Post by petrolino on Nov 15, 2019 23:35:31 GMT
Happy Birthday, Ms. Clark.
'Sitting in a penthouse suite in downtown Montreal last month, Petula Clark couldn’t help but recall another room in another hotel just a few blocks away, 48 years ago.
“I’d been coming here for years to perform in French,” said the 84-year-old English singer and actress, whose 1964 all-time classic Downtown is only the tip of a remarkable show-business iceberg. “So when I was invited back after having hits in English, I thought: ‘This is great. I can do a bilingual show.’ ”
The show in question — actually a series of them, at Place des Arts, straddling late May and early June of 1969 — didn’t go as Clark had hoped. This was a time when language in Quebec was an especially contentious issue. When Clark sang in French, the anglophone half of the audience would break out in catcalls; when she sang in English, the francophone half would do the same.
“It was like open war,” recalled Clark, still sounding a little bewildered by it all. “I couldn’t win. I was really heartbroken. I needed someone to talk to. I had never met John (Lennon), but I knew he was in town. I remember it was pouring with rain, and I walked over to the (Queen Elizabeth) hotel, a far enough walk to get drenched. I went up, no security whatsoever. The door was open and there John and Yoko were, sitting on the bed. I walked in looking like a drowned rat, crying.
“John was very sweet, very funny — he was from Liverpool, they’re all funny. I told him what had happened, and he said — can I say it? He said: ‘You know what, Pet? F— ’em!’ I said, ‘Oh! Thank you, John.’ Later they were passing around these sheets with lyrics, and we all started singing. Everything was being recorded.”
The song, as sharp readers may have guessed by now, was Give Peace a Chance. “I am on that record. I can’t hear my voice, but I’m there,” Clark laughed.
“I’d been coming here for years to perform in French,” said the 84-year-old English singer and actress, whose 1964 all-time classic Downtown is only the tip of a remarkable show-business iceberg. “So when I was invited back after having hits in English, I thought: ‘This is great. I can do a bilingual show.’ ”
The show in question — actually a series of them, at Place des Arts, straddling late May and early June of 1969 — didn’t go as Clark had hoped. This was a time when language in Quebec was an especially contentious issue. When Clark sang in French, the anglophone half of the audience would break out in catcalls; when she sang in English, the francophone half would do the same.
“It was like open war,” recalled Clark, still sounding a little bewildered by it all. “I couldn’t win. I was really heartbroken. I needed someone to talk to. I had never met John (Lennon), but I knew he was in town. I remember it was pouring with rain, and I walked over to the (Queen Elizabeth) hotel, a far enough walk to get drenched. I went up, no security whatsoever. The door was open and there John and Yoko were, sitting on the bed. I walked in looking like a drowned rat, crying.
“John was very sweet, very funny — he was from Liverpool, they’re all funny. I told him what had happened, and he said — can I say it? He said: ‘You know what, Pet? F— ’em!’ I said, ‘Oh! Thank you, John.’ Later they were passing around these sheets with lyrics, and we all started singing. Everything was being recorded.”
The song, as sharp readers may have guessed by now, was Give Peace a Chance. “I am on that record. I can’t hear my voice, but I’m there,” Clark laughed.
The spur for this reminiscence, and the reason for her Montreal visit this spring, is that Clark has been soliciting songs from a range of contemporary Québécois artists (“I want them to write for me in the now — I’m not looking for nostalgia”) for a French-language album to be recorded here this year and released in time for an extensive Quebec tour announced for spring 2018. The album and tour have the potential to be something special — a perfect capper to a unique artist-audience relationship.
It’s a connection that goes back a long way. Clark performed regularly from the early 1960s at Gratien Gélinas’s old Comédie-Canadienne theatre on Ste-Catherine St. (It’s now the site of Théâtre du Nouveau Monde.) She was also here during Expo 67 as part of a Montreal-produced episode of the Ed Sullivan Show; for the aforementioned 1969 shows; and notably again in 2000 for a rapturously received autobiographical (and bilingual, this time without the catcalls) one-woman concert at Théâtre St-Denis.
“Quebec has been a very special place for me,” she said. “The idea of touring here again is wonderful.”
It’s a connection that goes back a long way. Clark performed regularly from the early 1960s at Gratien Gélinas’s old Comédie-Canadienne theatre on Ste-Catherine St. (It’s now the site of Théâtre du Nouveau Monde.) She was also here during Expo 67 as part of a Montreal-produced episode of the Ed Sullivan Show; for the aforementioned 1969 shows; and notably again in 2000 for a rapturously received autobiographical (and bilingual, this time without the catcalls) one-woman concert at Théâtre St-Denis.
“Quebec has been a very special place for me,” she said. “The idea of touring here again is wonderful.”
- Ian McGinnis, Montreal Gazzette
"In 1964, I was a huge star in France but the swinging 60s were starting to take hold in London and I wasn’t part of it. Tony Hatch, a junior producer at Pye Records, came to see me in Paris and told me I had to record again in English. I was in the kitchen making some tea when I first heard him playing the melody to Downtown. I ran in and said: “What’s that?”
At that point, it was just a melody and a title, but I said: “If you can write a lyric as good as that melody, I’d love to sing it.” Two weeks later, I was walking into a studio in London with 40 musicians. They were all top guys – the guitarist was Jimmy Page – and when I first heard the orchestration, it was so great I nearly fell over, even though Tony was still finishing the lyrics in the bathroom."
At that point, it was just a melody and a title, but I said: “If you can write a lyric as good as that melody, I’d love to sing it.” Two weeks later, I was walking into a studio in London with 40 musicians. They were all top guys – the guitarist was Jimmy Page – and when I first heard the orchestration, it was so great I nearly fell over, even though Tony was still finishing the lyrics in the bathroom."
- Petula Clark, The Guardian
"You know, that album, 'Downtown'? That's John Paul Jones playing on some songs."
- Eddie Taylor, Classic Rock Files
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