Downtown Train

“Downtown Train” appeared on Rain Dogs in September 1985 and was released as a single in November of that year on Island Records. Recorded at RCA Studios in New York City. Written and produced by Tom Waits. The musicians on the track included Robert Quine and G.E. Smith on guitar, Tony Levin on bass, Mickey Curry on drums. Three minutes and fifty-three seconds. One of the cleanest melodies Waits ever put down, wrapped in the grime of a city he had just moved to.

Rain Dogs is the middle album of a trilogy that runs from Swordfishtrombones through Frank’s Wild Years. Waits had moved from California to New York in early 1984. The record is loosely organized around the urban dispossessed of that city, the marginal figures of Reagan’s America rendered in clanging percussion, distorted guitars, and Waits’ gravel-and-smoke baritone. Marc Ribot, then a new recruit to the Lounge Lizards, played on the record. Guitarist Keith Richards also appeared. The result was unlike anything else being made in 1985. It has not stopped being unlike anything else.

Rod Stewart covered “Downtown Train” in 1989 and took it to number three on the Billboard Hot 100, number one on the Mainstream Rock and Adult Contemporary charts, and number one in Canada. It hit the top ten in the UK. The song earned Stewart a Grammy nomination for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. Patty Smyth released her own version in 1987 and reached number 95 on the Hot 100. Everything but the Girl recorded an acoustic version that was used in the final episode of How I Met Your Mother in 2014. The song has outlasted every version of itself. The original remains the one worth knowing.