'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 12 Jun 10 - 06:59 AM

Once saw Sarsted live, he was singing 'Take off yout clothes'. When he got to the 'My daddy.is the pope.line, A nun in the Audience...in full drag, got up and ostentatiously made her way out. Poor Sarsted vainly tried to explain that it was in fact a moral song, as the impostor got his come-uppance...but to no avail.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Jun 10 - 08:32 AM

Where do you go to my lovely , pure unadulterated shite and a staple for woeful buskers down through the years. Regardless of who it may or may not have been about it , it was/is an exercise in namedropping in an effort to sound sophisticated, any reader of Jackie could have done the job had it needed to be done. The Romeo and Juliet . Dire Straits number at least had the good grace not to name drop and of course had a decent bit of music to it, It is high time that John Otway gave it the treatment as he has done so admirably with "I will Survive", "Honey", and of course "Two Little Boys" in the right hands these songs are masterpieces and Mr Otway has those hands. http:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_cE6I5V-bY

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 12 Jun 10 - 06:58 PM

Easy to say at 40 tears remove, anonymous guest, but in 1970, an acoustic(ish) song , from someone performing regularly in folk clubs ( see above) featuring an authentic sounding accordion....was pretty good.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 13 Jun 10 - 03:50 AM

Several parodies have been mentioned already, I am not sure if Billy Connnolly was the author of the parody or not, but I distinctly remember one of the verses he sang which went:

"I remember the back streets of Partick
Two children begging in rags
Where you tried to sell your wee brother
For a packet of Embassy fags"

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: GUEST,ruairiobroin
Date: 13 Jun 10 - 02:33 PM

Sorry Tug the Cox I got signed as "guest" whilst giving out about Where do you go to my lovely   What I said I probably said 40 years ago too.   Schmoltz does not improve with age . I was attending Folk clubs back then and there were lots of acts regularly appearing in folk clubs with and without accordions who had well constructed meaningful songs to sing and play that are never heard now, more's the pity, it's a shame that shite like that song will never die
It has always sounded to me that someone who had only a tenuous grasp of the English language an iffy understanding of music , a copy of a "Write your own Folksong" book and a friend in a record company was behind it. On the basis of what I have read above I remain to be convinced otherwise.
Murray MacLeod    I think that may have been Matt McGinn

Throw the other shite to Otway http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPPm7CVP6Bk

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Cretzon
Date: 13 Jun 10 - 03:31 PM

"Pure unadulterated shite" sounds like a euphemism for "wish I'd thought of it, but didn't have the talent, and probably never will have".

OK - easy to knock it 41 years later if you've got nothing better to do, but it made the artist and a few others a bit of fame and money, stayed in the charts for 16 weeks (four of them at number one)and obviously kept Joe Public happy for a while, or they wouldn't have bought it by the ton. It won the Ivor Novello award, as well, as I remember. Hardly shite.

If it was about anything it was probably about envy and jealousy.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 13 Jun 10 - 06:55 PM

Well Rory, you don't like it , understood. Anything else youhave said is no more than a repeat of that obvious fact!

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: GUEST,Uncle Rumpo
Date: 13 Jun 10 - 09:15 PM

he was support act at gig I went to about 5 years ago..
I didn't enjoy much of his act & material..

but "Orange Juice" was surprisingly quite good for a long forgotten pop song..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rykS25x7Jhk


at least as good as Cat Stevens wanky Deram era trite

and almost as good as David Bowie on the same Decca sub lable.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Jun 10 - 01:49 AM

Take off your clothes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juqsMRYwQUs

Posted this sometime ago now.




whb

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: wilbyhillbilly
Date: 14 Jun 10 - 01:55 AM

I'll try again, with a clicky!!!!!!

Take off your clothes

That's better.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: puck
Date: 22 Jul 10 - 10:40 AM

I'd have to say first of all that I love 'Where do you go to', and regard it as an iconic song of it's time. I love lyrics that tell a tale and even at the time it came out I understood the lyrics and references to Zizzy, Belmain etc.
I'd also like to say that considering you all seem to HATE the songs mentioned on this thread many of you seem to know ALL the lyrics [ very sad!!]; or have researched them to post them here [even sadder!!], and, by including the lyrics for all to see, are doing a fine job of advertising them, even in a negative light, you help to ensure their longevity!

I also have to own up to liking 'The green green grass of home'.....but then I'm Welsh and whilst it's very sad that not everyone is lucky enough to be 'cymro' and I pity those of you who are not....but then you can't be all perfect!!
I got the last bit in b4 you lot

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: autoharpbob
Date: 22 Jul 10 - 04:17 PM

Amazing thread! - and so sad that I not only could sing along to every single set of words printed, but I knew most of them by heart. I got just past halfway then thought to myself "Nobody has put up "Two Little Boys" yet!" - then someone did! My only excuse is that I was too young to know better, and now I appreciate them for their post-modernist irony.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: GUEST,Patsy Warren
Date: 23 Jul 10 - 07:23 AM

This is a coincidence I was having this very same conversation with my son who unfortunately has this on a 60's compilation CD. I wonder what was inside his head when he wrote it! I know Rita Heyworth had something going with the Aga Khan but I don't recall her sounding like Marlena Dietrich and I am sure she didn't come from Naples. Surely Peter Sarstedt's big brother Eden Cane would have been more likely the age to fancy Sophia Loren. Perhaps she turned one of them down and it was a bit of sour grapes, a little bit like You're so Vain by Carly Simon

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Tootler
Date: 23 Jul 10 - 06:51 PM

I noticed this thread had reappeared, so I had another look and a poke around You Tube and listened to some of the Peter Sarsted songs. I was quite surprised how poorly they had stood the test of time (or not as it happens). What seemed at the time interesting songs now sound bland and dated.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Dec 10 - 12:19 AM

John Otway's attempt to parody Dylan does have some of the typical Dylanesque vocal exaggerations stretched to a pretty ridiculous extent...as was clearly Otway's intention...and it's a piss poor and wretched attempt to sound like Bob Dylan, in my opinion. ;-) He manages to be a lot more annoying than Bob at his very worst. That also was probably his intention, so I guess he sort of succeeded...but I'm not impressed.

You want to hear a really good parody? Check out this marvelous parody of Neil Young:

Southern California Brings Me Down

Now THAT is a good parody. It's tuneful, and it's fun to listen to. It catches virtually every Neil-Youngish kind of riff and wordplay you can name, and it does so in an affectionate manner.

It's not bloody annoying and mean-spirited like Otway's tuneless mangling imitation of Bob Dylan's most aggressive vocal phrasings.

(However, I bet Otway had fun doing it.)

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Dec 10 - 03:17 AM

I have listened to Peter Sarstedt doing the title song of this thread on Youtube before an apparently lobotomized crowd of late 1960s young people who dance vapidly around on the dance floor seeming quite unconscious of the lyrics while he sings the song earnestly at them from the raised stage.

Interesting. He sings it quite well. While it does seem affected and pretentious in one sense...from another angle, I can see why some people really like it. It is unique, and it has a kind of interesting tune and overall effect.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 29 Dec 10 - 05:37 AM

So much rubbish written about a song he once told me it took him around ten minutes to write. Still, I suppose even more has been written about Shakespeare.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 29 Dec 10 - 07:20 AM

LH, you're right: it was the tune and Sarstedt's voice that made the hit.

But indeed, the lyrics made a lot of sense to us back in 1969 (though I never liked them). In a nutshell, the song is about "class treason". Its story is ficticious (as the woman turns out to be the narrator's childhood friend in Naples, where Sarstedt never lived), but the attributes were well-known from the yellow press in Europe, about Loren and other members of the "jet set". These attributes included a fashionable fake bohemianism represented by Rolling Stones records etc.

A member of the working class would be allowed to become educated and successful, but mingling with representatives of crudest capitalism like Aga Khan was a capital sin. It is however a particular weakness of these lyrics that they convey envy as well.

The real haut monde, of course, would smirk at Sarstedt's vulgar yellow-press clichés.

The times, they have a-changed since, but not completely.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: GUEST,erbert
Date: 29 Dec 10 - 07:27 AM

oh for f@cks sake, the song is bollox and the singer is a bit of a dick..

history.. end of..

But his one about orange juice was actually really quite good !!!??

sorry, the orange juice song is one of my favourites......

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 30 Dec 10 - 07:35 AM

Nah then "erbert" (are you the spotty one or someone else?) It was actually called "Frozen Orange Juice". His other "hit" was "Beirut" (Crumbling stone by stone) anyone remember it?

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Dec 10 - 12:25 PM

Well put, Grishka.

Ray - Sure...it could take about 10 minutes to write that song. Why not? Most of the songs I've written have happened very quickly. We're not all like Leonard Cohen (who says he takes months or even years to finish writing some of his songs). Most of Bob Dylan's great songs were written down in a quick flash of inspiration, so why would it have taken Sarstedt very long to write "Where Do You Go To, My Lovely"? This stuff just springs out of the subconscious and you have to be attentive and get it down fast when it happens...at least that's how it works for me.

What's interesting about the song, though, is not how long it might have taken to write it, but what Grishka had to say in his last post. He has explained it perfectly, in my opinion. It's about "class treason", as he says. It's about selling out for personal gain. It makes me think of someone like Veronica Lodge in the Archie comics, only she was born rich. ;-) So she couldn't commit class treason by joining the jet set. The weakness of the song, again as Grishka says, is the undercurrent of envy that weaves through it. A true social revolutionary is not supposed to envy the material advantages of jet set fame and fortune, he is supposed to despise and reject them utterly...otherwise he has slipped from revolutionary grace, hasn't he? ;-)

These were important issues in the 60s.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 30 Dec 10 - 04:17 PM

I'm not seeking to criticise anybody but I once asked Peter, a couple of decades ago, about the reputed deeper meaning contained in the song and his reply was that it had only taken him about ten minutes to write. Its sad than people come along after the event and try to find inferences and meaning in something when there aren't any. I was simply trying to point this out.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Dec 10 - 05:49 PM

I'm well aware of what you're trying to say, Ray. I understand what you're saying.

But that doesn't mean that there are no deeper meanings in the song, regardless of how few minutes it was written in.

Do you have experience writing songs yourself?

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: GUEST,Grishka
Date: 31 Dec 10 - 05:56 AM

I think we are not looking for "deeper" meanings, but for ideas and feelings that seemed self-evident in those days but should now be explained to younger persons (such as LH, judged by his appearance on U2be). Also, some aspects were specific to Europe. (Actually, in 1969 I was a young boy myself and hardly understood a word of English, but I lived near Paris in the 1970s.)

Certainly the lyrics lack finish. A line like "They say that when you get married it'll be to a millionaire" is ridiculous by any standard. Perhaps Sarstedt was ashamed of it lateron. The story had obviously grown inside him for a long time, maybe reading the yellow press at the hairdresser's, so it just fell off when ripe.

If I understand LH correctly, he is trying to check the songs and ideas of the past for their relevance today, which I find quite worth the while. If the old recipes do not seem very useful today, we may at least avoid repeating some of the old errors.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 31 Dec 10 - 07:25 AM

Seems to me that the deeper meanings in the song stem entirely from the person looking for them rather than the person who wrote it.

I don't see the relevance in whether I have experience in writing songs but, since you ask, yes, I have written the odd one and I also co-wrote a musical which played at the Royal Exchange, Manchester back in the 1970s.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Dec 10 - 09:42 AM

The reason I asked, Ray, was because different people write songs in different ways. Some people write very deliberately, with the conscious mind....they decide they are going to write about some specific thing: like a breakup with their girlfriend or an antiwar statement or whatever...

And other people write spontaneously and instinctively, without any prior calculation or expectation of what's going to happen (that's how I do it, and I've written hundreds of songs that way).

And still others write with a combination of prior mental calculation plus spontaneity/instinctively (I've done that occasionally).

I find that the stuff that is written on the spot with no prior idea of even what the song is going to be about...surprisingly, perhaps...results in far superior songwriting. And why? Because what you are writing when you write that way springs straight out of the vast well of your own subconxcious (or if you are mystically inclined...from some source that is beyond even you). You just have to relax, get your mind out of the way, and let it happen. And it's great.

It wouldn't surprise me a bit if Sarstedt got the tune and musical arrangement in a minute, and the lyrics in 7 or 8 minutes. That would be pretty normal, as far as I'm concerned.

Now, the point is, when stuff rises instinctively out of your own subconscious, it has all kinds of meanings in it. It relates to all kinds of stuff that's been bubbling around in the back of your mind, maybe for years, maybe for most of your life. And it just happens.

Whether Sarstedt had any conscious intention to say anything in those lyrics, he still has said something regardless. And he's touched on some interesting issues there, regardless. It may have meant nothing to him at the time on a conscious level, but it still has meaning, regardless. In my opinion. ;-) And it doesn't hurt you or anybody else if I find some meaning in his song.

But I didn't start this thread with any intention of provoking dissertations on the deep meaning of the song. I just wanted to see if anyone else remembered it, because it was on the radio so much in 1970 that it really started to bug me. ;-) And that was why I launched the thread. Period. It then went where it would, as threads tend to do.

******

Grishka - Don't let my looks deceive you. I am 62 years old this year. I only wish I was as young as I appear to be. It would be nice.

Subject: How do I get Self Confidence
From: GUEST,Eric
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 03:02 AM

If you are plagued by low self esteem and confidence, it is important that you take the necessary steps to start taking control and resolve to turn your life around. It’s not easy when you are facing a multitude of self doubts and negative thoughts at every turn, but the good news is that you can overcome these negative traits, it just takes time and effort and a patient approach.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Little Hawk
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 05:13 PM

I can't argue with that.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 26 Sep 11 - 05:56 PM

Thanks for reviving (?) these matchless lyrics for the mudcat hall of shame (except I barfed on that Paul Anka baby thing).

A favorite of mine in the Prairie Flower thread, 17347
Prairie Flower

One timeless verse-
I'm a little acorn brown
Lying on the dusty ground
Nobody cares to pick me up
For I'm just a little nut.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: lefthanded guitar
Date: 27 Sep 11 - 01:04 PM

Little Hawk I am engaged by your description of the songwriting process. It is for many songwriters (Dylan and myself included, tho I don't of course put myself in the same class as Dylan) something that springs from the subconscious and brings the influences of years of living and thinking and feeling.

I saw this thread and remembered the guy who sang this song when I was living in a small college town. I think the song still has a valid perspective, even if it's not as well crafted as other songs on the topic by the likes of Dylan or Ochs. The thing is only that (many of ) our generation that has moved on from that mindset -but I'm not sure the song is as dated as we may think.

What the song reminds me most,however, is recalling the community of people I knew in grad school,one foot in school the other in the work world; living in flimsy flats, hair long and tangled;rejoicing in the freedom of young adulthood but searching for love and struggling to find our way in life. Was friendship ever so valued and betrayal ever so scorned as it was in those days of the dawn of our maturity?   And when we believed, at the time, (as Nanci Griffith observed years later in Julie Gold's "Goodnight New York" ) that "having less meant knowing more."

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: GUEST,wallbanger
Date: 06 Dec 14 - 11:29 PM

Where do you go to... is the greatest pop song of all time. He also did a good one "He lived his life as though it was a movie.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Dec 14 - 04:26 AM

Ten minutes or ten months, it's still an interesting song, from the perspective of the 21st century. The 1960s attitude to the celebrity of someone who was once begging in rags, and is now a 'celeb' is not approval but contempt. Today's 'celebs' are role models.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: GUEST,DTM
Date: 07 Dec 14 - 05:32 AM

Saw Sarstedt several years ago on a Dave Berry, Wayne Fontana package tour. He was very poor.

"WDYGTML" was a novelty song that crammed in as much dropped names as was humanly possible in the alloted time.

Sacha Distell was originally a session guitarist and IIRC only began a career as a singer when he came to the UK. PS's song actually made Distell famous in the UK.

While I'm here, can I throw "Daddy's Home" onto the barfing pile?

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 07 Dec 14 - 03:51 PM

Oh come on, Sasha Distel was bloody gorgeous! (all lady catters, don't you agree?) And he played for the Queen Mother's 80th birthday in 1980.
One of my accordion-playing friends still plays WDYGTML (good waltzy melody if nothing else) - and if there happen to be singers around, we sing it too. Another female friend wore a stick-on walrus moustache that kept falling off, and brought the house down!

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Dec 14 - 05:50 PM

Helluva stretch this, mebbe, but slightly arrogant fellow bitterly addressing a lovely woman that he can't have...anyone for Raglan Road? :-)

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: michaelr
Date: 07 Dec 14 - 10:12 PM

Brilliant, Steve! The parallel is obvious, now that you point it out.

BTW, I don't think Sarstedt's song is all that abysmal. Its main shortcoming is that the verses and chorus are the same and it has no bridge.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: bubblyrat
Date: 08 Dec 14 - 09:36 AM

Oddly,the thing that I remember the most about PS is that he was one of three singing brothers ; younger brother Robin had a hit with Hoagy's song "My Resistance Is Low" , and older brother sang under the name " Eden Kane " with hits in the early 60s in UK. (I think !!).

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 Dec 14 - 10:23 AM

slightly arrogant fellow bitterly addressing a lovely woman that he can't have...anyone for Raglan Road?

And it doesn't come anywhere near "Streets of London" for supercilious condescension.

Subject: RE: 'Where do you go to my Lovely' - Discuss
From: The Sandman
Date: 08 Dec 14 - 11:24 AM

"And it doesn't come anywhere near "Streets of London" for supercilious condescension"
I would be interested to hear why you find that song condescending.