The X documentary "The Unhead Music" shows John Doe in the writing process for this one. In it, he states:
"I was inspired by a guy named Robert P. Williams, a blues guy. And he said 'no man or woman knows what trouble really is in this world', and I took it to mean [that] it could always get worse. And that's the sort of thought you can never really identify true trouble or the blues or whatever because always it can go further.
"And so the song's about the real child of hell, which you never really see. You're in a bar, or you're in some place, and something strange starts happening, and then all of a sudden you feel like that thing is there, that real child of hell is there, and causing this thing, working its evil way. You turn around to look for it and you can't see it. Turn around to get and it's not there."
The X documentary "The Unhead Music" shows John Doe in the writing process for this one. In it, he states:
"I was inspired by a guy named Robert P. Williams, a blues guy. And he said 'no man or woman knows what trouble really is in this world', and I took it to mean [that] it could always get worse. And that's the sort of thought you can never really identify true trouble or the blues or whatever because always it can go further.
"And so the song's about the real child of hell, which you never really see. You're in a bar, or you're in some place, and something strange starts happening, and then all of a sudden you feel like that thing is there, that real child of hell is there, and causing this thing, working its evil way. You turn around to look for it and you can't see it. Turn around to get and it's not there."