Music journalism is littered with unflattering shorthand terms that are as bothersome and hard to shake off as a randy Doberman. Anyone with even a passing interest in the rock comics will have stumbled across a few: Old New Waver, Sleeperbloke, Retro-Rocker, New Dylan, One Hit Wonder.
Peter Sarstedt has laboured under the latter tag for the last 30 years, the spectre of his first and biggest hit 'Where Do You Go To, My Lovely?' still clings to his name like gum on a radiator. Sarstedt had other hits such as 'One More Frozen Orange Juice' and 'I Am A Cathedral', but it's the tale of Marie Claire - the swinging socialite with a secret past as a street urchin - for which the singer will be remembered.
Not that he's complaining, mind. If my sources are reliable, the songwriter still makes #60,000 a year in royalties from that 1969 hit, no small compensation for the fact that his quarter-hour of fame is well in the past. You can be sure that right now, somewhere on the planet, a bedraggled busker is murdering the tune in broad daylight, an FM jock with a bad Bay Area accent is regurgitating it during nostalgia hour, or some stonewashed party-prat with face-fungus is giving the chorus the old heave-ho.
Sixty grand per annum. That works out at over a thousand smackers a week. For one song written three decades ago. In any other industry, such a coup would be regarded as the work of an expert entrepreneur, a veritable fiscal guerrilla. Except, in rock 'n' roll circles, people shake their heads and pity the poor pilgrim who never quite sustained his initial impetus.
Yet, here's Peter Sarstedt, sitting across from me in the bar of the Shelbourne, happy and healthy, promoting his most recent album England's Lane, still plying his trade in a business where artists go down more frequently than a wanna-be in an MGM parking lot. Sitting here drinking tea and dragging on the odd fragrant cigarette, there are no visible flies on Peter, no psychic scars sustained from years spent in rehab, prison or hanging out with L. Ron Hubbard.
Strangely enough, Sarstedt wrote 'Where Do You Go To My Lovely?' as a relief from all the heavier 'issue songs' he'd been performing at concerts. The irony is that it became his anthem, reaching number one in 14 countries within six weeks of its release in 1969, sharing the Ivor Novello award with David Bowie's 'Space Oddity'.
Did the song ever become more of a millstone than a milestone?
"Well, I don't think I ever blamed the song itself," he considers. "The millstone was the attitudes of the people I had to say no to all the time. They made me feel bad having to say no. I recently saw a film some Dutch guys made, which showed my manager being interviewed, and in the footage he's going, 'Frankly, Pete was a big disappointment to me. He would never do what he was told. I had it all set up for him and he kept saying he wanted to go home and play his music all the time. That's not the attitude of someone who's trying to make a few pounds.' Thirty years later and he's still angry!"
From the late '70s to the present day, Peter continued to travel the world, playing Europe, Africa and even recording with jazz-rockers Mezzo Forte in Iceland. In 1985 he recorded a New Age-y album, Asia Minor, with his brother Clive, played scores of concerts and festivals, and in the early '90s wrote and recorded The Green Alphabet, a 20-minute A-Z of environmental issues. However, he seems happiest with his 1997 release England's Lane, recorded with long-time friend and former Eden Kane collaborator Brian Hodgson.
"This latest album was done very sensibly, I think," he opines. "Everyone was interested in doing it. There's nothing I like better than a bunch of musicians who are better than me."
Amazingly, England's Lane contains a sequel to 'Where Do You Go To, My Lovely?' entitled 'The Last Of the Breed (Lovely 2)', a ditty that snapshots Marie-Claire 30 years later ("A major player in the world of haute couture/At the salons of Paris and Milano/Somehow you've delayed the aging process/Looking stunning in John Galliano").
"It was just a thought that I could do it," the songwriter concludes. "I had started to work on the idea, and once again, the old aristocracy came into it!" n
* England's Lane is out now on Round Tower Records.