| Songs With Great Back Stories |
| 1 |  | David Bowie
"Heroes"
'Heroes'
Bowie was walking in Berlin when he saw two lovers kissing by the wall, directly under an armed guard. He was inspired to write a song about loving someone so much that you'd dodge bullets and jump walls to be with them "just for one day." |
| 2 |  | Pete Murray
Feeler
'Ten Ft Tall'
Murray's friend's wife died of cancer. On the night of the funeral he was sitting looking out his bedroom window when a butterfly came out of the night and landed on his hand. 'Butterfly' was his nickname for his wife. |
| 3 |  | The Smashing Pumpkins
Siamese Dream
'Spaceboy'
Billy Corgan's little brother was not expected to live after being born with a genetic disorder. In 1993, he graduated from high school. |
| 4 |  | Billie Holiday
Lady Day: The Best of Billie Holiday
'Strange Fruit'
This 'fruits of hatred' lynching ballad remains one of the most devastating musical indictments of racism in the Deep South US. |
| 5 |  | Bob Dylan
The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1-3 1961-1991
'Let Me Die In My Footsteps'
At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the young Dylan saw indications - people buying gas masks, building shelters and stocking up on canned food - that indicated that people were so fixed on preparing for nuclear annihilation that "instead of learning to live they are learning to die." |
| 6 |  | The Rolling Stones
Let It Bleed
'Gimme Shelter'
Debate has raged over whether the murderous end to the optimistic free concert at Altamont was the metaphorical end of the '60s as well as the literal one (it was in December 1969 after all), but it definitely gave the Stones one of their greatest singles. |
| 7 |  | AC/DC
Back in Black
'Hells Bells'
A power outage, a rolling thunderstorm and an alleged supernatural possession all contributed to the greatest song Brian Johnson - or AC/DC, for that matter - would ever write. |
| 8 |  | The Clash
Give 'Em Enough Rope
'Safe European Home'
Lead singer and guitarist Joe Strummer and Mick Jones were keen to get into the surf 'n weed culture of Jamaica but they were not as welcome as they expected: their British hardship was still considered far more luxurious than the violent day-to-day Rastafarian grind. Second thoughts and mature song writing followed. |
| 9 |  | Joy Division
Closer
'The Eternal'
When he was just a boy, Ian Curtis lived down the street from a mentally disabled boy who wasn't allowed to leave his front yard. When Curtis returned to his neighbourhood as a man, he was still living in that house. And, as a grown man, he still wasn't allowed to leave the front yard. |
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