Editing Rain Dogs (section)

==Composition and recording==
Waits wrote the majority of the album in a two-month stint in the fall of 1984 in a basement room at the corner of Washington and Horatio Streets in [[Manhattan]]. According to Waits, it was, "kind of a rough area, Lower Manhattan between Canal and 14th Street, just about a block from the river&nbsp;... It was a good place for me to work. Very quiet, except for the water coming through the pipes every now and then. Sort of like being in a vault."<ref>[[#refHoskyns2009|Hoskyns 2009]], pp. 307–308</ref>

In preparation for the album, Waits recorded street sounds and other ambient noises on a cassette recorder to get the sound of the city that would be the album's subject matter.<ref>[[#refHoskyns2009|Hoskyns 2009]], p. 308</ref>

A wide range of instruments was employed to achieve the album's sound, including [[marimba]], [[accordion]], double bass, [[trombone]], and [[banjo]]. The album is notable for its organic sound, and the natural means by which it was achieved. Waits, discussing his mistrust of then fashionable studio techniques, said, "If I want a sound, I usually feel better if I've chased it and killed it, skinned it and cooked it. Most things you can get with a button nowadays. So if I was trying for a certain drum sound, my engineer would say, 'Oh, for Christ's sake, why are we wasting our time? Let's just hit this little cup with a stick here, sample something (take a drum sound from another record) and make it bigger in the mix, don't worry about it.' I'd say, 'No, I would rather go in the bathroom and hit the door with a piece of [[Lumber#Dimensional lumber|two-by-four]] very hard.{{'"}}<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tomwaitslibrary.com/interviews.html |title=The Sultan Of Sleaze: In Interview with YOU Magazine |year=1985 |publisher=Tom Waits Library |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071111164631/http://www.tomwaitslibrary.com/interviews.html |archive-date=November 11, 2007 }}</ref>

Waits also stated that "if we couldn't get the right sound out of the drum set we'd get a chest of drawers in the bathroom and bang it real hard with a two-by-four," such that "the sounds become your own."<ref name=rs>"The 100 Greatest Albums of the 1980s," ''[[Rolling Stone]]'' issue 565, November 16, 1989.</ref>

''Rain Dogs'' was the first time that Waits worked with guitarist [[Marc Ribot]],<ref>{{cite book |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=8q0KBucLXm4C&pg=PT138 |title=Wild Years: The Music And Myth of Tom Waits |page=138 |author=Jay S. Jacobs |publisher=ECW Press|date= May 28, 2006  |isbn=9781554902613 |access-date=July 3, 2012}}</ref> who was impressed by Waits' unusual studio presence. Ribot said, "''Rain Dogs'' was my first major label type recording, and I thought everybody made records the way Tom makes records.&nbsp;... I've learned since that it's a very original and individual way of producing. As producer apart from himself as writer and singer and guitar player he brings in his ideas, but he's very open to sounds that suddenly and accidentally occur in the studio. I remember one verbal instruction being, 'Play it like a midget's [[bar mitzvah]].'"<ref name=anecdotes>{{cite web | url= http://www.tomwaitslibrary.com/anecdotes.html | title= Comments and anecdotes On Waits | publisher= Tom Waits Library | url-status= usurped | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20111224033136/http://www.tomwaitslibrary.com/anecdotes.html | archive-date= December 24, 2011 }}</ref> Ribot also recalls how the band would not rehearse the songs before going to record; rather, Waits would play them the songs on an acoustic guitar in the studio. "He had this ratty old hollow body, and he would spell out the grooves. It wasn't a mechanical kind of recording at all. He has a very individual guitar style he sort of slaps the strings with his thumb&nbsp;... He let me do what I heard, there was a lot of freedom. If it wasn't going in a direction he liked, he'd make suggestions. But there's damn few ideas I've had which haven't happened on the first or second take."<ref name = anecdotes/>

It also marks Waits' first recording with [[the Rolling Stones]]'s [[Keith Richards]], who played on "Big Black Mariah", "Union Square" and "Blind Love". Waits later contributed vocals and piano to the Rolling Stones album ''[[Dirty Work (The Rolling Stones album)|Dirty Work]]''. Richards cowrote "That Feel" on Waits' ''[[Bone Machine]]'' (1992) and played on several tracks on ''[[Bad as Me]]'' (2011).<ref>{{cite news| last=Bonner| first=Michael| date=August 11, 2013| title= Keith Richards on Tom Waits: "He's a great bunch of guys!"| work=Uncut| url=https://www.uncut.co.uk/features/keith-richards-on-tom-waits-hes-a-great-bunch-of-guys-143428/}}</ref> Waits said, "There was something in there that I thought he would understand. I picked out a couple of songs that I thought he would understand and he did. He's got a great voice and he's just a great spirit in the studio. He's very spontaneous, he moves like some kind of animal. I was trying to explain 'Big Black Mariah' and finally I started to move in a certain way and he said, 'Oh, why didn't you do that to begin with? Now I know what you're talking about.' It's like animal instinct."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.tomwaitslibrary.com/lyrics-by-album.html |title=Big Black Mariah lyrics |publisher=Tom Waits Library |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120101154156/http://www.tomwaitslibrary.com/lyrics-by-album.html |archive-date=January 1, 2012 }}</ref>

According to [[Barney Hoskyns]], the album's general theme of "the urban dispossessed" was inspired in part by [[Martin Bell (director)|Martin Bell]]'s 1984 documentary ''[[Streetwise (1984 film)|Streetwise]]'', to which Waits had contributed music.<ref>[[#refHoskyns2009|Hoskyns 2009]], pp. 308–309</ref>