The track originated during late-night writing sessions at Manhattan's Electric Lady Studios in 1983. Exhausted from recording sessions, Idol spent his downtime watching foreign art-house films on cable television. One evening, he encountered director Georges Franju’s 1960 black-and-white chiller, Les Yeux Sans Visage (released in English as Eyes Without a Face).
The film follows Dr. Génessier, a guilt-ridden plastic surgeon who kidnaps young women to remove their facial skin. His goal: graft their features onto his daughter Christiane, who was horribly disfigured in an automobile accident caused by his own reckless driving. Christiane wanders a sterile mansion wearing a rigid, emotionless white mask, her eyes peering out from an expressionless void.
The imagery struck Idol with visceral force. Christiane's trapped gaze became an instant metaphor for the empty, emotionally detached relationships surrounding him in the hedonistic 1980s New York rock scene. He recognized that when intimacy evaporates, partners stop seeing each other as complex human beings. They become blank masks, eyes without a face.
