 Jun 2009 by Mr. T. J. Armitage
Biography or album reviews?
The book was well written. The first section and early life of Tom Waits was more biographical due to the input of collaborators from samesaid period. Read more
Published on 22 May 2009 by J.K. van Baaren
good present
i bought this for a close friend he has started it & is really enjoying it,a true & in places eye-opening story of the man his life & his music
Published on 18 May 2009 by *rosie*
Waits exposed - the curtain pulled back
well written and researched and strong on detail for the early tropicana motel days. tends to drag on a little when we get to the 1990s as the author has no real first hand... Read more
Published on 7 April 2009 by Bob The Bobcat
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