“Eton Rifles” by The Jam

"The Eton Rifles" was the one single The Jam pulled from Setting Sons, out in late October 1979, and it gave them their first top-ten hit at home. Paul Weller wrote it on a seaside holiday at Selsey Bill that summer, fired up by a TV news report showing Eton schoolboys jeering at a Right to Work march as it passed the school.

The college sat close to the band's Woking home turf, and Rick Buckler remembered growing up aware that the boys there were being taught to shoot, which struck him as a bizarrely militaristic idea of education. Weller turns that jeering into a snarling piece of class war, guitars chopping and drums drilling like a parade ground. It was recorded at Townhouse Studios with Vic Coppersmith-Heaven producing alongside the band, and "See-Saw" rode on the B-side.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.