Songfacts®:

• Robert Smith based this song on the deaths of his grandparents and the experience he had going to their funerals.
• The American alternative rock band Funeral Party named themselves after this song. Lead singer Chad Elliot said: "We chose the name Funeral Party because it was just the most depressing song I'd ever heard... it was the perfect name for a band like ours because we come from this jail town: no one gets out until they're dead. We also liked the name because it sounded like a hardcore band, but it had the word 'party' in it, so it fit in on the East LA dance party fliers."
  
  He added, "Initially, that name tricked people into seeing us." (SXSW, 2011)
• The Cure revisited this song on their 2011 DVD Reflections, during which they played their first three albums in their entirety.
• In a 1983 interview with Rockerilla, Smith crystallized the emotions behind the songs and the method behind the lyrics: "When someone you know dies you suddenly realize what death is. Something takes shape in your mind, it's not an indefinite, abstract entity anymore. Even if my parents are still alive I could understand, it opened my eyes, you face great changes. My lyrics are a miscellany of images taken from my mind. I never think of a specific subject to develop."
  
  He added, "'Killing An Arab' or 'Fire In Cairo' were based on specific subjects, but now it doesn't happen anymore. It's not just personal images, but also events involving other people, real or imaginary ones. The music has changed along with my changing feelings. It wasn't something I decided: it's a spontaneous evolution caused by a certain moment's stimulus."
• This was used in the 2012 movie Laurence Anyways.
• The Cure began work on Faith, their third studio album, immediately after a grueling 24-show tour of Australia and New Zealand, which only fueled Robert Smith's struggle with depression and influenced the grim tone of the album.