Innocent When You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader Review

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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.


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