Over the past three decades, Tom Waits has achieved the kind of top-shelf cult status most artists only dream about. In his varied career, he has acted alongside Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, and Lily Tomlin; his songs have been covered by artists as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, Sarah McLachlan, the Eagles, and the Ramones; he's won two Grammys, a Golden Globe, and been nominated for an Oscar; he's coined unforgettable phrases like better a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy and champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends; and he's made anyone who's ever listened to his music just that much cooler.

Here is Tom Waits in all his mischievous splendor. From a NewYorker Talk of the Town in 1976 to an interview by Terry Gilliam in 1999; from album reviews by Luc Sante and David Fricke to conversations with Elvis Costello and Roberto Benigni; from a recent profile in GQ to 20 Questions in Playboy and poems by Charles Bukowski that perfectly captures the Waitsian world, this is the must-have book for every fan of the artist Beck has described as a luminary, and for music fans everywhere.