Songfacts®:

• This song is about the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany, renowned for the three residencies The Beatles had there between April and December 1962. Ian Hunter also played the venue, and this song recalls the sights, sounds, and characters of the legendary club.
  
  "It was a rough part of Hamburg - St Pauli, Grosse Freiheit - but everything was rougher back then," Hunter told Uncut magazine. "Every imaginable naughty thing went on in that area, with the Star Club being right in the middle of it."
• In the lyric, Hunter mentions both Roy Young:
  
  Roy stays forever young
  At the Bed of Roses
  
  And Tony Sheridan:
  
  The band played all night long
  The Silver Bugs and Sheridan
  Down the Bed of Roses
  
  "The Beatles backed Tony Sheridan, and Roy Young was the resident keyboard player at the Star Club," Hunter recalled to Mojo. "Horst Fascher, the club owner, had bought Roy a Cadillac, so Roy was like the king of the Grosse Freiheit. The Beatles asked him to join - Brian Epstein rang Roy and said. 'We've talked and we would like you in the band.' Roy turned it down because he had a Cadillac, all that. I asked him later, 'How does that feel?' He said, 'You know, I get up every morning, I go in the bathroom, I bang my head against the mirror once, and everything's cool."
• Ringo Starr supplies the steady beat and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers' guitarist Mike Campbell also plays on the song.
• "Bed Of Roses" is the opening track on Defiance Part 1, Ian Hunter's 16th studio album. A star-studded lineup of other guest musicians joins Hunter, including Slash, Johnny Depp, Taylor Hawkins and Todd Rundgren.