After leaving Rainbow as their lead singer, Graham Bonnet and others formed the group Alcatrazz. While I didn’t know who he was until I sat down to write this, young Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen appears to have benefited the most from the group–as opposed to Graham Bonnet. He was only 20 when the album that had Hiroshima Mon Amour on it was released.

The following is from an interview Bonnet gave with Songfacts:

Songfacts: And then what are some memories of writing the song “Hiroshima Mon Amour”?

Graham: I saw a movie when I was in school called Hiroshima Mon Amour [a 1959 French film]. We played in Japan a lot, and I thought this would be a nice little tribute to what happened. I was always horrified by what happened. And Hiroshima, my love, it was like, goddamn, you know, I didn’t want that to happen again. So I read up a little bit about it, and that’s how that came about. It was something I thought should never have happened. It was just a horrible thing. I couldn’t believe that the Americans would do this, or anybody would do that to anybody. It was sort of a protest song in a way.

It’s been a little over a year since I watched Hiroshima Mon Amour, so I can’t speak to any potential similarities between this and the film.