Hiroshima Mon Amour

Alcatrazz lead singer Graham Bonnet wrote the lyrics to this song, which are about the nuclear bombs that America dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, effectively ending World War II. Bonnet was inspired by the 1959 French film Hiroshima Mon Amour, (translation: "Hiroshima My Love"), which he had seen in school. The film recounts the Hiroshima bombing and tells of the human suffering in the aftermath. "We played in Japan a lot, and I thought this would be a nice little tribute to what happened," Bonnet said in our 2013 interview. "I was always horrified by what happened. And Hiroshima, my love, it was like, goddamn, you know, I didn't want that to happen again. So I read up a little bit about it, and that's how that came about. It was something I thought should never have happened. It was just a horrible thing. I couldn't believe that the Americans would do this, or anybody would do that to anybody. It was sort of a protest song in a way."

A popular track from the first Alcatrazz album, Bonnet wrote it with their guitarist, Yngwie Malmsteen, who was just 20 years old when it was released. Malmsteen left the band and released his first solo album the next year, quickly becoming an internationally renowned guitarist. His replacement in Alcatrazz was Steve Vai, whose name would also be mentioned in many discussions of guitar greats.