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 New Yorker "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 reviews of Waits's acclaimed new album, Real Gone, this is the must-have book for every fan of the artist Beck has described as a "luminary," and for music fans everywhere.

Mac Montandon is the editor of Innocent When You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader. He has written for the New York Times, Radar, Salon.com, and Interview. He lives in Brooklyn.