A WARNING SHOT
Indy archive: Robert Webb on ‘The Eton Rifles’ by The Jam
The Jam’s parting shot to the 1970s was a class conscious political salvo. Paul Weller heard the phrase “Eton rifles” on television and thought it a good title for a song about the class system. A news report about Eton schoolboys chortling insults at “right to work” demonstrators in Windsor town centre provided the inspiration Weller needed. He scooted down to a caravan park in Selsey with his girlfriend, a guitar and a riff in his head. “I just kept singing it into my tape recorder,” he said.
By the dawn of the Eighties, the troika of Weller, Rick Buckler and Bruce Foxton was fast turning into a vehicle for Weller’s solo ideas. “I can understand how it might have been tough on Rick and Bruce when I presented them with a song like that and virtually told them what to play,” Weller said.
In the track, Weller sneers at weekend class warriors – “Sup up your beer and collect your fags/ There’s a row going on down near Slough” – and taunts his quarry: “What chance have you got against a tie and a crest?” At the time, Weller said: “It’s also obviously a piss-take of these trendy socialists and fascists.”
“The Eton Rifles” was recorded at west London’s Townhouse studios in autumn 1979. When The Jam’s product manager, Dennis Munday, played it to his colleagues at Polydor, he was met with worried looks. “They said Radio 1 wouldn’t play it because of the political content,” Munday recalled. Meetings followed and eventually an independent plugger secured a place on the Radio 1 playlist. The song became the band’s biggest hit to date and the showpiece of the Setting Sons album.