Rubber Bullets



"Rubber Bullets" is a song by the English band 10cc from their self-titled debut album.

Written 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. It also reached No. 1 in Ireland and No. 3 in Australia, but it fared relatively poorly in the United States where it peaked at only No. 73.

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:

That's a double track solo on that. It's, it's very, very high, of course, going through a Marshall stack, then I slowed the tape to half speed – seven and a half [inches per second] – and recorded it, you know, going [plays singles picked notes slowly] and when you speed it back up you've got an octave up, but there's a screaming fuzz on the top of it, that's an octave higher than it was recorded. So it's a very unusual sound done in that way, just an experiment. Because 10cc, we love to experiment, we used to love to waste time. And having the beauty of having our own studio, we didn't have a clock in there so we weren't restricted.

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."

- Eric Stewart

Bassist 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."

- Graham Gouldman

Although the song was not banned by the BBC at the time of release, much later it was banned for the duration of the Persian Gulf War.

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.

Cover versions

 * Top of the Pops featured an anonymous cover of the song on their 31st volume.
 * Ronski & Exotic performed a cover of the song on their self-titled album released in 1975
 * Vicky Rosti performed a Finnish version of the song called "Puupaukut" on her 1975 album Vicky.
 * The Vindictives covered the song on their 1994 album Party Time for Assholes.
 * The Men They Couldn't Hang featured a cover of the song on their 2011 album 5 Go Mad on the Other Side.