- 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 Swordfish trombones - 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 an outstanding investigation of a notoriously private artist and performer - the definitive account to date of Tom Waits" life and work.