Song Noir

There have been many Waits-related books, but Harvey's mission to recount and explain the resonance of his 10-year method-style immersion in LA's seedy underbelly is a winner thanks to his detailed research, noir-conscious writing style and fan's perspective on this uniquely complex artist. After meeting lifelong partner Kathleen Brennan changed his life, Waits left the city of his dreams to start his next phase with Swordfishtrombones. Those first wild years come to vivid life in this thorougly worthwhile addition to the Waits library. * Kris Needs, Classic Rock *
Harvey is sensitive to the delicacy of doing too much unpicking when it comes to the fairy tales, but he does supply insights and levelheadedness where it’s useful to the narrative, or to illustrating the work, to do so . . . Harvey has done a fine, impassioned job of piecing together the bricolage from which this most elusive, self-mythologizing figure set about assembling that “down-and-out but amusing […] character” who happened to write some of the most interesting songs of his era, but who in the end had to be burned away by the man behind the mask, for whom restlessness, self-invention, and an open road had always been at the heart of it all. * Los Angeles Review of Books *
The book has a nicely contained thesis – that Los Angeles and its variegated character shaped Waits’ creative development — and its focus on the first 10 years of his recording career serves that thesis well. Waits’ career path can look head-scratching. A musician launches with a half-dozen albums in the familiar genres of ballads, jazz, and blues, then takes a hard turn toward the theatrical avant-garde and keeps on going. In laying out Waits’ story, Harvey, a filmmaker, maps the journey in a clear and compelling way. * The Washington Independent Review of Books *
One can easily make the argument that musician, songwriter, and actor Tom Waits is the consummate chronicler of down-and-out life in Los Angeles. Producer, director, and critic Harvey describes the busy first decade of Waits’ idiosyncratic career and his nine Los Angeles-themed albums . . . Beautifully written, Song Noir is a fascinating and compelling read featuring striking and evocative black-and-white photographs. * Booklist *
Waits is a wonderfully absorbent sponge for influences that range from books to poems to movies and paintings. For this recording artist, the Beat beat might throb quite urgently in these City of Angels years but it is layered upon film noir, pulp fiction, gutter romanticism, detective novels, modern art and the rest. The references are multiple. The result, as Harvey enticingly reveals in his crisp and informed narrative, is an eclectic canvas: a self-directed movie of Waits’ hyperactive, and sometimes befuddled, mind which he weaves on record and on stage through a series of seminal studio and live releases over this period, from Small Change in 1976 through to 1983’s Swordfishtrombones. * Rock and the Beat Generation *
Song Noir is unique from other music biographies as it digs deep into the cultural history of Los Angeles and how it affected Waits and his music. * Underrated Reads *
Song Noir provides a compelling account of Tom’s wild years in the 1960s and ‘70s in an LA that no longer exists; much more than a biography, however, it also reveals the mythic visions of that city created by Waits as an extraordinary artistic achievement. * David Hesmondhalgh, music sociologist, author of Why Music Matters *
In Song Noir, Alex Harvey brilliantly reconstructs the colorful characters and grimy street life in Tom Waits’s head. Song Noir guides us through Waits’s evolution as an artist in parallel with the dark shades of Los Angeles in the 1970s, a world that helped shape his songs and ultimately his very persona. Harvey manages to craft a glimpse into Waits’s creative process, a swirling cauldron of sorts where Bukowski, Kerouac, Raymond Chandler and all the tragic victims from the pages of noir come to life, showing us the arrival and progression of Tom Waits the artist, with his rich cinematic vision in full bloom. * Tree Adams, composer *
I would recommend it to anyone who loves music, specifically Tom Waits, or those that just like a great biography. Go and buy this book, you will not regret it. * With Just a Hint of Mayhem blog *
This beautifully-written book is an inspired autopsy of LA's grimy underbelly in the 1970s - and a riveting psychological deconstruction of a complicated artist. * Guy Bennett *