Songfacts®:

• Tom Waits likes to snatch stories from the street. Like the time he and this then-girlfriend, Rickie Lee Jones, were flagged down by a group of Mexican gang members. "Because of how Tom looked at the time - the tattoos, the hat - I guess these guys felt safe to talk to him," recalled Jones to the July 2011 edition of Mojo magazine. "One of them asked him where the hospital was. He glanced into the back seat, and there was a kid back there bleeding. A lot of blood. He wrote 'Romeo Is Bleeding' soon after."
• This is the song that provided the title for the 1993 Gary Oldman movie about a crooked cop.
• Bones Howe, known for his work with The 5th Dimension and The Association, produced this song and the rest of the Blue Valentine album. The musicians are:
  
  Bass - Jim Hughart
  Congas - Bobbye Hall
  Drums - Chip White
  Organ - Charles Kynard
  Saxophone - Frank Vicari
• One of the many famous singers influenced by Waits is Jon Bon Jovi, who wrote a song for the movie Romeo Is Bleeding but then pulled it when he saw a rough cut and didn't like it. He ended up recording the song with Bon Jovi and releasing it with the title "Always," keeping the opening lines:
  
  This Romeo is bleeding
  But you can't see his blood