Peter Sarstedt – "Take Off Your Clothes" (1969)

My daddy is a priest, you know

And I am not a beast, you know

Many years ago, my daughters applied for admission to a local Catholic girls’ high school.

The application form asked the applicant to explain briefly why she wanted to attend a Catholic high school instead of a public high school.  One of my daughters responded to that question by stating that that religion had always been an important part of her upbringing – in part because her grandfather (my father-in-law) was a priest.

I’ve offered wondered what the sisters who ran that school thought of that answer.  (It’s true that my father-in-law was a priest, but he was an Episcopal priest – and unlike Catholic priests, he was not expected to be celibate.)

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The singer of today’s featured song has one thing on his mind, and he uses every trick in the book to persuade the young lady he is addressing to give it to him.

He’s a sneaky bast*rd, and he’s patient – rather than put off the object of his desire by coming right out and asking her to go to bed with him, he takes baby steps.

First, he asks her to take off her clothes, claiming that all he wants to do is look:

Take off your clothes

Let me see what it is that your hiding . . .

I just want to look

I just want to look

As a demonstration of his bona fides, he offers to take off his clothes as well:

So take off your clothes

And stand naked as nature intended

And I’ll take off mine

Just to show you that I’m in good faith

Once he’s got her nekkid as a jaybird, he invites her to lie on his bed with him – just to have a little chat:

Now you can see

That it isn’t as bad as all that

So lie on the bed

And I’ll talk of my unhappy childhood

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I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, “Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile”?  The singer of this song is a textbook example of what that old saying was talking about:

It will not hurt you

I promise you that, cross my heart

The first time is always the best

You can ask anybody

At long last, his siege is successful and he breaches the castle wall.  But it seems that he’s bitten off more than he can chew:

How does it feel

Now that you are no longer a maiden?

What do you mean? You want more?

And you want it right now?  (Oh, my God!)

Our modern-day Casanova has had enough:

I just want to sleep

Yes, I just want to sleep

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If you’ve been waiting to buy irony until it goes on sale, wait no more – the irony in “Take Off Your Clothes” is as cheap as any irony you’ll ever find.

“Take Off Your Clothes” is sort of a mirror-image of “Blagged,” the Peter Sarstedt song that was featured in the previous 2 or 3 lines.  The two songs contrast sharply when it comes to tone, but the premise – that men want only one thing from women, and that women surrender that one thing at their peril – was trite 50 years when those songs were recorded, and it’s even triter today.

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Peter Sarstedt – who was born in India to two British civil servants in 1941, but moved to London in 1954 – wasn’t the only pop star in his family.

Peter’s older brother Richard, who recorded under the name “Eden Kane,” had five top ten singles in the UK in the early sixties, including “Boys Cry,” which I heard more than once on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio show.  (I wonder if Steven knows that Peter Sarstedt and Eden Kane were brothers.)

His younger brother Clive recorded several albums and had a #3 hit with a cover of the Hoagy Carmichael song, “My Resistance Is Low.”  (Clive released that song as Robin Sarstedt – Robin being his middle name.)

Click here to listen to “Take Off Your Clothes.”

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