Interview of Tom Waits (1979)

Don Lane Show, 1979: Blue Valentine season

Tom Waits on Australia’s Don Lane Show in 1979, in the wake of Blue Valentine, is charming, and the wreckage stays in the act. The gravel voice does half the work. The timing does the rest. He is still the nocturnal songwriter of the Asylum years, before Swordfishtrombones would break the piano-bar frame for good. Between dry jokes and cult-following small talk, you hear him keep the act uneven: funny, unwilling to become neat, and already writing songs the television set cannot quite hold.