Innocent When You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader (Paperback)

~ Mac Montandon (Editor), Frank Black (Foreword) (Foreword)
Key Phrases: house where nobody lives, rain dogs, wild years, Tom Waits, Mule Variations, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Covering 30 years in 40 chapters, Montandon's anthology of reviews and interviews stretches from a Waits-penned press release (1974) through an interview that the singer-cum-cult-figure did for Magnet in November 2004. In between, readers can follow Waits and Elvis Costello through some absurd leaps of logic in a conversation they recorded at a Chinese restaurant in 1989, hear Waits tell Terry Gross "I couldn't wait to be an old man," and peruse a 1987 Toronto Star review of a gritty, mood-shifting concert. "Waits was forever turning the show into something new," the critic says, "revealing another nook in his low-rent pantry." Despite the conspicuous gap between 1993 and 1999, the volume gives a vivid portrait of Waits as a person, with glimpses into the life of a composer and performer who has referred to his songs as "travelogues." Word-for-word transcriptions of some interviews make for difficult reading, but the book will nonetheless be welcomed by Waits's many fans.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The first thing most people notice about Tom Waits is that voice, that raspy croak that somehow conveys a wide range of emotions. Many entries in this entertaining volume comment on Waits' greatest musical distinction; Gene Santoro's, for instance, aptly describes it as a "smashed foghorn." Other pieces include the hilarious transcript of an Australian TV talk show with Waits as a mumbling, drunken guest; profiles from the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Village Voice; interviews from the Onion and Musician magazine; rambling conversations with Elvis Costello and independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch; poems by Charles Bukowski (Waits is a longtime admirer); and a revealing interview by NPR's Terry Gross. As Geoffrey Himes notes in an article that appeared in the Washington Post, Waits' cast of characters in his songs includes drunks, hookers, petty thieves, and other assorted misfits who haunt all-night diners and used-car lots. "Bruce Springsteen likes to sing about these characters," Himes says, "but Waits sings as one." The fans surely will love this collection. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press (May 10, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560256672
• ISBN-13: 978-1560256670
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #51,170 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Multiple perspectives on Waits, June 3, 2006

By	Pieter "Toypom" (Johannesburg) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

In the absence of an autobiography, this collection of 38 interviews and profiles is essential for the Tom Waits fan. It opens with a foreword by Frank Black and an introduction by Mac Montandon.

Part One: Early Years, contains the following amongst many others: The 1974 press release for Heart Of Saturday Night by Waits himself; A short interview with Clark Peterson of Creem magazine from 1978 titled The Slime Who Came In From The Cold; from 1976, there is an article from Sweet & Sour, a long Zig Zag interview and a New Yorker article.

The 1977 Rolling Stone piece by David McGee is very informative and from 1979 there is a short Washington Post article. This section also contains a poem by Charles Bukowski with a short introduction noting that it captures the entire Waitsian world.

In Part Two: The Middle Years, I found the following to be the most compelling: Peter Sabbag's in-depth 1987 article from the Los Angeles Times Magazine, a long formal question and answer interview by Glen O'Brien in a 1985 Spin magazine, 20 Questions from a 1988 Playboy and another question and answer interview from 1989 with Elvis Costello in Option.

Part Three: These Days, offers inter alia the following informative pieces: A 1999 Billboard review of Mule Variations and a short 1999 live review by Jon Pareles from the New York Times. From the same year there is a short review by Luc Sante in The Village Voice and an engaging conversational piece by David Fricke in Rolling Stone. There is also a short question and answer session from a 2004 Vanity Fair.

This section concludes with Nirvana, a 1992 poem by Charles Bukowski. It was included because in an interview with Soma magazine in 2002, Waits referred to this as his favorite poem. The book concludes with a Discography and a Timeline from Waits' birth on 7th December 1949 to the release of his 2004 album Real Gone. The book documents his entire career and is perhaps better than any biography as it contain so many perspectives from so many different writers.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sirens? What Sirens?, June 20, 2005

By	Rudaigh Coyle (Quilcene, WA USA) - See all my reviews

I grabbed this book on the way to the emergency room -- something to hold onto while waiting and freaking. Four hours later, a guy with a very bloody face whacks my foot, "Hey, is that you they've been calling?" It was.

Wonderfully edited and organized, this is a fascinating book from start to finish. Anybody who's ever thought of getting into the interview/feature article writing business would be wise to read through these pieces to see how it's done. Anybody who wants to be thoroughly distracted from a miserable here and now should grab this book. And of course anybody interested in Tom Waits should read it for pure pleasure.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a great find, August 20, 2005

By	Kar (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

I bought this book on Amazon thinking it would be a hip birthday gift bound to please a huge Tom Waits fan. I browsed through it before wrapping it and the next day I went to a book store to buy myself a copy. Turns out this book has essays and stories from some of my favorite artists and writers like Frank Black, Jim Jarmusch, Terry Gross (npr!), Charles Bukowski and Elvis Costello. It's been on my nightstand for a few months now. Indeed, this book was a nice surprise.