B-side "Waterfall" Format 7" Label UK Records | Released June 1973 Length 5:19 | |
Genre Pop rock, rock and roll, comedy rock | ||
"Rubber Bullets" is a song by the English rock band 10cc from their debut self-titled album.
Contents
Written and sung by Kevin Godley, Lol Creme, and Graham Gouldman and produced by 10cc, "Rubber Bullets" was the band's first number one single in the UK Singles Chart, spending one week at the top in June 1973. However it fared relatively poorly in the United States where it peaked at only No. 73. A tongue in cheek homage to the 1957 film Jailhouse Rock with a Beach Boys influence, the song attracted some controversy at the time because of the British Army's use of rubber bullets to quell rioting in Northern Ireland.
Recording and impact
The song features a double-speed guitar solo, created using a technique also used the same year by Mike Oldfield for his Tubular Bells album. In a BBC Radio Wales interview, guitarist Eric Stewart explained:
Stewart also recalled:
I was amazed, but pleased that the BBC never banned the track, although they limited its airplay, because they thought it was about the ongoing Northern Ireland conflicts. In fact, it was about an Attica State Prison riot like the ones in the old James Cagney films.
Graham Gouldman remembered:
Kevin and Lol had the chorus and part of the verse but then got stuck. We all loved the chorus and realized it was a hit in itself, so we wanted to persist with it. I chipped in the line 'we've all got balls and brains, but some's got balls and chains.' One of my finer couplets.
In popular culture
"Rubber Bullets" was used as the theme song to the pilot episode of American animated TV series Superjail!, which aired in May 2007.
The song can be heard, played on a bar jukebox, in the 1975 Finnish television film Simpauttaja, based on books by Heikki Turunen.
The song was featured on the soundtrack of the 1998 film A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries.