Dreadlock Holiday

"Dreadlock Holiday"
Single by 10cc
from the album Bloody Tourists
Released	July 1978
Genre	Reggae, Rock
Length	4:31
Label	Mercury
Writer(s)	Eric Stewart Graham Gouldman
10cc singles chronology
"People in Love" (1977) "Dreadlock Holiday" (1978) "For You And I" (1978)

"Dreadlock Holiday" is a song by 10cc. It was written by Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman and was the lead single from the band's 1978 album, Bloody Tourists. Lead vocals were performed by Graham Gouldman.

The lyrics, about a white man lost in Jamaica, and being confronted by an unpleasant dreadlocked man looking for money, were based on a true event that happened to Moody Blues vocalist Justin Hayward and Eric Stewart in Barbados;^[1] it was a rare excursion into reggae for the act. It became the act's third and final number one single in the UK, and final top 10 hit, spending a single week at the top in September 1978. The single peaked at #44 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the USA. The song was later covered by Boney M on their 1985 album, Eye Dance. Also covered by Top Deck (in 1987) and by polish singer Reni Jusis (in 1999).

Some of the experiences that are mentioned are true, and some of them are ... fairly true!

Graham Gouldman, The Songwriters Circle, BBC2, 1999.

In popular culture

• The song is featured on the first episode, "Killeroo", of the first series of the British cult comedy The Mighty Boosh. Bob Fossil, head of the Zooniverse, dances to the first verse of the song while a confused Howard Moon looks on, before switching it off and explaining "And that's why I don't like cricket."
• A reworked version is the main theme for Sky Sports coverage of Cricket in the UK, with the lines "I don't like Cricket, I love it" rerecorded as "We don't like Cricket, We Love it" ^[2]
• The song is featured in the movie Snatch.
• The guitar parts of the song feature in 2 Many DJ's album As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2, mixed in with the vocals of Independent Women, Pt. 1 by Destiny's Child.
• Many elements of this song are used in the song "Your Cover's Blown" by Belle & Sebastian
• Some elements of this song are used in the song "Hip Hop Holiday" by New Zealand hip hop group 3 The Hard Way.
• The song is featured in the movie The Social Network.
• The song is featured as the opening track for the movie Reggae By Bus (1979).
• the internet flash game Skull Kid features an instrumental clip of this song

References

1. ^ 10cc - Life is no holiday for this super group
2. ^ New broadcast techniques for England cricket, Cricinfo. Retrieved 2010-05-14

Preceded by "Three Times a Lady" by The Commodores

UK number one single 23 September 1978

Succeeded by "Summer Nights" by John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John