Ten Favorite Real People Songs: I Feel Like a Bullet (In the Gun of Robert Ford) (#9)

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Ooh, it snowed today! Lovely snow showers! How festive! Now, BRING ON SPRING!!! (Those Itis boys, Arthur Itis and Burrs Itis, don’t like cold weather, and they take it out on me!) I think it’ll be a while, but I keep the warm feelings going by watching baseball games from this season on my MLB app. We’ll be sweating again in no time! Meanwhile, here’s another real person named in the title of a song, a theme stolen from, ahem, inspired by @teamfreak16 . #9: I Feel Like a Bullet (In the Gun of Robert Ford) - Elton John Y’know, poor ol’ Bobby Ford has sure taken a beating in songs. That reflects real life, though: Ford shot Jesse James, his gang leader, and went to collect the reward...then found himself convicted of murder and sentenced to hang! Jesse James was a folk hero of sorts, and ballads (that have carried forward to this day) paint him as something other than a robber and one of the most notorious outlaws in America at the time. The governor of Missouri, Thomas Crittenden, offered a $10,000 reward for Jesse James, “dead or alive.” By the time Robert Ford decided that it was easier to rob Jesse James of his life than keep robbing trains to make ten grand James had very little left in the way of an outlaw gang or ambition to keep up the life of crime. That information didn’t reach the governor in time, and Ford killed James for the reward money. Traitor? Opportunistic lowlife? That’s the way Bernie Taupin, a huge fan of the old US west stories (see Elton’s Tumbleweed Connection album), saw Ford when he composed the lyrics to this song about a man who is seen as “low as a paid assassain is, you know I’m cold as a hired sword” for breaking off a relationship in a rather blunt manner (“after years of going steady, well I thought that it was time to throw in my hands for a new deck of cards”). The man realizes, too late, what he’s done to his girlfriend and to himself (“I’m damned if I’ll ever get rid of this guilt that I feel”). This was released as a “double A side” single in 1975, and it was Elton’s first single in a long, long while that didn’t make the top ten. It came from an album that showed the cracks of Elton’s rapid-pace releases (he was averaging an album every six months during this era) and his substance abuse. It’s a very uneven album, but I do love this song. I Feel Like a Bullet (In the Gun of Robert Ford) Written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin Recorded by Elton John From Rock of the Westies, 1975 Here’s a terrific solo live version: