Crispian St. Peters: "The Pied Piper"

July 18, 1966 (1 week)

It takes some nerve to record a song that someone else wrote and then boast about your own songwriting talent. Then again, Crispian St. Peters had plenty of nerve to spare. He reckoned he was a better songwriter than Lennon and McCartney, had better stage presence than Elvis, was sexier than Dave Berry — to be fair, he may have had something there — and was more exciting than Tom Jones. (Gee, why did he stop there? He also could've informed everyone that he had a toothier smile than Cliff Richard and far more gorgeous chicken legs than Mick Jagger)

Still, many of these comments came after St. Peters' first UK hit, a cover of Sylvia Tyson's "You Were on My Mind" (there's some Can Con for you!). If there had been any immediate backlash it did nothing to stop "The Pied Piper" from taking him right back into the higher reaches of the British charts. Whatsmore, it also ended up being a breakthrough hit for him internationally.

St. Peters would go on to claim that his boastfulness wasn't meant to be taken seriously which of course smacks of after-the-fact revisionism. However, there could be another factor worth considering: "The Pied Piper" is about an influential musician leading others to a higher level of consciousness (or something to that effect) and he could well have been playing up to this image. Am I giving his nibs far too much credit here? Yes, I almost certainly am.

The tune, composed by future Woodstock producer/promoter Artie Kornfeld and his partner Steve Duboff, is pleasant enough. The lyrics, however, are over-intellectualized but fail to communicate a great deal. If this sounds like it was written by people who aspired to be just like Bob Dylan who didn't have an ounce of his talent, then you'd be correct for assuming so. Kornfeld and Duboff had initially recorded it together as The Changin' Times — gosh, where could they have come up with such a name? — with their debt to Dylan on full display. Yet, it's convincing in a way that the St. Peters' version isn't: convincing because they aren't very convincing. They sound like hucksters trying to con someone. By contrast, St. Peters is trying to be as sincere as possible, which will not do at all.

Crispian St. Peters would gradually fade away following the success of "The Pied Piper". He would have one more RPM Top 40 hit with Phil Ochs' "Changes" (for a songwriter who rivaled Lennon and McCartney, he sure seemed scared of performing his own material) but it didn't do as well elsewhere. His lack of modesty and the backlash that ensued seemed to halt his career prospects but I think the world was aging out of clean-cut singers squeezing the life out of folk songs so his shelf life was likely soon to expire anyway. Reflecting on his fame, St.Peters observed that people "called me the Cassius Clay of pop because me and P.J. Proby were always arguing". I would call bullshit on this but for two things: (a) I can't say with absolutely certainty that was lying and (b) he probably went through enough being around P.J. Proby so much. Plus, if this was who he was associating (and arguing) with then longterm pop stardom wasn't going to happen anyway.

Score: 4