I first heard the name 'Lulu' back in 1987 when she turned up as the replacement for Julie Walters in the now mostly forgotten Adrian Mole TV series. Based on the classic teen diaries by the titular Mole — who was very much the Ignatius J. Reilly of comedic British lit and, thus, a hero to me as an angsty youth — the show was faithful to the Sue Townsend novels, even if it never seemed quite right that more than a year's worth of journal entries ended up condensed to just six episodes. Walters played irresponsible matriarch Pauline Mole in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole series with Lulu in the role for follow-up The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole.
I probably wouldn't have noticed had it not been for my mum pointing it out. Yet looking back now, she wasn't as well suited as Walters. Her predecessor was seemingly born to play mothers (good or bad) while Lulu couldn't really be anything other than Lulu. It was the part she was born to play and one that has seen her through a long and varied career. But she is a peculiar type of celebrity. As a singer she didn't exactly wrack up the mega-hits (she is probably still best known in the UK for her version of "Shout!" which only managed to make it to number seven) while her modest filmography is filled with little-remembered cinematic efforts (there was a To Sir with Love II?) Her real home was in British variety TV which means she was famous for being famous, albeit not to a fatuous extent. As Tom Ewing observes in his review of her one British number one hit — in which she guested alongside Take That, the nation's biggest group of the time — "I only had a fuzzy grasp on why Lulu was famous and I doubt I was along in this". No, Tom, you were not.
Lulu's signature hit in the United States was "To Sir with Love", the theme song from the 1967 film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier. Though not a hit in her native Britain — it was in fact a mostly ignored B side to her Top 20 hit "Let's Pretend" — it was a sensation across the Atlantic, reaching the number one spot on the Hot 100 on October 21, 1967. Its flip side was previous UK hit "The Boat That I Row". For whatever reason, the two sides were reversed in Canada which nevertheless gave the Scot a chart topper on RPM fortnight prior to her breakthrough on the Hot 100.
I must say, this is a cracking single. "To Sir with Love" has always been a good song (kudos to everyone involved for avoiding sappiness) and its companion might even be a bit stronger. While Neil Diamond had recently done no creative favours to The Monkees, this composition for Lulu is spot on and sounds like it must have been written with her in mind. It may sound that way but his nibs had already had a bash at recording it himself a year earlier for his album Just for You. (Incidentally, it is a remarkable LP with just about every song a hit for someone. In addition to "The Boat That I Row", it also includes "I'm a Beliver" and "Red Red Wine" which means he placed three Canadian number ones on the same thirty minute record. "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" stands out as that rarest of things at the time, a Neil Diamond-penned single that was a hit for Neil Diamond of all people)
Diamond's version is far too serious for me to give a shit. Lulu has fun with it which is exactly what this statement of stubborn individuality needs. "Solitary Man", yet another well-known track off of Just for You, works as an earnest plea because of the rugged determination in the lyrics whereas "The Boat That I Row" is rather more flippant, an anthem for that free spirit who just goes about life the way they please and is immune to the critiques of others. A man like Diamond might be tempted to make it into a po-faced statement of intent but a good-natured young woman like Lulu transformed it into a song of liberation.
In addition, "The Boat That I Row" might as well be a theme song for Lulu's lengthy career in showbusiness. Her decades of shifting around from pop to the stage to film to TV variety and back again has been done on her terms. Others may have sung, acted or hosted more effortlessly than she did but no one performed the task of all around entertainer quite like Lulu.
Score: 8
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