The backstory to this is twofold. I was challenged to write a song with the word 'perpetrator' in the lyrics. Thinking on how to incorporate it cast my mind back to that time the venue I worked in received a bomb threat about two hours before the doors opened for that night's concert. These days of course, there'd be mandatory 'public safety is our first priority - call in the police and their sniffer dogs' protocols to follow, but back then (the mid-80s}, we, as the lawyers say, 'took a view': Was it likely that there was a bomb? No. Had we better check? Yes (the assumption that we'd all recognise a bomb if we saw one, none of us questioned).
So my stage crew & I started looking for a bomb.
Half-way through my part of the search, crawling through all the voids and gantries backstage, the absurdity of it all suddenly struck me - what if I do come face-to-face with the bomb? Jeez - this must be what it must be like patrolling in no-man's land: looking out for the enemy, but hoping like hell you don't actually run into them in case they've already found you…
So now, for the song, I had the premiss: the 'perpetrators,' whoever they were, had planted a bomb somewhere - a bomb that I had to find. Then, thinking back to those days, the Harrods bombing of 1983 came to mind. I remember'd hearing somewhere that the car containing the bomb had been parked the wrong way round, and that gave me the scenario. And so I met the challenge, with the results I place before you today.
Oh! And I'm sure you're all wondering: was there a bomb?
Well, if there was, we didn't find it; but in any case it never went off, though I do remember sitting down by the lighting desk up in the gods asking, as the first band were about to start: "Did anyone check under the drum riser?" "No?" (Drummer launches into first number) "Well, too late now!"
