Bones Howe “recalls. Waits was ready to record again, and he described to Howe his method for putting Foreign Affairs together. “He said, ‘I’m going to do the demos first, and then I’m gonna let you listen to them. Then we should talk about what it should be.’ I listened to the material and said, ‘It’s like a black-and-white movie.’ That’s where the cover came from. The whole idea that it was going to be a black-and-white movie. It’s the way it seemed to me when we were putting it together. Whether or not it came out that way, I don’t have any idea, because there’s such metamorphosis when you’re working on [records]. They change and change.” Broken dreams, back alleys, and whiskey bars made up the by-now-familiar terrain Waits traveled through while writing material for this new album. The delicate instrumental “Cinny’s Waltz” opens Foreign Affairs, setting a nostalgic mood, echoing Gerry and the Pacemakers’ sixties hit “Ferry ’Cross the Mersey.”
