Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits

by Barney Hoskyns

Waits had thought about consulting Robert Wilson on how to shake up the conventional experience of live music. “I really want to create a stage environment for me that [gives me] confidence,” he said to Jim Jarmusch. “And not use all this stuff that is thrust upon me …” What had shaken him up the most was playing on the same bill as ska-funk-metal fusioneers Fishbone at the LA Riots benefit in May 1992. “The show they did just changed me,” he told Jarmusch. “Really, it combed my hair and gave me a sunburn. That’s when you realize that music, it does something physically to you. It can actually lift you and throw you around.” Seven years on, Waits recalled Fishbone’s impact as he agreed to four gruelling months of touring North

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