Innocent When You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader
Binding: Paperback
Creator: Mac Montandon, Frank Black (Foreword)
ASIN: 1560256672
Manufacturer: Thunder’s Mouth Press
Average Customer Review: 
(From 19 total reviews)
List Price: $16.95
Amazon Price: $5.34 (21 new 18 used available)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours (Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping)
Price is accurate as of the date/time indicated. Prices and product availability are subject to change. Any price displayed on the Amazon web site at the time of purchase will govern the sale of this product.
Editorial Reviews
Product Description:
Customer Reviews
Keeping Track of Articles. by M. van Halm
If you’re a fan of an artist, it’s difficult, time-consuming and expensive to keep track of all the interviews and articles written about your favourite artist. Fans of Tom Waits can rest assured - the most interesting articles and interviews are collected in this book, in chronological order, with a foreword by Frank Black of the Pixies.
Reading all these interviews and articles consecutively, you get a taste of the elusive Tom Waits - sometimes truthful, often wickedly confabulating and evading queries, but always amusing.
A must for Tom Waits’ fans.
a must for tom waits fans. by fluffy, the human being.
this is a thoroughly enjoyable book consisting of all things tom waits: interviews, reviews, articles, and such. mr waits comments on his approach to songwriting were the most consistently interesting aspect of the book for me and should be of great interest (for freshness of/and or off-kilter approach to song building) to all aspiring songsters. lacking a biography or autobiography, the world, for now, will have to make do with this well done book for an insight into this amazing artist.
Step Right Up and have a chat with the man himself. by Douglas Kivett
Excellent book. This book is a collection of interviews, show reviews and magazine and newspaper articles spanning Waits’s career. Most of the interviews are from the perspective of the average reporter who has no way of getting at the center of the Waits Tutsie Roll Pop (”How many licks does it take to get to the center?”) and that provides an interesting perspective in that the reader gets to see how Waits chooses to portray himself. However, some of the interviews are done by close friends, like Elvis Costello and Jim Jarmusch (”Down by Law” and “Night on Earth”), and the reader gets a glimpse of maybe who the true Waits is. It’s a great contrast even if it wasn’t intended to be the focus of the collection.
Another captivating aspect of the book is that the reader is provided details about all the unique methods Waits uses to make his music. For example, on “The Earth Died Screaming”, sound effects are made by having people bang sticks and 2×4s on the pavement of the studio parking lot.
A must have for any Waits fan!
And it’s nearly 400 pages long!!
Multiple perspectives on Waits by Pieter
In the absence of an autobiography, this collection of 38 interviews and profiles is essential for the Tom Waits fan. It opens with a foreword by Frank Black and an introduction by Mac Montandon.
Part One: Early Years, contains the following amongst many others: The 1974 press release for Heart Of Saturday Night by Waits himself; A short interview with Clark Peterson of Creem magazine from 1978 titled The Slime Who Came In From The Cold; from 1976, there is an article from Sweet & Sour, a long Zig Zag interview and a New Yorker article.
The 1977 Rolling Stone piece by David McGee is very informative and from 1979 there is a short Washington Post article. This section also contains a poem by Charles Bukowski with a short introduction noting that it captures the entire Waitsian world.
In Part Two: The Middle Years, I found the following to be the most compelling: Peter Sabbag’s in-depth 1987 article from the Los Angeles Times Magazine, a long formal question and answer interview by Glen O’Brien in a 1985 Spin magazine, 20 Questions from a 1988 Playboy and another question and answer interview from 1989 with Elvis Costello in Option.
Part Three: These Days, offers inter alia the following informative pieces: A 1999 Billboard review of Mule Variations and a short 1999 live review by Jon Pareles from the New York Times. From the same year there is a short review by Luc Sante in The Village Voice and an engaging conversational piece by David Fricke in Rolling Stone. There is also a short question and answer session from a 2004 Vanity Fair.
This section concludes with Nirvana, a 1992 poem by Charles Bukowski. It was included because in an interview with Soma magazine in 2002, Waits referred to this as his favorite poem. The book concludes with a Discography and a Timeline from Waits’ birth on 7th December 1949 to the release of his 2004 album Real Gone. The book documents his entire career and is perhaps better than any biography as it contain so many perspectives from so many different writers.
Similar Products
Tags: alternative music, articles, bookmark, collection, mac montandon, tom waits, waits
Leave a Reply