"Dreadlock Holiday" is a reggae 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. The reference to cricket in the first chorus, reggae in the second, and Jamaica in the third, reflects finding common ground with the antagonist.
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, 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.Famous quotes containing the word holiday:
“A holiday is when you celebrate something that’s all finished up, that happened a long time ago and now there’s nothing left to celebrate but the dead.”
—Abraham Polonsky (b. 1910)