Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits by Barney Hoskyns
Bloomsbury $35
By Andrew P Street
Barney Hoskyns' exhaustive 600-page biography of Tom Waits is a triumph for a number of reasons. Firstly, it provides a fascinating overview of the life and work of one of popular music's most idiosyncratic and singular artists, written in a very readable style. Secondly – and more importantly – it does so with the express non-cooperation not only of Waits and wife/collaborator Kathleen Brennan, but also damn near everyone connected with them. Indeed, there's a lengthy appendix containing the polite but firm emails from many of Waits' sidemen, former producers, co-stars, collaborators and friends explaining that they have been instructed not to cooperate in any way.
This means that Hoskyns is left with a limited number of published interviews with the notoriously private performer (several of which Hoskyns himself conducted for various music publications), interviews with people unafraid of being cut out of the Waits circle, and Hoskyns' voluminous knowledge of the man's work. Amazingly, it all comes together to paint a fascinating picture of an astonishingly creative artist and a fiercely intelligent man whose uncooperativeness seems motivated by a passionate desire to protect his and his family's privacy rather than a need to conceal dark secrets: just about everyone who Hoskyns spoke to, on and off the record, spoke of Waits in terms ranging from respectful to glowing.
You'll share Hoskyns' frustration at the distance from his subject, but it adds to rather than detracts from the journey. Waits may not acknowledge it, but it's hard to imagine he doesn't secretly relish Lowside of the Road's enhancement of his myth.
