“Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?” is one of those love-it-or-hate-it songs. John Peel, the ultimate arbiter of good taste in British popular music for four decades, hated it, allegedly. I’ve always rather liked it. Show Yes, of course, it’s very much a song of its time in the late 1960s, and I suspect you’d never be able to make a song like it today. But for me, that’s all part of what… Fake accents and false laughs are two things I hate in songs, and Peter Sarstedt’s 1969 number one hit Where Do you Go To (My Lovely), which contains both and makes it doubley worse for me, yet seems to appeal to so many people and made him a star in the sixties when it went to number one in 14 different countries and, additionally, earned him an Ivor Novello Award. Like his fellow chart toppers, Cliff Richard and Engelbert Humperdinck, in that decade, Peter was born in India where his parents were civil servants, but when his father died in 1954 the family moved to the UK and Peter learned to play bass guitar. His older brother Richard whilst at boarding school was inspired to move into music after hearing Bill Haley & His Comets’ (We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock and then decided to form his own skiffle group called the Fabulous 5. A few months later he invited Peter to join them on bass. In 1960, Richard went solo, changed his name to Eden Kane and had a UK number one the following year with Well I Ask You. In 1965 Eden emigrated to Australia and Peter was without a job, so he went to Copenhagen and started writing songs. He says, “The message I got from Bob Dylan was to be as unlike him as possible. A Dylan imitator is nothing like Bob Dylan because he would never imitate.”In so doing, Sarstedt came up with a highly original debut single, I Am a Cathedral. This cryptic song was arranged by Ian Green and produced by Ray Singer, who worked on his two 1969 albums, Peter Sarstedt and As Though It Were a Movie. His next song, the accordion-based Where Do You Go To (My Lovely) has been parodied on different occasions by Roger McGough, John Otway and the Scottish-born stand-up comedian, Craig Ferguson. Peter often performs on oldies tours and he still performs on his own or with his brother, Clive, around Europe. “I reckon that I can pull in 250 people wherever I’m booked,” he says, “and that isn’t bad.” and because he generally does, he has the last ha-ha-ha-ha! "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?" is a 1969 song by Peter Sarstedt. It was a #1 hit in the UK charts for six weeks in 1969 and was awarded the 1969 Ivor Novello Award, together with David Bowie's "Space Oddity". In the United States, the record only reached #61 on the Cash Box Top 100 Singles and #70 on the Billboard Hot 100 that May. The song is about a fictional girl named Marie-Claire who grows up to become a member of the Jet Set, and lives in Paris. The lyrics describe her from the perspective of a childhood friend; it is left unclear whether they have remained close. The rhetorical question of the title suggests that her glamorous lifestyle may not have brought Marie-Claire happiness or contentment. Sarstedt himself was not French, but the song may have benefited from the contemporary awareness in Britain of such singers as Serge Gainsbourg and Jacques Brel. The lyrics contain a large number of contemporary and other references: * Marlene Dietrich: husky-voiced German actress and singer It is often suspected that the name Marie-Claire is inspired by the originally French Marie Claire magazine, a women's fashion weekly first published in 1937. One theory says that this song is about the Italian star Sophia Loren, who was abandoned by her father and had a poverty stricken life in Naples. Another theory has the song being inspired by singer and actress Nina van Pallandt. In reality, Peter Sarstedt wrote the song about a girl he fell madly in love with in Vienna in 1965. She died tragically in a hotel fire. The song was written in Copenhagen. (Confirmation of this fact can be found on the CD cover of “The Best of Peter Sarstedt”, EMI, nr. 8297622, Australian CD). The song has been covered by Right Said Fred, and their version has charted in Germany in 2006 (it is missing the final crucial verse where Marie Claire's origins are revealed). Finnish rock musician Hector (Heikki Harma) has recorded the song under name "Kuningatar" (The Queen) with Finnish lyrics, with references in the supermodel business, implying Marie-Claire is a supermodel risen from rags to riches. It was a favourite song of Nikki Sudden, and his friend Dave Kusworth (of The Jacobites) has recorded it for an album to be released in 2007 — his version appears on Reclaim Bedlam, a free Mad pride CD put out with the 100th issue of Southwark Mind News in April 2007. The song was also covered by Nashville Recording Artist Sandra McCracken on her 2004 release, Best Laid Plans. The most recent cover of this song was done by an artist known as The Great Whackadoo. This version combines the song's folksy style with elements of punk and metal. In 1997 Sarstedt recorded a sequel, "The Last of the Breed (Lovely 2)" on his CD "England's Lane" . This picks up the story of Marie Claire twenty years on, living now in London. It namechecks more people and places, including Belgravia, Ballets Russes, Cape Town, Claridge's, Gstaad, John Galliano, Harrods, Jerusalem, Long Island, Milan, Rudolf Nureyev, Palm Beach, Rio de Janeiro, and Isabella Rossellini. In 2007, the song was prominently used in Wes Anderson's short film Hotel Chevalier. The film is a prologue to his movie The Darjeeling Limited, in which the song also appears. Who did Peter Sarstedt write Where do you go to my lovely about?Among the personalities this song references is Zizi Jeanmarie, who was a French ballerina who in the 1950s was reckoned to be the best dancer of her generation. It also refers to Aga Khan, a wealthy Islamic leader who married the English fashion model Sarah Croker-Poole in 1969.
Is Peter Sarstedt still alive?8 January 2017Peter Sarstedt / Date of deathnull
Who wrote Where Do You Go To My Lovely?Peter SarstedtWhere Do You Go to My Lovely / Lyricistnull
Was Peter Sarstedt married?Anita Atke
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Whats the story behind Where Do You Go To My Lovely?
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