Neil We’d written this song 'Jealousy' - one of the first songs we wrote, which would eventually be recorded for Behaviour - and we wanted Ennio Morricone to do the string arrangement. So Tom Watkins tracked down Ennio Morricone's manager and he came to Sam West and we played him 'Jealousy' and he liked it, but months passed and in the end Ennio Morricone didn't want to arrange 'Jealousy' but he said he'd write a song with us.
They sent over this song in Italian, which sounded like David Bowie in about 1970. It was funny song about a man building an ark. We liked the tune of the chorus, so we took the tune of the chorus and wrote a new verse, and that was what became 'It couldn't happen here'. We sent it to Ennio Morricone and heard nothing.

Finally Chris and I went to seethe film Blue Velvet one night and we liked the music, which was written by Mgelo Badalamenti, who later became very famous for doing the Twin Peaks music, so we thought, 'let's get him to do the arrangement instead'. We were recording the song with Stephen Hague and I remember we had a bit of a row with him because he hadn't arranged an orchestra to record Angelo Badalamenti's arrangement. So, instead, Blue Weaver brought in his Fairlight and spent two days programming the entire arrangement using orchestral samples. It took three different passes of the Fairlight to record all the parts, and actually it gives the whole track a very eerie quality we would never have got from an orchestra.

It sounds tighter and also more weird. So, ultimately, it was a happy accident. It's probably my favourite track on the album. I remember Dusty playing it as one of her favourite records on Radio One, saying it reminded her of Elgar. The lyric is about this friend of mine who was diagnosed with having Aids. In the first verse we are all teenagers in Newcastle in the whole glam period, and the song describes the Newcastle scene: 'in six-inch heels quoting magazines' - we'd always buy Harpers & Queen. We were all very ambitious. 'Who do you think you are?' refers to the idea that gay people were too public. There was a lot of anti-gay rhetoric in the Eighties. And then Aids comes along. I remember my friend and I discussing Aids, and how people said it wasn't going to develop in England like it had in America. We said it couldn't happen here.

Chris Originally the line continued '...just before it did', which I never liked. I always thought the word 'did' was too funny.

Neil In Tim honoured fashion, Chris got it remove by laughing at it. The song then becomes about how affected the gay community, and the way people reacted to the gay community and suggested it was almost as though the gay community had been too visible and had themselves to blame. There was a lot of that going on at the time. The third verse reflects how people just reacted illogically to the whole thing and weren't able to react like it was a normal illness. The line about 'baffle scars' refers directly to my friend because he'd just recovered from having pneumonia. I played him the song and he liked it, but I don't think he knew what it was about. Or maybe he did, but I didn't tell him and I didn't want him to know.