Siouxsie was inspired this song by J. G. Ballard’s 1973 book 'Crash', in which the lead character gets sexual arousal by staging and participating in real car-crashes!
In her own words, the song is a love story told in stages: "First a warmness towards someone, then revenge because of a wrong done, then a rash reaction - a violent action, maybe - and then guilt, regret."
It was taken off The Creatures' first album FEAST that was written, recorded and mixed in 10 days during January 1983 at Sea-West Studios on Oahu island in Hawaii, co-produced by Mike Hedges.
The single was released on 15 April 1983. It stayed for a total of 7 weeks in the UK Top75 Singles charts peaking at #21 on 14 May 1983.
The video was shot by Tim Pope of GLO Productions at a London studio with the set specially designed by The Creatures & Alex McDowell of DaGama Design, consisting of metal, rivets, wire mesh, nails and a spinning wheel. The scene of a metal iron was inspired by Man Ray’s photograph titled 'Le Cadeau' ('The Gift', 1921).
TIM POPE: "This video was the first time I ever shot on 35 mm film, like they shoot the real movies - and that I ever saw anything I’d done projected on to a large screen, at a subterranean viewing theatre in Soho. […] The song is about a girl getting hit by a car. The metal-for-real set built by my old work mate Alex McDowell was meant to represent human skin, the nails being hairs and was so heavy it fell through the studio floor to a wine cellar below!"
BUDGIE: "It's just the two of us in a thing that we built, which is mostly metal with nails sticking out of it, with dangerous elements in it and the play off of flesh against elements of spikes and metal. You might get your hand caught in this wheel as it turns round. Plus, we threw in a couple of staged slaps."
SIOUXSIE: "Someone from Polydor sneaked down and saw the rushes and immediately started panicking because of those couple of hit-shots, and the fact it's not a normal commercial promo video. It's not shocking, but it's also not nice."
TIM POPE: "In the video, I wanted Budgie to hit Siouxsie in the face. Budgie said he couldn’t do it. I told him there were two ways we could do it - one was for him to hit her, and the other was for me to make it look like he had hit her in the face. And that’s what the film ended up being. I put in this snappy little edit, so the camera comes in on her face and his hand is about four inches away so Budgie doesn’t actually hit Siouxsie - A really Hollywood cut! But I’m more interested in the sort of film, where he really does hit her, if you see what I mean. Reality creates reality."
BUDGIE: "People got it into their minds that it's not gonna be shown, and as we were finishing the edits off they were already asking for a second version."
SIOUXSIE: "You won’t see it on TV. That alternative music programme 'Switch' wouldn’t show it!"
It was shown only once on TVAM before 7:00 in the morning!
