Spanning Tom Waits` extraordinary 40-year career, from "Closing Time" to "Orphans", "Lowside of the Road" is Barney Hoskyns` unique take on one of rock`s great enigmas. Like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, Waits is a chameleonic survivor who`s achieved long-term success while retaining cult credibility and outsider mystique. From his perilous `jazzbo` years in `70s Los Angeles to the multiple-Grammy winner of recent years - by way of such shape-shifting `80s albums as Swordfishtrombones - this exhaustive biography charts Waits` life step-by-step and album-by-album. Affectionate and penetrating, and based on a combination of assiduous research and deep critical insight, this is a outstanding investigation of a notoriously private artist and performer - the definitive account to date of Tom Waits` life and work.