Petula Clark: "My Love"

February 14, 1966 (1 week)

One thing you've got to give Petula Clark even if you think her music is more or less dog shit: she was (and no doubt remains) a pro. By the mid-sixties she'd already been a showbusiness veteran for over twenty-five years so she likely learned a thing or two. Just the fact she could sing in French, German, Italian and Spanish and not sound awkward and not sound over-rehearsed is a testament both her skills as a vocalist and her consummate professionalism.

Clark has long been open about her dislike for "My Love" and yet you'd never know it listening to her. If anything, she sounds a great deal more convincing here than on her previous Canadian chart toppers, especially "Downtown", a song I have grown increasingly disinterested in. (I have a policy, borrowed from Tom Ewing, not to alter the score given once a review has been published; otherwise, I'd knock "Downtown" down to a 4 or possibly even a 3) Her earlier North American hits had been about finding a refuge either by losing herself in New York City's downtown or in a small live music venue so it's perhaps understandable that she found the trite lyrics to "My Love" so underwhelming. Nevertheless, she brims with confidence and enthusiasm, transforming a very ordinary song into a credible performance.

The story goes that songwriter Tony Hatch was on an airplane from London to Los Angeles and was struggling to complete a song called "The Life and Soul of the Party". The American sitting next to him advised against it — he supposedly claimed that the title would "mean nothing" in the States which means he was almost as big of a moron as some of the strangers I've sat next to on planes) and so the Englishman ended up dashing off "My Love" instead. (Hatch didn't give up on "The Life and Soul of the Party" entirely as it ended up as a deep cut on Clark's album My Love (aka A Sign of the Times/My Love, because nothing says serious albums act like changing the title after it has already been released), released in the spring of 1966)

I'm not quite sure if the airplane story is true — unless the jerk in the seat next to him happened to be a record exec, I'm not sure why he even gave his advice a second though — but no doubt "My Love" sounds like it was written in a hurry. The laundry list of romantic cliches ("my love is deeper than the deepest ocean, wider than the sky") is the first giveaway that Hatch probably didn't put a great deal of care and attention into it. With a less experienced singer the whole thing may well have been abandoned after no more than a two or three studio takes; but an old pro like Petula Clark managed to take chicken shit and turn it into chicken salad — albeit one heavy on the dark meat.

Score: 6

Petula Clark: "I Know a Place"

April 12, 1965 (1 week)

As I hammered home the last time she came up, Petula Clark was a good deal older than her pop contemporaries. (At number two on the RPM chart during the week of April 12, 1965 was Sandie Shaw, a full fifteen years Clark's junior) While North America treated her like any other member of the British Invasion, she had already established herself in Europe so it wasn't as if she was this overnight success story. Yet, her relatively advanced years and the fact that she was working primarily with a milquetoast composer/producer set her apart and might have put her at a disadvantage, even if her run of hits in North America indicates she overcame this particular handicap.

"I Know a Place" was a canny move on the part of Clark and longtime collaborator Tony Hatch. While the heavier drum sound suggests they were adapting to current Merseybeat trends, the song's message of her being aware of this basement club in which "the music is fine, the lights are low" is far more important. She wasn't jumping on the Beatles' bandwagon, she's hip enough to know where to seek them out. Better yet, she's also cool enough to know the fantastic bands who aren't yet such a big deal. "Look, the older woman who lives down the road and who you secretly fancy is actually hip!"

Like "Downtown", "I Know a Place" is about a refuge. A place to go for lonely people to escape from their sad lives. But whereas her signature hit happened to be about New York, a city most people didn't really have the chance to visit back in the mid-sixties, this follow-up deals with a nice club which could be anywhere. Yeah, I suppose it's meant to be set in Soho in the middle of London — or maybe the Cavern up in Liverpool if we want to take The Beatle connection to the fullest extent — but it could be about any mid-size city's top music venue, the kind that kids would sneak out to visit.

While "Downtown" is the much more familiar Petula Clark hit, "I Know a Place" is the stronger single overall. Though more contemporary, it still allows Clark to unleash her West End/Broadway vocals and is thus not out of place for her. Not especially brilliant and no doubt nowhere close to as good as the music she experienced at this club but a fine record nonetheless. But that is the problem here: as she herself hints, there's far better pop to be found than with her modest efforts. She may indeed have had good taste in bands that were worth seeking out but that doesn't mean she was able to hold her own with them.

Score: 6

Petula Clark: "Downtown"

February 1, 1965 (1 week)

By the early part of December 1988 I had watched around a dozen episodes of Top of the Pops. No great total, I know, but I had only been in the UK since that August and I wasn't to know about Britain's favourite music show until starting school the following month. Though the late eighties had become awash in teen pop, TOTP in that era had its share of veteran performers. Phil Collins appeared on the first episode I recall watching, miming at a piano to "A Groovy Kind of Love" which also happened to be occupying the number one spot. It was followed by The Hollies and a reissue of their classic "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother". By December, the Christmas Number One race was supposed to be on but it sort of stalled when Cliff Richard's yuletide fave "Mistletoe and Wine" rather annoyingly took first place and refused to cede its position. Not only were the elderly appearing on TOTP but they were doing so while at number one.

Though not a chart topper, one of the other hits I can recall being performed by a pop music vet was "Downtown '88" by Petula Clark. Even alongside the likes of Collins and Richard she looked ancient. She looked like my grandmothers back home. She looked like Mrs. Vine, my geography teacher who chain smoked and who we nicknamed 'Chimney Pot'. She looked like those British women who hosted dating and light entertainment shows back then (with catchphrases like "Press your buttons now!") only that much older. My mum knew "Downtown" and informed that it had been popular when she was in school. What she neglected to mention was that Petula Clark was getting up there even back in her day.

I just turned forty-eight this past week so I suppose I'm one to talk but being thirty-two years old in the midst of mid-sixties' pop might as well have been the grandmotherly figure Clark cut nearly a half-century later on TOTP. But not only did she look like she was more than ten years older than Paul McCartney but she also sounded like a throwback. It was as if she had been Julie Andrews' less talented, less charismatic older sister who had finally caught a break. This perception wasn't entirely accurate since she had been a well known figure in the UK and most of western Europe. She had even reached number one back in Britain in 1961 with her English language version of "Salior", a CHUM chart topper for Austrian singer Lolita. Her fortunes had been rather up and down over the years but success in North America proved elusive until the British Invasion took off and she became one of its unlikeliest stars.

"Downtown" was the work of British songwriter Tony Hatch who would go on to co-compose such memorable TV theme songs as Crossroads and Neighbours (though not, much to my surprise, the wonderful tune to Eastenders). Prior to finding his real calling, however, he made a living at pop and had forged a thriving producer-singer relationship with Petula Clark going all the way back to "Sailor". By 1964 they must have felt that having a hit on Billboard's Hot 100 was simply not in the cards. Cliff Richard had only barely managed to crack the US charts and he was considerably younger than Clark. The arrival of The Beatles only managed to expose how out-of-date their predecessors were, the cheery, multilingual Petula Clark being among them.

Yet, few seemed to care that "Downtown" was such a throwback. The vast majority of people probably didn't even notice. In fact, its very nature as an old fashioned pop song works in its favour. It could easily be from one of the "movie shows" or from a Broadway musical that are implicitly being celebrated. "Ah, but Broadway is in Midtown," some of you more knowledgeable types may be saying but that's not remotely the point. New Yorkers may know about Downtown and Uptown and the area in between but the rest of us can only speculate. It is the thrill of possibly one day visiting the Big Apple that "Downtown" celebrates. The seedy part of Manhattan? It's nowhere to be found. (Prefab Sprout's "Hey Manhattan", off their great 1988 album From Langley Park to Memphis, does a far better job mixing the city's glamour with its sleaziness)

While I like the idea of romanticizing NYC, "Downtown" isn't an entirely successful attempt at doing so. Perhaps my knowledge of Clark's "advancing" age ruins it as I can't get passed wishing it had been sung by someone far younger. Tony Hatch's future career in UK and Aussie soap theme tunes creeps in as the chorus has the ring of the opening music to an American sit com about a newly independent — and, possibly, divorced — youngish woman arriving in the Big City to make it on her own, like if The Mary Tyler Moore Show had been set in a more glamorous town than Minneapolis. (Like Denver, perhaps?) Not to mention, who actually finds the downtown area of a major city to be a place where you go to avoid loneliness? I tend to gravitate towards big cities but I am under no apprehension just how alienating and soul-sucking they can be. The song itself may be harmless fun but it does little alleviate the shittiness of being alone in a giant megalopolis.

Score: 5