Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits
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Topic: Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits
Posted By: Dick Heath
Subject: Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits
Date Posted: July 26 2010 at 10:27
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http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lowside-Road-Life-Tom-Waits/dp/0571235530/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1280156184&sr=1-1 - Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits by Barney Hoskyns .
Slowly moving through this biography and having a rather love/hate affair with the way the book written.
Well known music author, Hoskyns is a near-complete fan here seemingly to provide a warts and all account of Tom Waits life and style, in an attempt to get at the essential artist and what makes that enigmatic and private person tick - which Waits appears to carefully avoid revealing in interviews. Hence Hoskyns is long in word, having clearly done a thorough piece of research here but seems to unable to thrown any of it away. So there are points where I'm finding the writing style is quite dense, with the trivial info overwhelming to point of slowing the main narative right down. I'm crying out: "Get on with it!". But admittedly some of the minor facts are quite interesting and I'm enjoying that minutia. Liberal use of quotes does mean for instance, that 70's LA beatnix-speak is lost on me. (I keep feeling a loose parallel is Antonio Fraser's over-reliance of quoting wholesale from 16th and 17th century texts, in her biographies of Oliver Cromwell, Guy Fawkes, etc., where the 400 year old English is used extensively). So right now I'm just beyond page 200 and only got to the end of 70's. Having said there's a lot of detail, and I get the feeling that I getting less about the long gaps between albums including tours (Hoskyns relying on 2nd hand interviews of Waits, or interviews he's made with Waits' acquaintances), than the albums themselves (i.e. Hoskyns has something tangible to slap on the turntable and to provide a personal analysis).
I would suggest this is a book aimed more at the discerning fan, than somebody like me who likes a little of Waits' music and wants to know (succinctly) where he's coming from. ------------- The best eclectic music on the Web,8-11pm BST/GMT THURS. CLICK ON: http://www.lborosu.org.uk/media/lcr/live.php - http://www.lborosu.org.uk/media/lcr/live.php Host by PA's Dick Heath. |
Replies:
Posted By: Dick Heath
Date Posted: September 06 2010 at 09:24
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Still reading, but finding this only digestible in 3 to 4 page chunks so ~100 pages to go (the new Ian Rankin pp made for much better holiday reading/entertainment) - and no changes wrt my earlier comments to the structuring and contents of this book. ------------- The best eclectic music on the Web,8-11pm BST/GMT THURS. CLICK ON: http://www.lborosu.org.uk/media/lcr/live.php - http://www.lborosu.org.uk/media/lcr/live.php Host by PA's Dick Heath. |
Posted By: sarge
Date Posted: October 11 2010 at 01:36
| Ah, thats a shame. Is it comprised entirley of interviews? |
Posted By: Dick Heath
Date Posted: October 11 2010 at 06:16
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It is readable but not quite what I want out of a biography. Sure it is based on interviews but the interviews being used to create a narrative, in which some statements are quoted. Seems to me Hoskins might have chopped some of the minor details and dug deeper to get a better insights to what makes Waits tick. However, friends and indeed former friends seem protective, and therefore seem to add to the myths rather than expose more of the truth. I appeared to have hit a part of the book in which there are "islands of detail" i.e. the recording sessions tied to Hoskyn reviews, separated by the times in between (especially on the road) being less sharp. Clearly from this, Wait's private life is largely private - although we go a little way into his relationship with Ricky Lee Jones. ------------- The best eclectic music on the Web,8-11pm BST/GMT THURS. CLICK ON: http://www.lborosu.org.uk/media/lcr/live.php - http://www.lborosu.org.uk/media/lcr/live.php Host by PA's Dick Heath. |
Posted By: Dick Heath
Date Posted: March 02 2011 at 07:35
After a longish lay off, I finished this book only yesterday (1st March 2011). There are some gems of information but in attempting to break through the enigma of Tom Wait's stage and album persona, Hoskyn's generates long (indeed overlong) descriptors, which have tangents and indeed the tangents have tangents. One example of tangents on tangents on tangents, that sticks in my mind, is a later chapter. The prime subject here is Waits in the early 90's with a tangent going to discuss people who have covered Wait's tunes, which goes further to talking about Ute Lemper's albums, with another tangent to say on her albums are tunes by Scott Walker who in number of ways is parallel to Waits wrt his reclusiveness, eclecticism and enigmatic nature as a composer/musician (even explaining how Walker creates some of the sounds heard on his on albums.......). I admit I'm guilty here at PA writing somewhat tangentially, but in this sort of serious biography dense with information, I found myself time after time wading (treacle-like) through relatively irrelevant wodges trying to find my way back to the subject of Tom Waits. At 500 pages of biography plus an Appendix*, I finished being only a little wiser about the man but however more informed about Wait's discography, because Hoskyns produces two line thumbnail sketches about most tracks on most albums (so admittedly helpful to me). Nevertheless I'm left thinking this biography could been far more polished and well edited down to 200 pages. (As I tell my undergraduates why use 500 words when 300 will suffice - those extra 200 tend to create a fog that clouds/obscures the facts and those pearls of wisdom contained in the relevant 300 words). As such, I've would have read it in fortnight, probably giving me more insight - while not having one large lump of book occupy floor space since last summer - no I didn't use it as a door stop but it probably would work. However, in its praise, it is the sort of book you can dip into and maybe gather a snippet or two, e.g. during those brief sessions sitting on the loo (i.e. a it's good have sitting in the toilet for those private moments ).
*One section of which is a run of repros of e.mails across several pages, in which Hoskyns was trying to get various permissions to interview the extensive cast of characters included here. This IMHO describing some dull aspects of the mechanics of setting-up and creating a biography which is inconclusive, is largely irrelevant and superfluous. ------------- The best eclectic music on the Web,8-11pm BST/GMT THURS. CLICK ON: http://www.lborosu.org.uk/media/lcr/live.php - http://www.lborosu.org.uk/media/lcr/live.php Host by PA's Dick Heath. |
Posted By: Jozef
Date Posted: March 02 2011 at 13:19
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I've been reading this book too for the past month now and I have to agree with most of what Dick is saying. While it's a very interesting book, particularly the chapters about Waits's early life and the musicians he's worked with, it seems like there's a lot of rambling paragraphs that can draw the reader's attention away from the main idea. I'm about halfway through, up to the chapter on "Swordfishtrombones" which I actually found to be one of the more interesting parts of the book to be honest. ------------- 
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