05/03/2011

European Lover


Britain and Europe have always had an uneasy relationship. There was a time when the British young man of means would undertake the Grand Tour of Europe as a rite of passage: from London to Dover and thence to Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Rome, Venice, Athens, Sicily, Vienna. It was meant to round out the education and develop the character, though was just as likely to mean gambling, drinking and dalliances. It has modern echoes, I suppose , not just in the word ‘tourist’ but in the stag weekends in Prague or Tallinn or the post - school exam trips, without parents, to Tenerife or Kos. A view of Europe as a strange mixture of ‘culture’ and hedonism

At the time pop music was starting to emerge, Europe was viewed by many British with a similar confusion: impossibly sophisticated - especially places like Paris and Rome- but also somewhere to regard with great suspicion. On one hand, songs like April in Paris or Arriverderci Roma cast the romantic appeal of an old colourful travel poster in a railway waiting room, especially to people whose experience of foreign travel, if any, might be a day trip to Calais or Ostend. Petula Clark had her first UK Number One in 1961 with her version of Sailor, a roll-call of seemingly faraway places in Europe as well as the other side of the world - Capri, Amsterdam, Honolulu, Siam. A couple of years later The Bachelors scored their own similar hit with an old Bing Crosby tune, Faraway Places(With Strange Sounding Names) - which included Spain and, yes again, Siam.

At the same time, things European seemed, to many British at that time, something to be rather wary of and often quite remote. Olive oil was found in small bottles in chemists, to put in your ears. Funny foreign dishes like coq au vin or beef bourguignon were towards the exotic end of the culinary spectrum and pronounced with a very exaggerated French accent to herald their arrival. The cook and food writer, Nigel Slater, described in his book Toast - set in the mid-1960’s – the dismay caused in his household when his father daringly tried out spaghetti bolognaise for the first time:

Aunt Fanny is looking down at her lap. ‘Do I have to have some?’ I think she is going to cry...We all sit there staring at our tumbling piles of pasta on our glass pyrex plates. ‘Oh Kathleen, I don’t think I can’ sobs Aunt Fanny, who then picks up a long sticky strand with her fingers and pops it into her mouth from which it hangs all the way down to her lap. ‘No, wait for the sauce, Fanny’ Mother sighs, and then quite out of character, ’Come on, Daddy, hurry up’. Dad spoons the sauce, a slurry of reddy-brown mince that smells foreign, over the knots and twirls of pasta. Suddenly it all seems so grown-up, so sophisticated

I can remember -many years after the time Toast was set-going into a bakery shop in Lancaster and hearing someone, (probably a tourist), asking to buy some croissants. ‘We don’t sell them’ was the reply from the girl serving. ‘ I can see them there’, said the customer, pointing at the window. ‘Oh, you mean curly-wurlies’ came the surprised answer.

Times changed, of course, and horizons widened, in music as in food and culture.. As seen in the column on Paris Bells, by the mid-sixties artists like Francoise Hardy were getting in the UK charts and The Beatles could come out with some lines of French in Michelle. A few more years on and ‘European’ could even seem old hat and more bland than sophisticated - Eurovision, Euro-pop, Europe banging out The Final Countdown. Exotic travel no longer meant Barcelona or Rome but Thailand (same place as Siam but doesn’t rhyme as well),or Goa or the Maldives.

A trip round the sites and sights of Europe, however, was still a popular travel option, though the whirlwind coach tour –as in the 1969 film If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium –seemed more an American than British experience. A musical voyage round Europe’s cities also surfaced from time to time. In Dusseldorf, Regina Spektor threw in Frankfurt, Paris, Berlin, Prague, Amsterdam, Montpellier, Barcelona, Brussels, Marseilles, Corsica, London as well as Dusseldorf. In Eurotrash Girl, Cracker had a similar list, with Athens, Zurich and Turin as new additions. And in the song here from 2007, European Lover, Sheffield indie band Little Man Tate manage Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Sicily and Crete – and, being from a northern perspective , London too. The itinerary described is not dissimilar to the Grand Tour of old, though Crete is perhaps in there more for the night clubs of Malia now rather than the Knossos Palace.

In this case, however, the song’s narrator doesn’t visit these places himself but instead throws their names with a mixture of wistfulness and bitterness at his former lover, away travelling and apparently getting married to someone else on the way. There is also something touchingly old-fashioned about it, as though the narrator was speaking from the 1950’s. In fact, the phrase ‘Gay Paree’ may be used ironically but it sounds like a London bank clerk in the 1890’s. ‘Going to Gay Paree, eh? It’s that Toulouse Lautrec and can-can girls over there’. (In the 1976 release Georgina Bailey by Noosha Fox , about a teenage girl’s crush on her uncle Jean Paul, ‘Gay Paree’ is used in a knowingly modern sense –and it is nice to see, in the video below, that they didn’t stereotype the French back then).

In some ways, with the breaking up of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia into their different parts Europe can seem more different than perhaps 40 years ago. When a travel guide on a country called Molvania came out in 2004, it wasn’t immediately obvious that it was a spoof: Slovenia, Slovakia, Moldova - why not Molvania? What probably stays true is that if one has been to any of the places in the song the memories of them - for Crete or Barcelona - will be that for that place. If one hasn’t – like Sicily – the name itself remains the adventure still.

35 comments:

  1. Geoff, thanks for the amazing column! I'm pretty sure I believed that Molvania existed until now though:)

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  2. Wow, this is a great column - so much to respond about, but first things first, WHO IS THAT VERY STRANGE MAN who introduces Noosha Fox? The one with long hair in a peace sweater, who insists on getting a kiss from the singer? This is very strange, and seems a very British kind of presenter to me......:)

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  3. I loved this column. I have to say though, it's a little strange that in the photo you used, all the flights to Europe are leaving from Israel:) I'm not sure if there was a hidden point here..... If I didn't know better (because I've read your column each week), I'd think there was something mildly Zionist going on here!:)

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  4. I hadnt noticed that! No significance-but I will find another one.
    The DJ in the Noosha Fox clip is Jimmy Savile- constantly on the TV from mid-60's onwards. Louis Theroux did a programme about him, of which this is a clip
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84u9WnylT60&feature=relmfu

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  5. Wow, he is really something! Apparently he was named by a magazine one of the "Top 40 most eccentric TV presenters of all time" - which isn't hard to believe. I am practicing saying "How's about that, then?" "Now then, now then, now then," "Goodness gracious" and "as it 'appens" - apparently his catchphrases.........:)

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  6. Only Top 40! Dont forget you need a Yorkshire accent!

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  7. I love that this song has an old school Britpop feel to it - it reminds me of the era of Oasis and Blur!

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  8. Interesting choice of a song to represent your column about Europe! This has an actual Eurovision vibe to it, I think - bouncy, poppy, catchy, pleasant power pop!

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  9. This band reminds me a little of the The Kinks actually (the guitar gives them that slightly hard sound that lets the music have a punk feel as well as pop). Had never heard of them but will check out the album that has this single. Thanks Geoff!

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  10. The band also has a song called "This Must Be Paris" that repeats some of the same ideas as in "European Lover".......

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  11. Cheers mate for the column - I was the drummer for Little Man Tate. I drum now for Jon Windle, who was singer and now sings solo since the band broke up. No songs about places on his album but here's the link anyway! - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Step-Out-Man-Jon-Windle/dp/B00438L89C

    Ta!

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  12. Geoff, did you know that your column has a really interesting precedent in a 1960s trend of releasing albums of songs about places? I just came across Zenith Presents - Around the World from 1963, which is a "Special Product" released by Columbia - so it just has Columbia record artists - Ray Conniff with three songs about Europe, Michel Legrand on Paris, Andre Kostelanetz globe trots between India, Australia and Copenhagen, The Harmonicats take us to Mexico and Cuba. Here is the album! - http://cgi.ebay.com/ZENITH-PRESENTS-AROUND-WORLD-COLUMBIA-RECORDS-CSP14-/310288472283

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  13. For another song about Europe to add to the list, there is Chilly Gonzales's ‘I Am Europe’ which has a great monologue full of metaphors - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDSUrqJPCg -

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  14. There is also “I am European (The Festival Hymn)” from 2009 (the voices in the sung parts belong to several Berlin based international artists from Bulgaria, Poland, Germany and the UK). Here is the song - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sora5Nq17G8 - and here are the lyrics! -

    Greek dance, Tour de France, Appenzeller, football fans,
    Colossus of Rhodes and magic dragon Amsterdam,
    Swiss watches, beer bar, Döner Kebab, sauna,
    Flamenco, help for Africa, Yves Saint Laurent the mega star,
    Croatian islands, Mozart, Spring of Prague, German cars,
    BB lips, Pommes Frites, Norwegian fjord, and Cold Play hits,
    Scottish kilt, oil rigs, the Irish and Saint Patrick’s,
    French wine, Spanish wine, Italian wine, Neuschwanstein…

    I am European – and I love it to be
    I am European – it’s my destiny
    I am European – that’s my place to be
    I am European – you’re my family
    I am European – and I love it to be

    Black Sea, Baltic Sea, everywhere democracy,
    Philosophers, Socrates, Seneca, and Champions League,
    MP3, ecology, in our hearts Versace!
    Beethoven, Pizza, the English on Ibiza,
    French baguette, Basque beret, Romeo & Juliet,
    Shopska Salata, Kopernikus, Smetana,
    Fish & Chips, Kafka, Oktoberfest laughter,
    The Swedish and Midsummer night, the dream of Shakespeare set it right…

    Many roots, many hearts
    Many souls, many stars
    Many dreams, many me’s,
    We’re all Europeans! // One Europe, our destiny!

    I am European – and I love it to be
    I am European – it’s my destiny
    I am European – that’s my place to be
    I am European – you’re my family
    I am European – and I love it to be

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  15. And there is Muse's song about Europe called "United States Of Eurasia" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ok0expLH1o

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  16. Thanks for these links -I hadnt heard the Festival Hymn before

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  17. I love the idea that these songs about Europe are like the Grand Tour of old - offered to us ordinary folk in lieu of the coming-of-age travel!

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  18. I think the Grand Tour of Europe was an American practice too - the American young man of means seemed to join the British young man of means on this tour (according to Henry James at least!). Ah, the good old days of gambling, drinking and dallying one's way from Paris to Athens!

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  19. I like the sound of that book Toast - I'm going to get hold of it to read! Thank you Geoff.

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  20. That old vision of the British of Europe is exactly what most Americans think today of Europe: "impossibly sophisticated - especially places like Paris and Rome- but also somewhere to regard with great suspicion":) Unfortunately!

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  21. I had to google what Geoff means by a "stag weekend" - it's a "bachelor party" for all you Yanks who read this blog:)

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  22. How interesting that British kids seem to do these post-exam trips to have raves in Tenerife and Kos; I don't think there is a U.S. equivalent for this (in college, the students head to Mexico on Spring Break in March, but I don't think there is the same thing - some students have a "senior trip" in their last semester of high school, after exams, but this is usually organized by the school as a cultural event, not the same hedonistic trip of the British students!).

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  23. You're very right that the whirlwind coach tour is an American idea - 12 cities in 6 days, that kind of thing!

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  24. Ah, Siam! Not sure where this is, but it sure is popular in British pop songs!

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  25. I love Petula Clark. I remember her record Sailor, along with Ann Shelton's Lay Down Your Arms, being played time and again on Forces Favourites on a Sunday afternoon to cheer us up when we were serving abroad.

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  26. I tried to find the Bachelor's song "Faraway Places" online but all the Youtube versions weren't playable in the U.S. So here is another version for anyone interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGtRiS5MPhM

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  27. I remember the film "If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium!" The scene at the Normandy Invasion monument caused hysteria when I saw it. Most provincial Americans still don't know what a bidet is, or even how to use it. Or the scene where the single American unknowingly has an arranged marriage possibility with a large girl, so he avoids her by jumping in theVenice canals all the while being pursued by a 60's goddess. Also, I just did some researching, and according to several sites, Donovan wrote the theme song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bR1YKcO3Qg. And then I think Donovan himself pops up in that film, playing the guitar in a youth hostel....... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M4D2B18cz8

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  28. I am from Claughton, Lancashire, and our local bakery STILL sells "curly-wurlies" that are really croissants, Geoff:) Come and have some if you're ever in the area!

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  29. It's fascinating - I bet you could chart the changing sense of countries belonging to Europe by which ones get listed in songs about Europe (like Turin being added in 2007).......

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  30. I WANT TO MEET THE LONDON BANK CLERK WHO SAYS THINGS LIKE: "London bank clerk in the 1890’s. ‘Going to Gay Paree, eh? It’s that Toulouse Lautrec and can-can girls over there’. Genius!

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  31. I really like how the British youth all stand around looking slightly gormless in the background of this performance by Noosha Fox. I remember that Top of the Pops thing of people standing around. Also, what's with the schoolgirl outfit? Very hilarious - it's this kind of thing that Youtube was invented for!

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  32. I sort of like the Noosha Fox song.... She sings with such a posh accent though! And I think you're being sarcastic about them not stereyping the French back in 1976:) That Jean-Paul is a naughty wine-drinking French uncle!

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  33. I think it's incredibly hard to write a song about Europe actually - much harder than writing a song about a particular European city..... It's just so different for everyone, the impressions we have. I'm in the U.S. and I just surveyed my family - one person heard "Europe" and thought of WW2 (bombed out buildings in East Germany), another thought "castles and churches," another thought "rave parties in Berlin." Writing anything that summons any sort of clear image is really hard I think. So kudos to this band for recreating the Grand Tour!

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  34. I think Noosha Fox was dressing up as Georgina Bailey. I am not sure about being posh -I think she was Australian!

    I used to drive through Claughton regularly! I would love to come and buy some curly-wurlies again.

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