Adrian used to do a cover of another of their songs 'Rainclouds' in his band 'Evil Ways'. The band's manager, Rod Smallwood, commented this version: "This was originally done by a band called Beckett who the band liked a lot. On the original release, it is titled "A Rainbow's Gold".Īccording to Nicko McBrain, commenting on the single in "Listen With Nicko Part VI" (as part of The First Ten Years series), the members of Iron Maiden were friends with members of Beckett. The song was written by Terry Slesser and Kenny Mountain, respectively the band's vocalist and guitarist. The first B-side is a cover of British progressive rock band Beckett's "Rainbow's Gold", which was featured on their self-titled album released in 1974. According to Dickinson, the song critically addresses "the romance of war" in general rather than the Cold War in particular. The atomic clock, set at 12 minutes to midnight in 1972, regressed thereafter among US–Soviet tensions, reaching three minutes to midnight in 1984 – the year this track was released – and at that time the most dangerous clock reading since 1953. In September 1953 the clock reached two minutes to midnight, the closest it ever got to midnight in the 20th Century, when the United States and Soviet Union tested H-bombs within nine months of one another. The song title references the Doomsday Clock, the symbolic clock used by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which represents a countdown to potential global catastrophe.
The song attacks the commercialisation of war and how it is used to fuel the global economy (“The golden goose is on the loose and never out of season”), how rich politicians profit directly from it (“as the reasons for the carnage cut their meat and lick the gravy”) and how after a war concludes, the world is left in a far worse condition than before the war began, resulting in future wars (“to the tune of starving millions to make a better kind of gun”). A protest song about nuclear war, "2 Minutes to Midnight" was written by Adrian Smith and Bruce Dickinson.
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