Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick

"Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick"

Single by Ian Dury and the Blockheads

B-side

"There Ain't Half Been Some Clever Bastards"

Released

23 November 1978

Format

7" single, 12" single

Recorded

1978 at The Workhouse Studio, London

Genre

Length

3:43

Label

Stiff

Writer(s)

Ian Dury
Chaz Jankel

Producer(s)

Laurie Latham

Ian Dury and the Blockheads singles chronology

Music sample
"What a Waste" (1978)	"Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick" (1978)	"Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3" (1979)
"Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick"

"Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick" is a song by Ian Dury and the Blockheads, first released as a single on Stiff Records in the UK on 23 November 1978. Written by Dury and the Blockheads' multi-instrumentalist Chaz Jankel, it is the group's most successful single, reaching number one on the UK Singles Chart in January 1979 as well as reaching the top three in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and it was also a top 20 hit in several European countries.

"Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick" was named the 12th best single of 1978 by the writers of British music magazine NME, and best single of 1979 in the annual 'Pazz & Jop' poll organised by music critic Robert Christgau in The Village Voice. It was also named the 3rd best post-punk 7"'s ever made by Fact magazine. By June 2013, it had sold 1.11 million copies in the UK, making it the 90th best selling single of all time in the UK at that point.

Co-writer Chaz Jankel has repeated a story both in Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll: The Life of Ian Dury and Ian Dury & The Blockheads: Song by Song that the song was written in Rolvenden, Kent during a jamming session between him and Dury. Jankel relates that the music was inspired by a piano part near the end of "Wake Up and Make Love with Me" (a song on Dury's solo debut New Boots and Panties!! that Jankel had co-written) and that after listening to it, Dury presented the lyrics for "Hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick" to him the same afternoon. This was later corroborated by Dury.

Dury mentioned a number of origins for his lyrics, including claiming that he had written them up to three years earlier and it had just taken him all that time to realise their quality. Blockheads guitarist John Turnbull gives a different account, claiming the lyrics were written while on tour in America six months prior to the song's recording and that he was still adjusting in-studio. He said the line "it's nice to be a lunatic" was originally "it don't take arithmetic".

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Wikipedia