Innocent when You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader »

Over the past three decades, Tom Waits has achieved the kind of top-shelf cult status most artists only dream about. In his varied career, he has acted alongside Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, and Lily Tomlin; his songs have been covered by artists as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, Sarah McLachlan, the Eagles, and the Ramones; he’s won two Grammys, a Golden Globe, and been nominated for an Oscar; he’s coined unforgettable phrases like “better a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy” and “champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends”; and he’s made anyone who’s ever listened to his music just that much cooler.

Here is Tom Waits in all his mischievous splendor. From a New Yorker “Talk of the Town” in 1976 to an interview by Terry Gilliam in 1999; from album reviews by Luc Sante and David Fricke to conversations with Elvis Costello and Roberto Benigni; from a recent profile in GQ to “20 Questions” in Playboy and reviews of Waits’s acclaimed new album, Real Gone, this is the must-have book for every fan of the artist Beck has described as a “luminary,” and for music fans everywhere.

Library Journal

Tom Waits is one of the true eccentrics in American popular music whose songs and persona have always identified strongly with seedy, late-night bars and downtrodden characters. Since the mid-1980s, he has had the freedom to create a large body of innovative music drawn from sources as diverse as Captain Beefheart, Harry Partch, and Kurt Weill. Journalist Montandon here presents a well-edited collection of essays and interviews spanning Waits's career from 1974 to 2004 and representing publications as diverse as the Onion and Vanity Fair. Many of the writers spend as much time describing Waits and their interview location as they do the music, but this is half the fun. Waits is, not surprisingly, an intelligent, witty subject, so the conversations go all over the map. Two of the best segments involve songwriter Elvis Costello and film director Jim Jarmusch (who recently cast Waits in Coffee and Cigarettes). This first anthology on Waits is essential reading for his myriad fans and nicely complements biographies like Jay S. Jacobs's Wild Years. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries.-Bill Walker, Stockton-San Joaquin Cty. P.L., CA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.