Songfacts®:

• As the album's title suggests, this was originally recorded in 1986. It was originally intended for a second album by Hackett's short-lived supergroup GTR, which never materialized.
• Chris Thompson of Manfred Mann's Earth Band sings lead on this, and Queen's Brian May joins Hackett on co-lead guitar.
• This song's intro is set during an effete, high-class ball. It opens with an orchestral waltz and a man asking, "Would the lady care to dance?" Once the lady says yes, the waltz is replaced with a brief, rapid-fire guitar solo by Hackett, which leads into the song itself. XM Satellite Radio has been known to use this intro in some of its channel-ID audio bites.
• The song itself is a straightforward ode to the ever-popular gambling device, often called the "one-armed bandit." Hackett had the old-fashioned mechanical reel variety in mind, as the more sophisticated (and often armless) video-based slot machines now prevalent in today's casinos hadn't yet been invented in 1986.
• The "number [Hackett's] dreaming of" in the second verse is presumably the number 7. Not only is this a commonly-used symbol on slot machines, but a row of all sevens is often designated the jackpot-winning combination.
• In the final verse, Hackett (via singer MacDonald) warns listeners not to play a slot machine for too long, lest they lose everything. Like most other casino games, slot machines give a slight built-in advantage to the house over the player, by providing payouts that don't quite reflect the true odds of winning. So, if you play a slot machine long enough, you will eventually lose all the money you started with; it's just a question of how long it takes.
• As the song ends, we're returned to the ballroom setting from the intro, where the lady discovers that she's torn her dress, presumably while dancing to this high-energy song. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Joshua - La Crosse, WI, for all above