Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom WaitsDetailsTom Waits on Tom Waits: Interviews and Encounters (Musicians in Their Own Words) FREE Shipping on orders over . DetailsTom Waits - The Little Black Songbook: Chords/Lyrics FREE Shipping on orders over . Updated to include Tom Waits's most recent endeavors-albums Real Gone, Blood Money and Alice, and movies Coffee and Cigarettes and Domino-Jacobs's biography of the man with the gravely voice draws on a 30-year career, a lot of interviews and Waits's microphone banter to show "the irony of Tom Waits's career is that after he found happiness, love, and sobriety, his music became more and more experimental." Waits appears here with all the trappings of an iconic figure, including the self-mythologizing: Jacobs quotes Waits heavily, but warns that the musician's words are often of questionable accuracy. With over 30 images capturing Waits in his many different roles, a discography (including covers) and a list of Waits's guest appearances, Jacobs's biography will find a welcome audience in fans of Waits's music.
I love biographies and such of my favorite musicians and I have never read anything on Tom. Any recommendations on where to start? π Rendered by PID 72840 on app-782 at 2017-03-17 22:56:21.732650+00:00 running 32e28f7 country code: SG.DetailsWild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits FREE Shipping on orders over . When a celebrity not only refuses to cooperate with a would-be biographer but persuades most of his inner circle not to grant interviews either, the writer's task is much more daunting. In trying to account for the 40-year career of eccentric singer/songwriter (and occasional film actor) Tom Waits, Hoskyns (Hotel California) puts his subject's reluctance front and center, openly speculating on the rumors that Waits's wife has engineered his withdrawal from his early associates. The armchair psychology extends to Waits's idiosyncratic public persona, but is buttressed with interviews with as many people as Hoskyns could get to talk, a few conversations he had with Waits for magazine pieces and excerpts from other articles over the years.
For the most part, Waits's musical transformation from hip troubadour to far-out maverick is well contextualized, but when Hoskyns's resources are stretched thin in this overlong book, his pronouncements become less compelling. Readers may not particularly care what the biographer thinks of Waits's last album, for example, nor need a complete set list from a random concert. Despite these problems, however, Hoskyns deserves credit for trying to give Waits the critical scrutiny his work deserves. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition. Absolutely outstanding" --Danny Baker, BBC"[This] book lights up and whirls like one of the greasy carnival rides in Mr. Wait's own sprawling oeuvre" --The New York TimesHoskyn's superlative overview of one of America's major (though idiosyncratic) popular artists will likely stand as the best book on his life"--Library Journal (starred review)"Hoskyns persevered in writing the first Waits biography, netting fascination firsthand stories, terrific photographs, and fanatically detailed information about studio sessions and concerts...the result is a respectful, entertaining, and revelatory portrait set within a vivid cultural context."
--Booklist"It's about time [Waits] received biographical homage from a rock writer of the stature of Hoskyns."--Stephen Poole, The Guardian"Comprehensive and judicious. [Waits] could not have found a more respectful, sympathetic and knowledgeable biographer if he'd chosen him himself."--Mick Brown, The Word"Thanks to his diligence. His Californian connections and some magazine interviews he conducted long ago with Waits, Hoskyn's life comes across as convincingly lifelike."--Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1 edition (May 11, 2010) 5.2 x 1.4 x 8 inches #656,673 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) in Books > Arts & Photography > Music > Musical Genres > Rock in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Actors & Entertainers 5 star26%4 star18%3 star15%2 star30%1 star11%See all verified purchase reviewsTop Customer ReviewsFool's Errand.|Worthy for fans with some misgivings|IF you're a fan.|TWO Sides of the Road" is a Better Description|
The best you can do if you're looking for a book on Tom Waits| Tom Waits - The Little Black Songbook: Chords/Lyrics* Note: these are all the books on Goodreads for this author. To add more books, click here.Customers Also Bought Items By Nick Cave & th... Are You an Author? Help us improve our Author Pages by updating your bibliography and submitting a new or current image and biog. Learn more at Author Central It’s difficult to write a proper introduction to any piece about Tom Waits. If you’re a fan, you’ll already know everything I could say about him. If you’re not, here’s what Wikipedia has to say: “Thomas Alan ‘Tom’ Waits (born December 7, 1949) is an American singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding ‘like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car.’
With this trademark growl, his incorporation of pre-rock music styles such as blues, jazz, and vaudeville, and experimental tendencies verging on industrial music, Waits has built up a distinctive musical persona.” Waits’ music treads so many stylistic paths that the challenge I wanted to present myself with here was, “In just how few songs can you sum up the man’s music?” Fifteen was about as close as I got. The goal here wasn’t just to put the songs on here that I couldn’t live without (because I left off, oh, say, 50 or so), but to find 15 songs that represent every facet of Waits’ music: the backwoods, the cabaret halls, the grimy sidewalks. It was a challenge, to say the least. Tom Waits’ music has always had an odd theatricality to it, borne of (I think) a fascination with Kurt Veill and Bertolt Brecht. Never has this been so apparent as in The Black Rider, a “musical fable” produced in collaboration with William S. Burroughs and Robert Wilson. “Just the Right Bullets” is a bizarre combination of lurching, music hall cabaret, and surging, double-time instrumental passages—I think it’s as appropriate as any cut to demonstrate Waits’ theatrical leanings.
Taking its title from a piece of graffiti carved into the walls of Alcatraz during a prison break, “Hell Broke Luce” finds Waits agitating on behalf of one of his favorite causes: the beleaguered Army grunt. But this isn’t a tender ode to homesickness like Real Gone‘s “Day After Tomorrow”: this is an apocalyptic field chant that conjures visions of a dusty, demoralized desert before strafing it with Keith Richards’ and Marc Ribot’s guitars. Fittingly for someone who’s spent a career chronicling the least among us, Waits hurls vitriol for those at the top: “How is the only ones responsible for making this mess / Got their sorry asses stapled to a goddamn desk?” Stark, eerie, and hilarious, “Goin’ Out West” is the highlight of Bone Machine. Its genius is the naked ambition and hilarious blues boasting in the lyrics (“I’m gonna change my name to Hannibal / Or maybe just Rex”) that butt up against the end-of-the-world menace of the band’s relentless swing.