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50 best London songs
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By Time Out editors
Posted: Mon Sep 25 2006 
1 Ralph McTell 1 Streets Of London Ralph McTell [download]
Post-war poverty, drugs, love and redemption – the most recorded London song of all time isn’t what you think it is
‘I grew up in post-war Croydon. I was quite a sensitive little boy and poverty was all around us, but because it was so common you didn’t notice unless somebody got something that you didn’t get, like pennies to spend or a new bike. There was no one that I knew that even had a car. So I was never aware of that poverty, until you saw someone who was worse off than you. I used to go to Saturday morning pictures at the end of Surrey Street, which was a busy bustling market, and collect boxes for firewood while they were clearing away the stalls. But late at night there was this old chap who used to wander up, kicking up the papers and picking up the rubbish from the market, just the odd bit of stuff that had been dumped, and it was an image that I always remembered. Feature continuesAdvertisement
‘When I was a busker in Paris in 1965, when we were coming home from our little jaunts in the Latin Quarter, there were a lot of very impoverished people – they call them clochards – sat over the hot-air gratings in the Metro, and I formed this idea of writing a song about those people. The time was right for that sort of song because of the protest movement and that social awareness that was apparent in all songs. So I started writing “The Streets Of Paris”. But I thought: Wait a minute, these images are everywhere. So I wrote it as “Streets Of London”, to a tune that I’d already composed.
‘After I got back from Paris, I offered it to a very good friend, a singer called Derek Brimstone. I scrawled it out on the proverbial napkin, in a pub somewhere in Fulham, and after a few months, he rang me up and said “ ’Ere, Ralph, you gotta do that song. It’s going down a storm!”
‘I thought it wasn’t quite complete, so I wrote a fourth verse and started doing it and Derek was right. The reaction to it was absolutely sensational. But I had to be persuaded to record it by my producer Gus Dudgeon. He begged me to put it on my second album, and I didn’t want to. But after the very last track for that was recorded, he said “Just do one pass for me, Ralph.” The band went to the pub and I sat there and did one pass on it. There was a cover version within four days of its release and it went round the world in a week [at one point the single was selling 90,000 copies a day].
There are now 212 or 214 cover versions – it’s been covered by everyone from Roger Whittaker to Sinéad O’Connor to the Sex Pistols. It’s sung in schools, and it’s used in English lessons all over Europe, even though it’s bad grammatically! A friend was hitch-hiking around the Himalayas ten years ago, and they asked him to sing them a song, and in return they sang him a song in English that they’d learnt from another hitch-hiker – it was “Streets Of London”. I don’t know how or why it happened, but there you go.
‘I have to say that the real important thing for me about that song, and in that song, is that I had a friend I was busking with in Paris and he was fascinated by drugs. He drifted into heroin and became seriously addicted and in a very poor state rather rapidly. In one of his half-hearted attempts to come off, we were talking and I was really trying to lay it on him. I said to him, “Why d’you fuckin’ do this, man? You’re killing everybody who loves you, you’re driving us all up the wall.” And he said, “Well, why should I change?”
In the end, this feeling of alienation, that he couldn’t be approached, was the key to the song. It wouldn’t have been written if it was just about homeless people, it was written about a mate of mine. So that “How can you tell me you’re lonely?” was the important thing, and these verses were the examples to him. When you see somebody worse off than you are you feel compassion, and you feel ashamed for feeling whatever you might feel, and that was the whole point. But the strangest thing of all about that intentioned message to a disconsolate, alienated fucked-up pal was that everyone thought it was a song about homelessness, which is a very strange twist.
‘I’ve always written slightly obliquely like that. But in ‘Streets Of London’, it’s so graphic, the images of the four characters in the song, starting off with the bloke in the market, then the old lady, then the lonely man in an all-night café and then the forgotten hero. There are four London characters there, but the central thing is the alienated individual who hasn’t realised, or needs to have it explained, that there are people much more alienated with no chance of being rehabilitated.
‘I was only 22 or something when I wrote it. In the end I wrote my friend another song, after he died, called “Song For Martin”. It’s about people who have that simple do-gooder idea, that you can help an addict. You can’t really. If he doesn’t want to be right, you won’t be able to help him. But that wasn’t for another… oh, 15 years or so.’
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83 comments
Ummm...what about Warren Zevon's "Werewolves Of London"!!!
Disappointed no place for "Mornington Crescent" by Belle and Sebastian
Disappointed no place for "Mornington Crescent" by Bell and Sebastian
Even though they're from Australia, the Waifs' "London Still" is one of my favourite London songs of all time!
Oh yes indeed. Though I agree with the comments by the previous posters to some extent, I have to declare that the obvious choice would be 'London Bridge' by Fergie. A nice looking lady, and judging by the way she often does wee-wee in her pants when on stage, she is probably quite dirty in bed. No, not that sort of dirty.
It has to be 'Endoplasmic reticulum' by The Housemartins. No band more perfectly embody the spirit of London than these chaps. Did I say London? I meant Hull.
'Birmingham Jail' by a fat bloke in some film I saw ages ago. Maybe it had Gene Wilder in it dressed as a chicken or something. Possibly Richard Prior too, on a rodeo donkey. The song perfectly encapsulates the spirit of London, except for the fact that it is about Birmingham. But you can't have it all. Come to think of it, the song is probably talking (singing) about Birmingham Alabama. In America. So it is probably spelt 'Gaol' too. And probably goes on about Fawcetts, trunks, and fanny-packs.
"Saturday Night Beneath the Plastic Palm Trees" was in my collection before coming to live in London in the 1980s. I think this captures a side of London that you only get to understand if you live here - what goes on in the deep dark suburbs, especially on lost weekend nights. I just googled the title to remind me of the lyrics and found that Parliament have already debated London anthems in 2004! Check out http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmhan srd/vo040421/debtext/40421-31.htm - Karen Buck MP reminds us that Time Out did something similar in 2004. "London Calling" got props then but Ralph McTell was conspicuous by its absence.
Has London's calling really been left off this list? That's mad, wherever you go in the world there are Brit/London obsessed clubs playing that as their anthem. Agree with below post about The Tacticians too, was a top song but very low key release so suppose the so called music experts haven't heard of it, infact, everytime I hear Lily Allen's LDN "sun is in the sky.." I can't help wondering if she based it on "London's alright".
London Calling surely! Voted by rolling stone mag as the greatest record of the 80s - surely thats a better song than any of the others...its pure London!
Despite their Woking routes, the Jam's fascination with London was apparent in all of their songs, and Strange Town sums up this place.
"I bought an A to Z guide book
Trying to find the clubs and YMCAs
When you ask in a strange town
They say don't know, don't care
And I've got to go, mate!!"
Guns of Brixton surely, plus anything by Madness. Suggs is Mr London surely? One Better Day indeed - they document London better than anyone since Ray Davies stopped.
"London's alright" by The Tacticians. One of the best singles of the last 12 months and by far the coolest song about in London in ages. Full of charm and wit !!!
Tom McRae - 'Draw Down the Stars'. London as the mistress you can't help returning to. It perfectly captures that melancholy, addictive beauty the city has. And it has some great lines - "in a city that kills by constriction / Throw your streets around me and squeeze", "This flourescent night will divide us / And dissolve to a flickering screen". I know it's an album track but it is just exquisite and HAS to appear in the top 50!
London by The smiths...do you think yuo've made the right decision this time?Yes yes..that sums it up.