Petula Clark: “As soon as I walk on stage to sing, I feel free”

Petula Clark arrives in the Netherlands, 1960

She has danced with Fred Astaire, sung with Frank Sinatra and joined John Lennon and Yoko Ono in bed. She has sold over 70 million records and was the United Kingdom’s first female to win a Grammy with hits such as ‘Downtown’ and ‘Don’t Sleep in the Subway Darling’. She is, of course, PETULA CLARK!

Petula’s meeting with John Lennon and Yoko Ono took place in Montreal at the city’s Queen Elizabeth Hotel where they spent a week in bed as a peace protest against the Vietnam War. It was pouring with rain, she added, and she walked into the hotel after her show, looking like a drowned rat. John put his arms around her and asked, “What’s the matter?” Petula explained that as she had so many hits in French and English, Tony Hatch, the composer came to her flat in Paris and asked her to do a rendering of the hit ‘Downtown’. She continued, “Suddenly our lives changed.” It was 1964, and the song was a huge success on both sides of the Atlantic especially in the States where it went to Number One. Petula decided to do a bilingual concert in Montreal but when she sang in French, the English were not happy and vice-versa.

Petula Clark has a complicated love life. She has been married to Claude Wolff, the father of her three grown-up children, for 55 years but no longer lives with him. Instead, she shares her life with a boyfriend (she discreetly refuses to say who), who she fell in love with a few years ago. Being in love, she says, is that crazy, fantastic, warm feeling.

Petula is a shy person who, for all her fame, is not in the least bit starry eyed. “Singing is a way of expressing myself”, she says, adding, “It is wonderful. It is sensual. It is powerful. I think singing is who I am. It is very deep inside me. There is a huge sense of freedom attached to it. As soon as I walk on stage to sing, I feel free.”

A child star at the age of nine, Petula had been trying to break free since adolescence. She was managed initially by her over bearing father, Leslie. Petula’s film career began after she sang at the Royal Albert Hall as a 12 year old. With her girl-next-door Englishness, she was employed by the Rank Organisation to be cute and became known to the British public as “our pet”.

Petula’s concerts in the Middle East first started in 1979. She flew into Bahrain on the Concorde from London Heathrow. Her concerts were a resounding success with renditions of her tributes to Elton John and the Carpenters. One critique said she came on stage as a diminutive, almost shy figure, very different from her full-blown image magnified by the TV lens. She transforms only after making her quiet wry salutations with just that hint of self-mockery that promises bigger things in reserve. They come resoundingly with the first bars. She soon explodes like a firework raining colour and sound.

Petula Clark’s voice ranges from the tender to the rasping. It is a sound she discovered in the sixties when everyone had to have one. It has lasted her longer than most. She is a thorough professional leaving not much to chance. In Bahrain she had a standing ovation, when she slyly enticed the Americans to their feet for her vocal rendering of their National Anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, and again after three encores …. when the limit is two!

In Dubai, her first concert was on 25th May 1980 at the Crystal Ballroom in the Hyatt Regency, Dubai. “It is one of the most elegant and beautiful venues I have performed at”, Petula remarked. She has performed before Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on several occasions and at the White House in Washington D.C. during the administration of President Johnson.

‘Downtown’ was the first of 15 consecutive Top-40 hits Petula Clark achieved in the United States. The American recording industry honoured her with a Grammy Award for Best Rock and Roll Recording of 1965 for ‘Downtown’. 

I had the opportunity to interview the Grammy Award winner Petula Clark on 25th May 1980, the afternoon before her first concert in Dubai. An excerpt of the live radio interview, as well as her most well-known song ‘Downtown’, follows:

Excerpt of radio interview with Petula Clark on 25 May 1980 in Dubai