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