Phil Collen told Songfacts about the genesis of the song:

It started off, we were in Dublin and Rick Savage started playing this tune, so I immediately started singing, “Out of touch, out of reach.” That was literally the first thing that came out of my mouth. He said that was cool and he goes, [singing] “I got to know tonight,” this whole other section. We glued it together and we got very excited and we actually went around and played it for our friends who were clothes designers in Dublin. We sat down and were playing acoustic guitar, singing over the demo, and we thought that was going to be the chorus. And Mutt Lange said, “Okay, that’s a great verse, a great bridge. Now we need the chorus.” Uh, okay. [Laughs] So we sat down and we kind of just goofed around. Steve had this idea and Joe came and sang this thing and before you knew it, the song was pretty much done.

He also discussed what the song was written about:

The song really is about finding spiritual enlightenment. Not many people know that because it sounds like just ‘getting hysterical’, but it’s actually about that. It’s about finding this deeper thing, whether you believe it or not. It’s just about finding that.