The streets that just go on forever

9:15am Thursday 12th April 2007

An obvious question that Ralph McTell must have been asked a million times: Why did he choose to re-release Streets of London in 1974, six years after its appearance on his album Spiral Staircase?

"It's a good question actually. At the time I recorded it, it was just another song on the record to me. But within two days it had a cover version and someone heard it in Australia. People were picking up covers.

"My career, which had been going along quite nicely, started going along very nicely. When people pressed Transatlantic to release it as a single they said that at four-and-a-half minutes it was too long - singles were about three minutes. They said it wasn't commercial.

"Years go by and I am with Warner Brothers. There was a rumour that Transatlan-tic was about to release it. My manager said, It's up to you.' I re-recorded it in an afternoon after spending the morning recording Bert Jansch's In the Bleak Midwinter. In one day it sold 90,000 copies," he said.

He does not know the total sales of Streets of London because the song is still appearing on compilation albums and some people are reluctant to pay royalties. Wonderful as it must be to add such a timeless song to the universe, has Ralph McTell had problems following it up?

"Yes. If you are 21 or 22 and you write a song that does that, what does that (the song's success) mean for all the other stuff you do? Does it mean that they're not very good or that you peaked early?"

He was 30 when the song hit the big time.

"It was the right song at the right time. It is just an extraordinary song. You asked me if it has held me back in any way, yes it has. It is a simple song that only a young person would write. I couldn't write that at 62. It's a young song.

"You can imagine what it's like when you do better work. My set of criteria for writing songs has broadened - a bit like me - and deepened; but I am more interested in what the craft has developed into.

All great art has a life of its own. Streets of London is now part of the culture's ever-rolling song of London along with The Kinks' Waterloo Sunset, T S Eliot's The Waste Land and Little Gidding poems, Jupiter from Gustav Holst's Planet Suite and William Blake's immortal Songs of Innocence and Experience.

Ralph McTell has already written a suite of nine songs inspired by the conflict between the life and art of Dylan Thomas, six of which he still performs. I tried to encourage him to undertake a version of Songs of Innocence and Experience based on London's music scene in the early 1960s.

"I wasn't aware of anyone who was in it for stardom or fame. What drove everyone was the passion for the music. We would drive miles to hear someone play the trombone and go home talking about it. We would go to Eel Pie Island to hear a great bass player.

"The music scene in London was every bit as thrilling as anything that has happened since. Music clubs didn't even have a microphone, but people listened: you could hear a pin drop. It was a contribution to changing the world."

The contemporary music scene, like politics, strikes him depressingly as all style and no substance. The accompanying obsession with trivia and celebrity alarms him.

"I am disenfranchised man, I don't know who to vote for any more," he said.

But he has his family and his music to keep him sane and balanced in a culture bent on going off its head.

Fact file Born in Croydon, Surrey, in December 1944, Ralph May went on to write more than 200 songs the most popular of which, Streets of London, sold millions worldwide and established his reputation.

Better known as Ralph McTell (the name was suggested by folk musician Wizz Jones), his early life was marked by the desertion of his father. "It shaped me totally," he said. Nevertheless he and his brother Bruce seem to have had a happy childhood.

Never confident in himself, Ralph gained confidence from the times to support himself with a series of temporary jobs while he pursued his fascination with beat culture music in London. Later he busked around Europe.

In 1966 he met a Norwegian student, Nanna Stein. They married and went on to have a daughter and three sons. They have eight grand children.

Streets of London appeared on his second LP in 1968, Spiral Staircase. Six years later he re-recorded it and the subsequent single made him an international star at the age of 30.

In 1992 the BBC commissioned a words and music composition about Dylan Thomas. "Two or three years went into that. It's a grown up work," Ralph said.

Two volumes of autobiography, Angel Laughter and Summer Lightning, a compilation of his words and music, Songs For Six Strings, and a bound volume of his lyrics and poems, Times Poems, have been published.

New releases include The Journey, a four CD box set and Gates of Eden, featuring songs by Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and the masters of country blues. A re-release of his 1986 album Bridge of Sighs is also planned.

Ralph McTell will be at the City Varieties, Leeds, on April 22, starting at 8pm. The box office number is 08456-441-881.

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