Barry and Robin Gibb wrote the song while sitting on a darkened staircase at Polydor Records following a power cut. The song recounts the story of a miner trapped in a cave-in. He is sharing a photo of his wife with a colleague ("Mr. Jones") while they hopelessly wait to be rescued. According to the liner notes for their box-set "Tales from the Brothers Gibb" (1990), this song was inspired by the 1966 Aberfan mining disaster in Wales. According to Robin, there actually had also been a mining disaster in New York in 1939, but not in 1941, and he thought "New York" sounded more "glamourous".