Red Sky Over Wembley

"Night approaches slowly. With bells and waste-laden trains. We take a taxi cab and send it northward. And do a runner through well-remembered lanes. Well, we watched the red sky over Wembley. With pain in our hearts for all those we know ..." And this is how it all started. Sat listening to The Decorators' Red Sky Over Wembley, wondering why some things were lost and some things never found, and why some London songs were played to death and others never mentioned. Mick Bevan's band of doomed romantics were among the London-based outfits of the early 1980s that seemed destined to be dogged by ill-fortune. The Decorators had the songs, the beautiful guitars, the presence. They even had Dexys' Pete Saunders in their ranks. But it wasn't to be. The group's output was small, a few singles, a couple of mini-LPs, but it is a fine body of work, which has inspired words elsewhere.

Swiss Cottage Manoeuvres

"On a Christmas cake day one Friday in August in a bookshop in Charing Cross Road I first set eyes on a girl and at once I did know ..." Al Stewart has a song called Belsize Blues, which is available as a bonus track on the expanded edition of his best-selling work. Back in the days of teenage punk rage I considered Al Stewart's Year of The Cat to be the enemy, along with Elton John and Supertramp. It would be many, many years before the early works of Al Stewart won me over. His first LP, for example, contains a lovely little London song, Swiss Cottage Manoeuvres. It's a very Donovan-esque tale of the original bookshop casanova, who falls for a girl with eyes like a poet and hair like a rainbow, who just happens to be the daughter of a judge from St Albans. It's a bit of a 'will she, won't she, should I, shouldn't I?' tale, but I won't give away the full story. Let's just say the path of true love or lust is never smooth. The Swiss Cottage setting seems to fit perfectly with Al Stewart's early bedsit balladeer persona. The question is whether I should give Year Of The Cat another go?

Les Bicyclettes de Belsize

"Les bicyclettes de Belsize carry us side by side. And hand in hand we will ride over Belsize. Turn your magical eyes round and around, Lookin' at all we found. Carry us through the skies, les bicyclettes de Belsize ..." As a kid whenever I heard Engelbert singing Les Bicyclettes de Belsize it always sounded so glamorous and exotic, and even when I knew it was a version of a film theme I somehow imagined something shall we say big budget and French rather than an arty little romantic film about Belsize Park in north London. It is only recently that Les Bicyclettes de Belsize has appeared on DVD, hand in hand with The London Nobody Knows. Bit of an odd couple that. The Les Reed score has also recently reappeared twinned with another of his great soundtracks, Girl On A Motorcycle, which featured Cleo Laine singing the lovely Don't Ask Me. In the London of the mid-1980s that film was a bit of a by-word for beat boho-cool, with lots of images from it used in fanzines and the TVPs seemingly besotted with it. Not sure we were so familiar with the film of Les Bicyclettes de Belsize though, or the rest of Les Reed's score which includes gems like Episode Six singing about the Gentlemen of the Park. Incidentally pedants do like to point out that the film is a bit more 'Ampstead than Belsize Park. Tsk. The other big hit version of Les Bicyclettes was by the great Mireille Mathieu ...

Parliament Hill

"Nothing to do but watch the clouds go sailing by. Thinking of you. See you walking in my mind. All the doubts are left behind in the sunshine. If you come to Parliament Hill ..." sings Chris Simpson on Magna Carta's gorgeous Parliament Hill from the 1971 LP Songs From Wasties Orchard. It's a lovely slice of folk rock/soft pop all about finding escape and sanctuary, with the distinctive bass sound of Danny Thompson. It certainly bears comparison with the best US sounds in this area. I mean the folk rock area, rather than the south east corner of Hampstead Heath which is Parliament Hill Fields. It's a green part of London that's inspired two very different and well-known poems. There's John Betjemen's with his children carrying dandelions to Kentish Town, and there's the rather later Sylvia Plath one that also mentions Kentish Town. Is it just a phase we go through with Sylvia Plath? I don't think so. Some of her words still mean the world to me. This passage particularly from notes written in Cambridge, February 1956 still sums up life for me: “What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination. When the sky outside is merely pink, and the rooftops merely black: that photographic mind which paradoxically tells the truth, but the worthless truth, about the world. It is that synthesizing spirit, that ‘shaping’ force which prolifically sprouts and makes up its own worlds with more inventiveness than God which I desire. If I sit still and don’t do anything, the world goes on beating like a slack drum, without meaning. We must be moving, working, making dreams to run towards; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine: it is that kind of madness which is worst.”

The 'Ampstead Way

"It's so absolutely different and delightful when you dance The 'Ampstead Way. It's so far ahead of dreaming, why it's practically romance. The 'Ampstead Way ..." sings Beryl Davis with a bit of support from comedian Sid Field on the number The 'Ampstead Way from the 1946 big screen spectacular London Town, which it seems misjudged the mood of the nation with its technicolour brashness in that immediate post-WW2 period. Despite its Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke score the film wasn't a success, but this is a lovely little number. The film also featured Petula Clark, barely into her teens but already a showbiz veteran. Londoners and their dropped aitches eh? Tsk. 'Ampstead seems particularly prone to it. Hmm. Well, 'Ampstead 'Eath in the 19th century was THEE place for Londoners to go on a day out. The opening of the railway station there in 1860 made it more accessible, and brought crowds from other parts of London, particularly on Bank Holidays. A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 9: Hampstead, Paddington (1989) states: "Damage, particularly fires among the furze, and rowdiness were often a problem in the 1870s, when there might be 30,000 visitors at the August holiday and 50,000 on a fine Whit Monday. Violence was also a problem at the bonfires and processions held from before 1850 on Guy Fawkes day, until in 1880 a committee was set up to regulate them. Numbers reached 100,000 in the 1880s, although that estimate included trippers to Parliament Hill Fields, which were not yet part of the heath. The crowds were thickest in the south-east corner near the station, where in 1892 nine people died in a rush to escape from the rain. 'Appy' Ampstead became a nationally known phrase in the 1890s, when celebrated in a song by Albert Chevalier and in the cartoons of Phil May." The phrase 'Appy 'Ampstead was also used by the painter Arthur Rackham. His earliest sketches of life in Hampstead in the late 1880s reflect an eye for detail or what he himself declared a cockney ability to be 'very observant of small, new, strange things'. And 'ere's Gracie Fields singing 'Appy 'Ampstead showing what a great character player she was. Mind you, she was a 'Ampstead resident herself.

Hampstead Way

"Everything's okay now Hampstead Way ..." sings the very great Linda Lewis on the lovely Hampstead Way from her first LP Say No More. Linda is one of London's treasures (West Ham born and bred) and her '70s recordings are among the best things recorded on these shores, and on a worldwide scale up there with Laura Nyro and Minnie Ripperton. Her sound is such a mix of styles, and the LPs she made for Reprise were way way ahead of the pack. Hampstead Way refers to the house Linda shared with a variety of artistic types, including Robert Wyatt and Jeff Dexter, and where there were all sorts of soon-to-be superstar visitors hanging out. Linda's singing career started with a cover of Mary Love's You Turned My Bitter Into Sweet and she sang with Herbie Goins and the Nightimers before going on to do that wonderful solo stuff. "Cue the music and cue her ..."

Hampstead Incident

"Standing by the Everyman, digging the rigging on my sail. Rain fell to sounds of harpsichords, to the spell of fairy tale. The heath was hung in magic mists, enchanted dripping glades. I'll taste a taste until my mind drifts from this scene and fades in the night time." Donovan's Hampstead Incident is an addition to our London songs featuring the Everyman in Hampstead. I wonder if he was popping in to see a Godard feature in the grand tradition? Seeing as the Mellow Yellow LP appeared in what was it 1966 then perhaps he would have been going to see Pierrot Le Fou for the first time. Appropriately Jean-Paul Belmondo appears in another of Donovan's London songs of the time, Sunny South Kensington. Indeed the Mellow Yellow LP has quite a suite of London songs. There's Museum, of course. And Young Girl Blues. Zouzou did a fantastic French language version of that, which I really love. Many many years later Donovan and Zouzou would do a lovely little duet ...

Thunder over Kilburn

"But it's raining hard tonight here, up in Kilburn. The drunken men cannot find their way home. They stagger and then fall down in the gutter, singing sad laments of love gone wrong. Thank God! That it will soon be tomorrow. And I'm not lying, soaked out in the street. I'll call you when I wake up, baby. If I can just get off to sleep." Ah yes. Jock Scot's poem Thunder Over Kilburn which might seem to flirt with County Kilburn cliches but is in fact a touching tale of absence making the heart grow fonder. This performance appears on My Personal Culloden where Jock collaborates with the great Davy Henderson's Nectarine No. 9 on what was the reactivated Postcard's swan song. The set features another great London song in White Cars Passing By where Jock refers to going with his girl to the Everyman cinema in Hampstead to see Brigitte Bardot in Godard's Le Mepris and not wanting to leave. Ah nice. The old romantic eh? I remember going there to see Breathless for the first time, falling in love with Jean Seberg and spending weeks rubbing my thumb along my lower lip like Jean Paul Belmondo. And while we're talking about poets and Kilburn ...

Kilburn High Road

"From the tracks that hissed from engine fast approaching to the engines clipped clopped rumbling heavily by and I want you ..." sings John Head on Kilburn High Road, one of the loveliest of Shack's songs which is saying something. I particularly like this one because with a title like that it's important to avoid the obvious cliches, and the railway imagery is a delight whether it's the old North London lines or even the West Coast Main Line which would take them home. One of the more pleasant aspects of Shack's painful progress has been John's development as a songwriter in I suppose a Dennis Wilson/Dave Davies way. I doubt there is anyone more delighted by that than brother Michael who if I remember rightly was fiercely protective of little brother in the early Pale Fountains days simply referring to the new guitarist as John and not letting on to the world at large that they were related. But he knew all along, way before we did, if Byrds Turn To Stone is anything to go by: "Learnin' to play the guitar. One for you and one for me. Who'd be the first one to learn all the tricks by Mr Lee ..." The Brothers Head are truly jewels in the crown of England's Glory as an old Kilburn and the High Roads song might 'ave it. Speaking of which, remember this?

Kilburn Towers

"Little white jug, me and Kilburn Towers. As we sit on the hill, and we drink and we swill. Till the early hours and then I am everything. Little white jug and me and Kilburn Towers ..." Now there is a debate to be had about whether the Bee Gees' Kilburn Towers is a London song. But we're not going to entertain the idea that it's not one of ours. I mean, the hill could be Shoot Up Hill. The tower could even be the famous Gaumont State Cinema's. And if we need experts to speak in our defence we will wheel out Harvey Williams who wearing his Another Sunny Day hat set the Bee Gees on the road to fame and fortune by covering Kilburn Towers and helping us realise the Brothers' songwriting genius. And if there is anyone who objects too vigorously we'll resort to the Bee Gees' Trafalgar with its "I rolled into the smoke and there I lost my hope. I need someone to know me and to show me the square peg fits the hole. Why haven't I been told? I need someone to know me and to show me. Trafalgar, Trafalgar, Trafalgar, please don't let me down ..." The very idea ...