Notwithstanding his image as a participant in and chronicler of urban America’s seamy underbelly, Waits is apparently a changed man in a lot of ways, both inwardly and outwardly, as an artist and as a person. He was wearing a skinny-brimmed black (Trilby) hat, white shirt, black pants and black pointed roach-impalers. We met in a Zoetrope hallway a bit less than an hour after the interview was set to begin, and he apologized for being late as he walked to his car – a dusty Monte Carlo – so he could get the keys to his office. Waits wanted to talk briefly about his seventh album for Asylum: “Heartattack and Vine.” Waits was ensconced there while working on original songs for “One from the Heart,” a film Coppola was directing. 4, 1980, in Tom Waits’ two-room office on the old Hollywood General movie lot, now part of Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope empire. The interview that follows took place Thursday afternoon, Sept. This Q&A was republished in the book “ Tom Waits on Tom Waits: Interviews and Encounters,” edited by Paul Maher Jr., in 2011. A hard copy of the Q&A survived my cassette tape remains MIA as of fall 2020. The idea was press would lift quotes from this and he wouldn’t have to do so many interviews. ![]() I had the interview transcribed and printed up as part of the “Heartattack and Vine” press kit. Before my tape rolled, he bummed a Marlboro from me, asking me to keep it on the down-low, because his new wife, Katherine, would get mad. I was sitting on a couch to the left just off-camera. We arrived at Zoetrope mid-day, like right after lunchtime. So it was an idyllic virgin experience for both of us. He’d shot Monterey Pop, Woodstock, CSNY, The Doors, Joni, Jackson, JT, Eagles, Linda, Pryor, The Monkees, Buffalo Springfield, Lovin’ Spoonful and hundreds more, but had yet to experience a Tom Waits interview. ![]() I asked my friend Henry Diltz, the renowned rock photographer, to come along for fun. Ironically, I had left Capitol Records at Hollywood and Vine just a couple of months before, and now at my new gig as E/A’s editorial director, the title of one of the first of the label’s albums I created a press kit for was “Heartattack and Vine.” With the appointment made to conduct a Tom Waits interview on the Zoetrope Studios lot in Hollywood on September 4, 1980, I listened to my advance pressing of Waits’ “Heartattack and Vine” a few times at my Elektra/Asylum office on La Cienega and focused my questions. As Tom and Stephen talked, I walked around quietly snapping photos." He was in a little office at Zoetrope studios working on the music for Francis Ford Coppola's 'One from the Heart.' The piano took up most of the room and there were papers strewn all over the floor. ![]() Henry Diltz: "I went along with my friend Stephen Peeples to interview Tom Waits.
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