This was the song that launched this Australian band into global stardom. 1988 was their breakout year, they had FOUR songs dominate the radio following this hit. Pretty huge considering before then they couldn’t get anyone to take them seriously in the US. But their manager sent them on a small town US tour and THIS SONG started getting played on college radio.
Band member Andrew Farriss said that the famous riff to the song appeared suddenly in his head while waiting for a cab to go to the airport to fly to Hong Kong. He asked the cab driver to wait a couple of minutes while he grabbed something from his motel room. In fact, he went up to record the riff and came back down an hour later with a tape to a very annoyed driver.
He then flew to Hong Kong with the cassette and played it for the lead singer who wrote the lyrics in an hour. So the song that launched them to stardom was basically written in two hours- plus however long it takes to fly from Australia to Hong Kong.