Bruce discussing No Prayer For The Dying:

Tailgunner

The title came from a porno movie, about anal sex, then I thought,
well I can't write the lyrics about that! So I write it about real
tail gunners. I had some words which began 'Trace your way back fifty
years, to the glow of Dresden, blood and tears'. I know we shouldn't
mention the war but it's about the attitude of bombing people. It was
real death in the skies back then. But there aren't any tail gunners
on planes anymore, it's all done by computers using missiles. At least
it used to be man-on-man, but now it's machine-on-machine. Who uses
bullets anymore?

Holy Smoke

This is about TV preachers and all the various lies they tell and I
just had this big image of all those ovens in the death camps with the
preachers' feet sticking out and holy smoke going up.

No Prayer For The Dying

This song has Steve's lyrics and for me it has the best vocal on the
album - the one I like best, even though it's like just two lines.
It's one of the best 'quiet beginning' type songs I've ever done with
Maiden and I really like the melody line.

Public Enema Number One

It's actually about... green hypocrites. It's about a big guy with his
fast car, and he's leaving the city in a cloud of smoke leaving the
children crying in fear. He's got a one way ticket out of here. Fine,
see ya. because he can afford it, he's left everyone else behind and
in the cities ther is over crowding, guns and riots and it seems like
everything is gonna snap. The politicians just lie to save their own
skins, gamble that they are gonna do the right thing, and they give
the press scape goats all the time. The whole thing is based on a
cross between New York and LA and I just hope the kids of today have
more brains than the frazzled remains of the Sixties and the Seventies
generations... California dreaming as the earth dies screaming! That's
what it's about, people talking about the environment and not doing
anything.

Fates Warning

Steve's words again. This is about feeling secure when everyone's life
can hang by a thread. You can go anytime and who knows why or how?

The Assassin

Here we are trying to get into the head of a hired killer. He doesn't
do it for money, but because he likes it and he's cool, calculating,
cold and sadistic. These are Steve's lyrics again.

Run Silent, Run Deep

These are some words I wrote for the 'Somewhere In Time' album. That
particular song never made it but I kept the words, and when Steve
came up with something, I said: 'You know what will fit brilliantly
there - these words'. It's a song about submarines, actually the first
song about submarines. 'Dive, Dive, Dive' came later. This is a
slightly more serious version. The title comes from one of my
favourite war movies. We do use a lot of film and book titles because
they always inspire good material for us. But then books crop up a lot
on films! This is about the dog eat dog, no mercy world of life and
death at sea during the Second World War, and it was as rough for the
guys below as it was for the guys up top. They both engaged in this
evil struggle without any mercy. And the sea didn't have any mercy.

Hooks In You

Is a slightly tounge in cheek thing. Me and Paddy went to look at a
house to buy and it was lived in by three gay guys. We looked around
and it had all these beams, and one of the guys was obviously into S&M
and leather and stuff, and in one room there were these enourmous
industrial hooks screwed into the beams. My mind boggled at what they
could be used for. I went home and wrote 'Hooks In You' with the line
'All the hooks in the ceiling, that well h8ng feeling'. I couldn't
write it about gay guys, but what if - you went round to the house of
Mr. and Mrs. Average you found all these hooks in the ceiling. What do
THEY get up? (Did Bruce buy the house?) No we didn't! At the end of
the song the guy thinks his wife has been unfaithful and sets her in
concrete in the foundations.

Bring Your Daughter... To The Slaughter

Here I tried to sum up what I thought 'Nightmare On Elm Street' movies
are really about, and it's all about adolescent fear of period pains.
That's what I think it is - deep down. When a young girl first gets
her period she bleeds and it happens at night, and so she is afraid to
go to sleep and it's a very terrifying time for her, sexually as well,
and 'Nightmare On Elm Street' targets that fear. The real slaughter in
the Freddie movies is when she loses her virginity. That is the rather
nasty thought behind it all, but that's what makes those kind of
movies frightening.

Mother Russia

Is about the tragedy of a great land which has an incredible history
of being over run and people being massacred, for centuries, and this
song says wouldn't it be great if Russia could finally get itself
together now and live in peace.

[This text was nicked from the homepage of Örjan Friberg
]

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