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.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Peter Sarstedt – "Blagged" (1968)

And as I walked outside and closed the door

I wondered if I'd won or lost

Peter Sarstedt was kind of a big deal in the world of pop music in the sixties.  His 1969 single, “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely),” was a #1 hit in the UK and won an Ivor Novello Award (which is the British equivalent of a Grammy).

“Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)” tells the story of a poor girls from the mean streets of Naples who grows up to become an international jet setter.  (Some believed that the song was inspired by Sophia Loren, who grew up in poverty in Naples.  But in 2009, Sarstedt revealed that the song was really about his first wife, Anita Atke, a Danish dentist.)

The song’s lyrics drop the names of Marlene Dietrich, Picasso, the Aga Khan, and the Rolling Stones, and also make reference to fashionable resorts (St. Moritz and Juan-les-Pins) and Parisian landmarks (Boulevard Saint-Michel and the Sorbonne):

I've seen all your qualifications

You got from the Sorbonne

And the painting you stole from Picasso . . .

When you go on your summer vacation

You go to Juan-les-Pins

With your carefully designed topless swimsuit . . .

And when the snow falls you're found in St. Moritz

With the others of the jet set

And you sip your Napoleon brandy

But you never get your lips wet

Sarstedt described “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)” as a “romantic novel in song.”  I would describe it as a “so-full-of-sh*t-that-its-eyes-are-brown song.”   

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I would never have heard of Peter Sarstedt if Steven Lorber hadn’t played a couple of his records on his “Mystic Eyes” radio show on WHFS in 1980.

Today’s featured song was the B-side to “I Am a Cathedral,” the Sarstedt single that preceded “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)” and failed to chart.

“Blagged” is based on a fictional (presumably) conversation between a man and a woman who have just had sex.

Peter Sarstedt

The female member of the couple is clearly suffering from a bad case of post-coital tristesse – also known as “post-sex blues.”  When her partner nonchalantly asks her for a post-coital cigarette, her response is less than gracious: “You got what you came for,” she says.  “Now leave the way you came!”

The male shrugs off her snarkiness, replying thusly:

“I am but a man,” I said

“I do what I can,” I said

Which is a truthful answer, but a bit lame.

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The man should have put on his pants and skedaddled at that point, but he can’t resist asking her a hypothetical question before he exits:

What if I said that I love you?

Would all your morals then be pacified?

The act of love be then more true?

His lover doesn’t fall for that, and comes back with a question of her own:

“Oh yes, you are smart,” she said,

“But where is your heart?” she said

That shuts the dude up, and he leaves without another word.

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But once our wannabe Casanova has departed, he has a moment of doubt:

And as I walked outside and closed the door

I wondered if I'd won or lost

And if the status quo was still intact

And was it worth the time it cost?

Who’s kidding who here?  I don’t believe for a minute that he really thought those thoughts as he left his lady fair’s boudoir.  After all, he got what he came for – right?

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I’ll tell you more about Peter Sarstedt and his talented brothers in the next 2 or 3 lines.

Click here to listen to “Blagged.”

And click on the link below to order the song from Amazon: