Synopses & Reviews
Tom Waits, even with his barnyard growl and urban hipster yawp, may just be what the Daily Telegraph calls him: the greatest entertainer on Planet Earth.” Over a span of almost four decades, he has transformed his music and persona not to suit the times but his whims. But along with Bob Dylan, he stands as one of the last elder statesmen still capable of putting out music that matters.
Journalists intent upon cracking the code are more likely to come out of a Waits interview with anecdotes about the weather, insects, or medieval medicine. He is, in essence, the teacher we wished we had, dispensing insights such as: Vocabulary is my main instrument;” We all like music, but what we really want is for music to like us;” Anything you absorb you will ultimately secrete;” Growth is scary, because youre a seed and youre in the dark and you dont know which way is up, and down might take you down further into a darker place . . .;” and There is no such thing as nonfiction. . . . People who really know what happened arent talking. And the people who dont have a clue, you cant shut them up.”
Tom Waits on Tom Waits is a selection of over fifty interviews from the more than five hundred available. Here Waits delivers prose as crafted, poetic, potent, and haunting as the lyrics of his best songs.
Review
"This book is filled with verbal fireworks and lyrical bon mots."—American Songwriter Magazine
Review
"Absolutely required for Waits fans old and new, this pile of interviews is a magic mountain of weird."—PopMatters.com
Review
"Recommended for all Tom Waits fans."—Library Journal
Review
“ Jeff Burger has selected interviews and quotes, many of which haven’t [previously] been published in English, that will prove as fascinating to Cohen newcomers as to his most diehard fans.”—
Parade magazine
Review
“I love the way Cohen speaks [in this book]—he is so disarming and seductive. I always burst out laughing; he is funny and deep.”—Bella Freud, Vanity Fair
Synopsis
This autobiographical portrait of Tom Waits takes shape through a selection of more than 50 interviews. Starting with the first interviewon KPFK-FM’s Folkscene in 1973Waits speaks out on a variety of topics and shares something truly unique with his readers. In a rap that is a synthesis of inflectionsLouis Armstrong, Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, Mark Twain, hobo, pool hall attendant, vaudevillian huckster, musicologist par excellence, and a fresh slathering of the organic word-ooze of William S. BurroughsWaits comes across as well read, informed, and lucidly aware of current pop culture. He delivers prose as crafted, poetic, potent, brilliant, and haunting as the lyrics of his best songs.
Synopsis
Leonard Cohen, one of the most admired performers of the last half century, has had a strange and eventful life. Now, for the first time, he tells his story in his own words, via more than fifty interviews conducted worldwide between 1966 and 2012.
In Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen—which includes a foreword by singer Suzanne Vega and eight pages of rarely seen photos—the artist talks about “Bird on the Wire,” “Hallelujah,” “Famous Blue Raincoat,” and his other classic songs. He candidly discusses his famous romances, his years in a Zen monastery, his ill-fated collaboration with producer Phil Spector, and his long battle with depression. He also comments on his classic poetry and novels, the financial crisis that nearly wiped out his savings, and his remarkable late-career resurgence.
Here you’ll find interviews that first appeared in the New York Times and Rolling Stone, along with conversations that have not previously been printed in English. Some have been broadcast but never published. And some of the material has not been available until now in any format, including the many illuminating reminiscences that contributors supplied specifically for this definitive anthology.
About the Author
Jeff Burger is the editor of Springsteen
on Springsteen: Interviews, Speeches, and Encounters. He has contributed to
Barron’s,
Family Circle,
GQ, the
Los Angeles Times,
Reader’s Digest, and more than seventy-five other magazines, newspapers, and books, including many national and international music periodicals. He has published interviews with such leading musicians as Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Tom Waits, the Righteous Brothers, and the members of Steely Dan. He lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey.