For more than twenty years, Tom Waits has been the rag and bone man of contemporary music, a singer with a heart of gold and a voice of gravel. His ragged voice and haunting lyrics have enraptured fans worldwide, capturing the tattered hopes and boozy dreams of hard-luck cases everywhere. Small Change, the first biography of this unique performer, tracks Waits from his early days as a pizza chef and fireman right up to the masterful albums such as Rain Dogs and Frank's Wild Years that brought Waits critical acclaim in the eighties. Visions of Waits the actor (Down by Law, Ironweed), Waits the composer (One from the Heart), Waits on tour ("The new band is all midgets, they share a room"), and wonderful photos all add up to a welcome portrait of the music that has influenced U2, Elvis Costello, and The Pogues, and of the man whose ravaged voice and whiskey wisdom have shown us the high life, the low life, and all that lies between.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
An extended fan-mag article,
By A Customer
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This review is from: Small Change: A Life of Tom Waits (Paperback)
The author tries to match Waits with his metaphor magic and of course fails. This kind of punchy "clever" writing might work for a magazine but is very hard to read for an extended period time, as in a book. There are lots of weird mistakes (is the author English and missing some things?) and the font used is almost illegible. Still it's the only book I know of and somewhat helpful if you can find the facts among the fluff.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
the wrong author for the job,
This review is from: Small Change: A Life of Tom Waits (Paperback)
Mr. Humphries is a big fan of Tom Waits. Unfortunately, he's mainly a fond of the early Tom, and spends a great deal of this book trying to explain why Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs and everything that followed don't live up to Small Change. Tom deserves to have a biography written about him that does justice to his mid-eighties and later work as a period of astonishing innovation and creativity, rather than seeming almost apologetic that he dared to stray from the bars and back alleys of his early work at all.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
More a collection of the author's opinions than a bio.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Small Change: A Life of Tom Waits (Paperback)
Fans of Waits are sure to be disappointed by this book which pretends to be a bio. It's actually mostly a collection of the author's own enthusiastic essays about Waits. Read a Dave Marsh bio of Springsteen to get an idea of the flavor. Direct quotes from Waits are mostly familiar, having already appeared in well known magazines. Save your money or buy a spare copy of a Waits CD instead.
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