Songfacts®:

• "Rain On The Graves" is Bruce Dickinson's take on the crossroads story where a man makes a deal with the Devil, exchanging his soul for a particular talent. It's widely associated with the bluesman Robert Johnson, who supposedly took this Faustian bargain.
  
  "It's basically the crossroads revisited," Dickinson explained in a Songfacts track by track. "That's the lyric: a guy walks into a graveyard, meets the devil, and the devil says, 'So, what are you here for? And don't lie, because I'll know.'"
• The song is part of Bruce Dickinson's solo album The Mandrake Project, which is packaged with a comic series of the same name that Dickinson also created. At the time, he was in his second stint as Iron Maiden lead singer, but also free to pursue projects like this one.
• The title and chorus lyrics came to Dickinson when he was visiting the grave of the poet William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850) at St. Oswald's Church in Grasmere, England.
  
  "I'm standing there and it was raining and it was grey and it was gloomy," Dickinson told Songfacts. "I just thought, What would happen if you met a guy here sitting on a gravestone and it just so happened to be the devil? What would you say to him? Or, what would he say to you?"
• Bruce Dickinson wrote the song himself. It was produced by Roy Z, a California-bred guitarist who did time in bands like Tribe Of Gypsies and Seventh Thunder before connecting with Dickinson. They started working together on Dickinson's first post-Maiden solo album, Balls To Picasso, released in 1994.
• The music video was directed by Ryan Mackfall and stars Dickinson as a preacher who enters an ancient and very frightening graveyard. The Devil, played by Tim Cartwright (best known for his role in A Werewolf in England), confronts him, and the preacher signs a contract selling his soul for rock and roll. He wakes up in a coffin, then transforms into scintillating singer with amazing stage presence. The Devil appears, but he manages to vanquish him... or did he?