Customer Reviews

Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits

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4 star:		(1)
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2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A lot of music fans would really love a good biography on Tom Waits, and the author Barney Hoskyns lets this desire overrun the question of whether or not he has the information for a decent biography.

Now, let's get to the problem with this book; Waits has no desire to play along with an unauthorized biographhy, and has requested that his friends honor his wishes to not play along. Hoskyns never forgives Waits for this.

Now, personally, I can see Waits's issue here. Hoskyns however makes a pretty big fuss over Waits excluding friends from his inner circle who don't honor his wishes to keep his private life private. Now this may sound cold, but two things; one, however cold it may sound, Waits is a grownup, his friends are grownups; there's never any evidence or even suggestion that Waits has treated people in any sort of dishonest, criminal or abusive way. Two, personall, I'm a private person if somebody was writing an unauthorized biography (I am in no way claiming to have done anything worth making me famous, or that anyone would be interested in my private life this is conjecture) yes, I would ask that my friends not blabber about my private life, and if they did anyway, I would be quite hurt.

I would love to know some of the stuff Hoskyns wants to know about. I would love to read interviews from the sidemen to get an inside story about the recordings of some of my favorite music, but again, Waits and his friends are grownups; if Waits would prefer that much for stories of his behind the scenes times get spread around, that's his time.

On that note, Hoskyns also conjectures quite a bit about Wait's marriage to Kathleen Brennan, suggesting that she's holding a Yoko-Ono type influence on his life, alienating his friends and affecting his work. We're not talking bout The Beatles here though, where there's a band to disrupt. The albums are issued under one person's name. A Tom Waits album is whatever Tom Waits says it is. If he says that a Waits album is with Kathleen Brennan over the old guys, than that's a Tom Waits album.

The great fault with this book, and as the book goes on Hoskyns seems to be apologizing for it and trying to excuse himself for it is that he signed on to do a book without accepting that he was never going to have access to the information that he wanted. As the book goes on, Hoskyns resorts to stacking up snarky asides against Tom, writing reviews of the later records and recycling stories from David Letterman interviews. Hoskyns's personal offence at Tom's love of privacy even manifests itself in an appendix where the author includes e-mails from Waits acquaintances refusing interviews.

Even if you utterly disagree with my view that Waits is justified in asking his friends not to play along with this project, and you feel that the author is absolutely justified in his disenchantment with Waits, it's hard to deny that the author's lack of necessary information substantially wrecks the latter half of the book.

Hoskyns isn't a terrible writer though, and while I can't recommend buying this book, Tom Waits fanatics will find this worth checking out for some entertaining chapters on the earlier portion of Waits's career and the construction of the drunken jazzbo mythos still follows him around.

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.

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.

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.

We all know that Tom Waits didn't want to have anything to do with this book and went out of his to tell his friends to boycott this biographer. Still, Barney Hoskyns went ahead and wrote the best book that he could have written about a living legend who happens to be uncooperative. There are many things in this book that would only appeal to hard core fans such as song by song analysis of albums. Hoskyns is an excellent writer and I am left to wonder what this book could have been if Tom Waits had not asked his friends to not talk to Hoskyns. It is still the best book out there on the subject and who knows someday Tom Waits may soften his stance and talk to a biographer or at the very least let his friends talk. Waits reasons for not talking is obvious. There's a mystery attached to his persona and he wants to keep it that way. He walks a thin line of being real and putting on an act and he wants us to always guess what's real and what's a put on. I do think that's a minor detail. True Tom Waits fans don't care. They love the man and his music. Whether his wife is the second coming of Yoko Ono is irrelevant. That's their business. The album cover says Tom Waits and that's what I go by. Read this book.

The book reads like one long, badly written record review. Most info and quotes come from older interviews and other sources. In the second half of the book Hoskyns doesn't even try to hide his distain for Waits' wife and co-writer, tries to make her into some sort of controling gate keeper manipulating things from behind the scenes. Tom Waits has a gift and if this is the way he chooses to protect it, so be it. Listen to his music instead of reading this and enjoy the ride.

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)

Most of the other two-star reviews have covered the problems with this book - the snarky tone, the baseless Kathleen-as-Yoko musings, padding out thin material with song-by-song reviews of each album - so I won't rehash that here.

This doesn't sink the book entirely, but it's telling that Hoskyns claims that "Mystery Men" was directed by Tim Burton under a pseudonym. On a whim, I tried Googling this claim, and could only find a piece of glurge that doesn't claim to be factual. Fact-checking appears to have been marginal, at best.

Which is unfortunate, because there's so little factual information in the thing. I think if he'd been intellectually honest, the book would have started with the appendix, where he lists all of the rejection emails he receives from Waits' current friends and associates. If I'd known that at the start, I could have saved myself some time. (In truth, if he'd been really honest, the words 'Unauthorized Biography' would have been included on the cover.)

Hoskyns is, at least according to the blurbs, a well-known and respected music writer. Unfortunately, there's a different skill set required for a biographer, and this project seems to be beyond his reach. There's no intellectual rigor here, and not enough personal distance from his subject. He's obviously a big fan, which is a big drawback for this book. It causes him to insert his personal opinions at every turn (he includes his personal list of the 40 best Tom Waits songs - to what purpose?), and he's too respectful of Waits to do the digging necessary to write a proper unauthorized biography.

After I finished reading the book, I though about what do do with the thing. I'm certainly not planning to read it again, but I can't think of anyone to give it to. My youngest son and a couple of my friends are Waits fans, but there's really not a lot of new information (in fact, you could probably find a lot of the interviews that are the source material through Google). However, the dearth of really substantial information and the sheer amount of filler in the book means that I wouldn't recommend it to a non-fan.

While it's far from perfect, I'd recommend Jay Jacobs' book on Waits over this one Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits (No Series Information required).

LOWSIDE OF THE ROAD: A LIFE OF TOM WAITS offers a treasure trove of detail in an entertaining biography perfect for any popular music collection. Tom Waits is one of the most critically acclaimed singer-songwriters today: this is the first serious in-depth coverage to examine his life and career and uses the author's unusual access to the reclusive Waits' inner circle and exclusive interviews with Waits over the years to provide an unusual, well-rounded coverage.

While the title is obviously chosen for being an actual Waits song, Hoskyns should've called this book "TWO sides of the Road." There is an obvious "Part One" and "Part Two" here...with the delineation being the start of Waits' relationship with Brennan. After that, Hoskyns runs out of sources who WOULD talk to him about Waits and morphs from biographer to armchair music critic...while constantly whining about Waits' desire to keep his private life private.

The first part of the book is actually pretty decent, and provides a glimpse of Waits' childhood and musical beginnings. The stories and interviews with those involved with his first few albums are also enjoyable. The most interesting part of the entire book is the seemingly complete alienation by Waits of anyone involved with his career after Brennan steps into the picture. This is where the Yoko comparisons start coming into play and, to his credit, Hoskyns does a good job of allowing those involved to express their disappointment and sadness of the sudden overnight change. However, Waits has said on more than one occasion that Brennan saved his life (most recently during his Rock N Roll Hall of Fame induction speech). He stopped drinking soon after their relationship began, and she gave him the courage to begin the "experimental" period of his career. So, if alienating those who were part of his "troubadour years" is what it took to achieve all that he has since, it's hard to argue with that decision.

I think it's obvious at this point that we'll never have a "true" biography of Waits. Even if he wrote his own, I'm not sure how much would actually be truth instead of fiction given his penchant for storytelling and sense of humor. Perhaps it's best that we as fans just accept him as the mystery he's always been and continue to enjoy the music.