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.
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Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
