David Pirner reveals why he wrote his ‘metaphor for depression’, while Tony Kaye recalls what inspired the video – which showed the faces of missing children and became a phenomenon
We were a garage punk band who recorded for an independent label and travelled in a van. Then I thought I was losing my hearing. I was having a sort of nervous breakdown and needed to get away from the noise. I started playing an acoustic guitar and ended up writing songs on it, one of which was Runaway Train. Initially it went “two souls laughing at the rain, one’s crazy and the other’s insane”. But once I started writing about what was going on with me, the proper words came in one sitting.
