Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits

By Barney Hoskyns

With his trademark growl, carnival-madman persona, haunting music, and unforgettable lyrics, Tom Waits is one of the most revered and critically acclaimed singer-songwriters alive today. After beginning his career on the margins of the 1970s Los Angeles rock scene, Waits has spent the last thirty years carving out a place for himself among such greats as Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Like them, he is a chameleonic survivor who has achieved long-term success while retaining cult credibility and outsider mystique. But although his songs can seem deeply personal and somewhat autobiographical, fans still know very little about the man himself. Notoriously private, Waits has consistently and deliberately blurred the line between fact and fiction, public and private personas, until it has become impossible to delineate between truth and self-fabricated legend.

Lowside of the Road is the first serious biography to cut through the myths and make sense of the life and career of this beloved icon. Barney Hoskyns has gained unprecedented access to Waits’s inner circle and also draws on interviews he has done with Waits over the years. Spanning his extraordinary forty-year career from Closing Time to Orphans, from his perilous “jazzbo” years in 1970s LA to such shape-shifting albums as Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs to the Grammy Award winners of recent years, this definitive biography charts Waits’s life and art step by step, album by album.

Barney Hoskyns has written a rock biography—much like the subject himself—unlike any other. It is a unique take on one of rock’s great enigmas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: May 19, 2009
• ISBN: 9780767931465

Barney Hoskyns

Rock historian Barney Hoskyns is the author of nine books including SAY IT ONE TIME FOR THE BROKENHEARTED, PRINCE: IMP OF THE PERVERSE, FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM: THE GREAT VOICES OF POPULAR MUSIC and ACROSS THE GREAT DIVIDE: THE BAND AND AMERICA. He has written for numerous music publications such as NME, MOJO, as well as THE TIMES, VOGUE, ARENA, the NEW STATESMAN and the INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY. He lives in London.

Reviews for Lowside of the Road

[nmele_4 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The further I read in Hoskyns biography, the more I was reminded of A.J. Weberman, the guy who spent years digging through Bob Dylan's trash and analyzing it. I was surprised when, a few pages before the end of this Tom Waits biography, Hoskyns asks himself, and his readers, whether he isn't doing something like Weberman. My answer is yes, and it's not pretty. While Hoskyns cites Waits' clear statements about the need to keep some part of his life private, and the relationship between mystery and art, Hoskyns clearly holds it against Waits that he refused to authorize this biography and refused access to himself and his family, and then discouraged close friends from talking with Hoskyns. He opens the book with this gripe and includes an appendix of e-mails from friends of Waits who have turned down his requests for interviews. Sour grapes, and they sour the whole project.

[bbec_4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

felt a bit tainted when i realised that this was unauthorised. go the impression that the author hadn't quite dealt with his version not getting the go ahead from waits also.