1965, 'Downtown' made Petula Clark the first UK female singer to have a No.1 on the US singles chart since Vera Lynn in 1952. The song was also a No.2 hit in the UK. Recorded in three takes (with the second take ultimately chosen as the completed track), session players in the studio recording included Jimmy Page.
etula Clark does not like to look back. She does not celebrate birthdays – hates nostalgia. So spending several hours in a studio, listening to her early records – as she was recently forced to do, for a compilation of songs from her seven-decade career – was “kind of torture”, she says. She affects a groan, eyes rolling beneath their spidery lashes. (excerpt from TheGuardian)
It was in 1964 that she became famous worldwide, with Downtown, the smash hit that beat the Beatles to a Grammy and led her to be anointed “the First Lady of the British Invasion”
Her career decisions were handled by other people; Clark says it is “probably true” that she could have benefited from being more involved. Performing in Montreal in 1969, she was heckled for singing in English and French – she had not been advised that a separatist movement was under way. Distraught, Clark sought advice from John Lennon, who was in Montreal for a bed-in with Yoko Ono. She recalls turning up at the door of their hotel suite, snivelling, in the middle of a downpour.
Lennon welcomed her warmly. “They were both still in their nighties. I sat there, dripping water all over their bed, and told them the story. He said: ‘Oh, fuck ’em.’ I said: ‘Thank you, John.’” Lennon was happy to play therapist, she says. “He was so funny and very philosophical. We had a chat about the situation. Did it really matter? ‘This too shall pass.’ That sort of stuff. Then he said: ‘I tell you what – you need a drink’. Which was very true.”31
One of Clark’s great friends was Karen Carpenter, who she met in Los Angeles at the 1969 premiere of Goodbye, Mr Chips, in which Clark starred alongside Peter O’Toole. The Carpenters, then unsigned, were performing at the afterparty. Impressed, Clark introduced herself and pointed them out to Herb Alpert, who went on to sign them to A&M. She did not run into Karen often, but “we had that connection, so that every time we did see each other, we were close”.
When Clark and Carpenter – then the two “top girls” of the world of pop – met Elvis Presley in his dressing room after a show, he angled for a threesome, she says. “He was raring to go. Karen was lovely, but she was kind of innocent. I felt sort of responsible for her, so I got her out of there. Then I looked round, and Elvis was at the door, and he looked at me, like: ‘I’m going to get you one day.’” But he never did, she tells my voice recorder directly. “Some people think he did. I think he put out the rumour that he did. But he didn’t.”
