LOS ANGELES OCTOBER 5, 1979

Tom Waits' black '64 Thunderbird is parked in a used car lot, up against a graffiti-covered wall. That is, one imagines the T-Bird is black. Caked with an impenetrable layer of L.A. dirt, the broad-flanked sedan could be chartreuse for all anyone can tell. Inside floats a clutter of unmailed bills, unopened letters, wadded-up Kleenex, a portable AM radio (antenna broken), a cardboard box full of old, yellowing T-shirts, and a paperback wedged in the crevice where windshield meets dashboard. Its title, Invade My Privacy, is fading fast in the sun. The auto's left rear fender sports an elaborate decal -- Blue Valentine -- the very same left rear fender emblazoned on the cover of Waits' thusly titled 1978 album. As Waits comments later, sitting in manager Herb Cohen's cloistered offices, "I couldn't afford a billboard, so I wrote it on the car."

"Blue Valentine" has been gathering dust in the unpaved car lot every afternoon for three weeks in October '79, while inside the faceless, uninviting brick and concrete complex Tom Waits -- beatnik balladeer, jazz journeyman (the ad might read: "Have gravelly voice. Will stand up and sing.") -- has been readying his band for a tour that will take them across the country and through Christmas, visiting theaters and small halls. "I don't play many beer bars any more," Waits explains. "I used to play exclusively toilets, that's all I wanted to play. But the thing is, you play toilets too long and you start gettin' a little on you."

This time, Waits is stepping out with a new bunch of musicians, including among its ranks guitarist Terry Evans, late of many a Little Richard and Ray Charles revue. Waits discovered Evans playing in the dimly lit recesses of a Ventura motel bar. "Times are tough," Waits mumbles knowingly.

In spring of '79, Waits had commenced work on a record tentatively titled White Spades, but he got distracted, caught up in some other things. "I ended up changing the title to Heart Attack and Vine, and that's what I'm working on now. I'd say the sound's a little more rhythm & blues. Got a song called 'Drinkin' Whiskey in Church,' one called 'Breakfast in Jail,' another called 'Whose Sportcoat Is That?' Another, 'Pomona Lisa.' A lot of it I'm going to break in on the road.

For someone with the demeanor of an itinerant bum, the slouchy ambience of some Kerouac nomad, Waits has immersed himself in a demanding swarm of projects, committing his time and talents to a busy horde of movers and shakers. Apart from his current fall/winter tour and the Heart Attack and Vine LP (to be recorded with producer Bones Howe in early January), several motion picture forays are under way. One is a script co-written with writer/actor Paul Hampton called Why Is the Dream So Much Sweeter Than the Taste? "It's about a used car dealer in Southern California," he says, by way of explanation. Waits has already appeared on screen, as the inebriated, slovenly barroom pianist Mumbles in Sylvester Stallone's Paradise Alley (unfortunately much of Waits portrayal ended up on the cutting room floor). And, like a lot of pop music figures nowadays, Waits is open to starring in another venture for the silver screen, though he disdains being typecast. "The thing is, once you get any kind of image -- I've gotten countless calls to play a drunk Irish piano player which is, like, not very challenging. I'd much prefer to play an axe murderer."

Waits also spent a good portion of 1979 holed up in a Paris loft, collaborating with artist Guy Peellaert (Rock Dreams) on a book of portraits of American heroes, to which Waits has contributed the text. "You know, people like Marlene Dietrich, Mohammad Ali, Meyer Lansky, Pearl Bailey, Jimmy Durante, Adam Clayton Powell."

Why is he pushing himself so hard? Waits' every waking hour (beginning around noon) is devoted to his music, a book, a movie idea. "There's a certain reward," he says. "A very personal reward from all this. But I don't know, sometimes I just want to disappear. Poof! 'Excuse me while I disappear.' Deadlines, schedules, obligations, responsibilities. Sometimes the work just kinda drills. But then something comes along and boom boom -- everything's okay. So what are you going to do? Marry the girl or pay her off?'

Tom Waits doesn't dwell on the lofty mega-platinum pinnacle of success enjoyed by groups like the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac, or by solo artists like Jackson Browne, but his albums and his frequent tours (on last year's, each performance was opened by a Waits-auditioned local stripper) have sold consistently well. His songs have been covered by several million-selling artists (including the Eagles), which means that Waits has been on the receiving end of a few fat royalty checks. A self-described follower of "life on a beer budget," one can't help but wonder what Waits must have done with his extra cash. He answers: "My name is Morgan, but it ain't J.P., if you receive my meaning."

This past fall, rumors circled the Hollywood hot air mills purporting that Waits had returned from France a changed man. One story went so far as to suggest he had shed his thrift shop threads for Giorgio Armani suits and a clean-shaven, manicured Continental haute couture. Sitting in one of Herb Cohen's small offices and backdropped by a fountain and Spanish courtyard, Waits needn't have inquired "Giorgio who?" to debunk that fiction. One look was enough: pointed black shoes (leather cracked), tight, wrinkled straight black pants, a haphazardly-buttoned off-white white shirt, his goatee more under his chin than on it, and wavy brown hair jutted high on top, seemingly propped upright by a pair of oversized sideburns.

SALINA, KANSAS DECEMBER 7, 1979

En route to Kansas City from Denver, on the last leg of his year-end tour, the one-time pizza maker from suburban San Diego celebrates his thirtieth birthday. It's Pearl Harbor Day in this wintry, flat midwestern town.

Though he rolls his eyes and clears his throat in mock despair, Waits insists that the Big Three-O is nothing to sweat over. "The big ages are sixteen, thirty-three-and-a-third, forty-five and seventy-eight," he laughs. "Turning thirty -- everybody thinks about it, I guess. But it don't bother me, I feel pretty healthy." At which point Waits lets loose a painful succession of coughs, a peal of mucus swirling in the lungs.

And speaking of lungs, Tom Waits, the man who couldn't make a gesture on stage -- let alone tell a story -- without holding or toking on a Lucky Strike, has given up smoking. "It's a whole other world for me. I just didn't feel good, I felt like I was caving in inside. I couldn't walk two blocks without coughing and wheezing and out of breath, so I said, "What am I doing killing myself?' I don't want to live hard, die young and have a beautiful corpse. I really don't."

What about his much ballyhooed bouts with a bottle of Four Roses? "I ration myself. You know, it's good to discipline yourself in this area. As I turn the corner on thirty I'm fastly becoming concerned about personal hygiene. Drinkin' and smokin' and smokin' and drinkin' started slowing me down. One of these days I'll want to have a family, I've gotta think about that."