Section:GDN 12 PaGe:8 Edition Date:190731 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 30/7/2019 18:11 cYanmaGentaYellowbla

• The Guardian
  8 Wednesday 31 July 2019

‘Elvis angled for

a threesome – he

was raring to go’

of any artist in history. She has been

on Desert Island Discs three times:

in 1951 (when she was just 18 ); 1982;

and 1995. She made her debut as a

child entertainer shortly before her

tenth birthday in 1942; this October,

the month before she turns 87, she

will return to the West End as the

bird lady in Mary Poppins.

It was in 1964 that she became

famous worldwide, with Downtown,

the smash hit that beat the Beatles

to a Grammy and led her to be

anointed “the First Lady of the

British Invasion”. It went to No 1 in

the US – “There was no escaping it. It

cut through absolutely everything”

• and Clark was quickly sucked into
  the upper echelons of American
  show business.
  She worked with Fred Astaire,
  Dean Martin, Bobby Darin and the
  Muppets. Steve McQueen, the King
  of Cool, told her he loved her in a
  restaurant. Meeting celebrities was
  exciting, she says, but “the really

From child star to

superstar, Petula Clark

is still performing

at 86. She talks to

Elle Hunt about

being consoled by

John Lennon, her

friendship with Karen

Carpenter – and her

close encounter

with the King

I sat there

dripping all over

John and Yoko’s

bed. John was so

funny and very

philosophical

great people” stand out – Quincy

Jones was “wonderful”, and she

and Harry Belafonte “adored each

other”. “I think he kind of fancied

me,” she adds, somewhat bashfully.

They inadvertently caused a

media storm in 1968, when Clark

took Belafonte’s arm during a duet

for her one-hour special for NBC;

a Plymouth Motors advertising

executive took exception to a white

woman and a black man touching on

television. Belafonte, a prominent

civil rights campaigner, was aware

of the potential consequences, but

Clark was “an innocent”, she says. “I

stumbled into that ... I’ve never got

political about anything.”

Clark, her husband Claude

Wolff and their lawyer ordered

NBC to erase the other takes so

there was only the one with them

touching, Belafonte casting her

in his autobiography as a gleeful

co-conspirator to “nail the bastard”.

But Clark insists now it was an

artistic decision, not a political one.

“I didn’t like the idea of a sponsor

telling me how to do a song ... It had

nothing to do with racism. That was

the best take. That was the way that

the song was supposed to be done

• with that feeling, that emotion.
  When it turned into this whole race
  thing – it sounds silly, but I didn’t
  quite understand what it was about.”
  Her career decisions were handled
  by other people; Clark says it is
  “probably true” that she could have
  benefi ted from being more involved.
  Performing in Montreal in 1969, she
  was heckled for singing in English
  and French – she had not been
  advised that a separatist movement
  was under way. Distraught, Clark
  sought advice from John Lennon,
  who was in Montreal for a bed-in
  with Yoko Ono. She recalls turning
  up at the door of their hotel suite,
  snivelling, in the middle of a
  downpour.
  Lennon welcomed her warmly.
  “They were both still in their
  nighties. I sat there, dripping water
  all over their bed, and told them the
  story. He said : ‘Oh, fuck ’em.’ I said:
  ‘Thank you, John.’ ” Lennon was
  happy to play therapist, she says. “He
  was so funny and very philosophical.
  We had a chat about the situation.
  Did it really matter? ‘This too shall
  pass.’ That sort of stuff. Then he said :
  ‘I tell you what – you need a drink’.
  Which was very true.”
  There was a crowd in the next
  room, among them Allen Ginsberg,
  Timothy Leary and one of the
  Smothers Brothers – “but no drugs”,
  she adds, fi rmly. Someone handed
  her a lyric sheet, and she joined
  the group in singing “a simple little
  melody: ‘All we are saying, is give
  peace a chance.’ I don’t think any
  of us knew we were being recorded.”

Clark was a pop artist, never part

of the counterculture. “I was on the

edge of it quite often. There used

to be some parties in LA where all

you had to do was walk in and that

was it, you were stoned from the

moment you took a breath.” She

wasn’t interested in drugs, feeling “a

certain responsibility” to her family.

“I touched a little bit of it – it never

impressed me at all. And I saw too

much of the damage it was doing.”

One of Clark’s great friends was

Karen Carpenter, who she met in

Los Angeles at the 1969 premiere of

Goodbye, Mr Chips, in which Clark

starred alongside Peter O’Toole.

The Carpenters, then unsigned,

were performing at the afterparty.

Impressed, Clark introduced herself

and pointed them out to Herb Alpert,

who went on to sign them to A&M.

She did not run into Karen often,

but “we had that connection, so that

every time we did see each other, we

were close”.

When Clark and Carpenter – then

the two “top girls” of the world

of pop – met Elvis Presley in his

dressing room after a show, he angled

for a threesome, she says. “He was

raring to go. Karen was lovely, but

she was kind of innocent. I felt sort of

responsible for her, so I got her out of

there. Then I looked round, and Elvis

was at the door, and he looked at me,

like: ‘I’m going to get you one day.’ ”

But he never did, she tells my voice

recorder directly. “Some people

think he did. I think he put out the

rumour that he did. But he didn’t.”

Any regrets? “I didn’t fi nd him

that attractive,” she says apparently

offh andedly. But when I ask what

period of Elvis it was, she jumps at

the implication. “Oh, it was when

he was at his best! But he was almost

too much. ”

Petula Clark does

not like to look back. She does not

celebrate birthdays – hates nostalgia.

So spending several hours in a

studio, listening to her early records

• as she was recently forced to do,
  for a compilation of songs from her
  seven-decade career – was “kind
  of torture”, she says. She aff ects a
  groan, eyes rolling beneath their
  spidery lashes.
  Clark is among the best selling
  British female artists of all time,
  with one of the largest chart spans

Clark is one

of the bestselling

British female

artists of all time

Clark, the child

star, signing

autographs for

troops in 1940

Clark in 1952

and with

Harry Belafonte

in 1968

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