Songfacts®:

• Tom Waits included "Downtown Train" on his 1985 album Rain Dogs, one of his most popular and critically acclaimed sets. The song, however, was sometimes derided as one of his more conciliatory efforts. The British music magazine Sounds called it a "conformist AOR song."
  
  Waits, however, has never set out to write a hit song. With a little polish and a nod to the trends of the day, he could have been more commercially viable, but that's not what he was after. Waits stayed out of the spotlight and gave only sporadic interviews. He rarely talks specifics when it comes to songs, but he summed up this one when he said, "Everybody's on their own road, and I don't know where it's going."
• The most popular version of "Downtown Train" is Rod Stewart's 1989 cover. He recorded it at the behest of an executive at his label for his Storyteller compilation, taking it to #3 on the Hot 100, #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and #10 in the UK.
• Waits' version didn't chart, which wasn't surprising - none of his singles did. What's more surprising is that it took this long for someone to have a hit with one of his songs. Bruce Springsteen, in particular, is a big fan and recorded Waits' "Jersey Girl"; the Eagles recorded his song "Ol' '55."
  
  It was Patty Smyth who first charted with one of his songs when her version of "Downtown Train" went to #95 in 1987.
• Waits released a music video for this song that was directed by Jean-Baptiste Mondino. Shot in black and white, it features the boxer Jake LaMotta - subject of Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull – as his angry Italian-American neighbor throwing water from his apartment window onto Waits, who's singing in the street.
  
  "We did the video in downtown New York," Mondino told Uncut magazine. "I tried as much as I could to have something close to the poetry and beauty of his work. I asked for Jake LaMotta to be in the video and he accepted it."
  
  "I said it would be nice if we ended it with a little piece that I wanted, when Tom played accordion down on the riverbank in New York, early in the morning," the director added. "You can't blame the record company for wanting to make a big hit, but Tom is one of a few left in America who doesn't run after success. He likes to do his work, to be appreciated, but he has his own world."
  
  Waits is an accomplished actor, appearing in about 30 films, including The Cotton Club (1984), Short Cuts (1993) and Licorice Pizza (2021).