Section:GDN 12 PaGe:9 Edition Date:190731 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 30/7/2019 18:11 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Guardian
Wednesday 31 July 2019 9
After Carpenter died from
complications resulting from
anorexia in 1983, Clark paid tribute
to her “very dear friend” and her
“strange, tragic end” at the Royal
Albert Hall. “It was awful,” she says
now. “I remember from the fi rst
time I met her, I saw the diff erent
phases of this thing, I could sense
that something was going on. She
got into that Beverly Hills thing, of
being skinny. ”
Clark worked in the studio with
Richard Carpenter after his sister’s
death. “I think he was still trying
to fi nd someone to replace her –
he never will. But he was a hard
task mas ter.” She whistles, rolls her
eyes. “I think that was probably the
secret to it. Not a lot of fun, no – but
very, very clever.” Clark says she
only had a “nightmare session” with
one producer: Bob Crewe. “He just
wanted to make me sound diff erent.”
The music industry has come
under a lot of scrutiny, for sexual
harassment and abuse – did she ever
feel vulnerable, especially as a young
woman? She considers the question
carefully. Women have changed; the
world has, too. “I’ve come across
all that stuff , of course. ” She pauses
for a long time. “I don’t want to get
into that,” she says softly, almost
to herself. Then she recaptures her
train of thought. “It’s right that
women should come out and say
PHOTOGRAPHS: LINDA NYLIND; REDFERNS; GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGESwhat has to be said. It’s still a worldeducation suff ered; when she did
make it to school, she was bullied for
being famous.
Aged about 12, Clark was
contracted as an actor by the Rank
Organisation, Britain’s largest fi lm
company, and remained there
through her teenage years. She
wanted to be Ingrid Bergman, but
there were no roles for adolescents.
Her chest was bound as late as age
16, to protect her image as a child star
in ankle socks. “I think I was part of
a moment in people’s wartime lives
that they wanted to keep precious,”
she says. “Me becoming a woman –
they didn’t want to see that.”
But Clark was growing up and
wanted to sing more grown-up
songs. “And, of course, as soon as
I did anything like that, we’d get
letters coming in: ‘We don’t want
Our Pet singing about LOVE’. What
was I supposed to sing? The Little
Shoemaker for ever?” It was a
desperately unhappy time – she has
said she came close to a breakdown- compounded by her fraught
relationship with her father Leslie,
who was also her manager and a
frustrated actor. “He enjoyed the
so-called glamour of it, probably
more than I did, and I think he could
see me slipping away. It was not
easy, for either of us.”
Clark eventually terminated their
relationship, which, she says fi rmly,
was “necessary, but not easy”. Does
she feel any resentment towards
him? She is quiet, stops and starts.
“I adored my father. He was my idol
for many, many years. This is hard
for me to talk about.” There was
“nothing weird going on”, she adds
hurriedly; “but when we parted, it
was very, very painful”.
She was also dismayed to discover
that she was broke, her fi nances
having been handled for her during
her entire career. “That was a
surprise, put it that way.” But she
had two hit records, With All My
Heart (1957) and Alone (1958), and,
together with her sister, was able topull together enough for the two of
them to rent a fl at in London. Now in
her mid- 20s, Clark was independent
for the fi rst time in her life – she
got herself a pink sports car, and
“several boyfriends”.
Then she was called across the
Channel by her record company,
which was irked that a French
singer, Dalida, had had some success
covering Clark’s songs. After a
successful show at the Olympia
theatre in Paris, she was persuaded
to record in French by the promise
of spending time with the record
company’s “gorgeous” PR man,
Claude Wolff. “They said: ‘ He’ll be
taking you around.’ Ça change tout.”
You knew what you wanted when
you saw it, I say. “I didn’t know I was
going to get married to him!” she
says. “But he was kind of dishy.”
Clark couldn’t speak French,
Wolff couldn’t speak English, and
he had an “extremely beautiful”
girlfriend (“I couldn’t stand her”).
But at the end of her three weeks in
Paris, the night before she was due
to go back to London, Wolff came to
her hotel. “He said: ‘You come with
me’ – dot dot dot.”
After a long-distance love aff air
between London and Paris, they
decided that she would move to
Paris, where her career was taking
off. The British press was resentful,
accused her of running away from
her past. Clark is adamant: she left
England because she wanted to be
with the man she loved. But “it was
nice to get away from being ‘Our Pet’.
The great thing about becoming a
star in France was they knew nothing
about my past. They thought I was
sexy. I thought that was pretty great!”
Her marriage to Wolff was
unusually feminist for the time:
“It was a partnership.” They had
two daughters and a son. Clark has
spoken often with regret about
her “mother’s guilt”, believing she
handled neither parenthood nor her
career as well as she could have – a
concern she has expressed to her
children. “They say: ‘What are you
talking about? We had a great time.’ ”
Wolff and nannies shouldered the
burden, but it required compromise
all round, she says, personally and
professionally. “They weren’t always
easy choices – and leaving the
children was always traumatic.”
Clark and Wolff have been
married 58 years and continue to live
together in Geneva – but now lead
mostly separate lives. They have
“drifted apart”, says Clark , gently:
“He has his life and I have mine. How
can you talk about that? Personal
relationships are complicated, and
it’s very diffi cult to explain that to
the world.”
Is she happy? She sounds
surprised to be asked, stops and
starts with her answer. “Um , yeah.
You know, happiness – I actually
wrote a song called Happiness.” She
pauses, and it takes me a moment
to realise that she is quoting song
lyrics. “It comes and goes, it’s like
a summer rose, and we settle for
contentment and the status quo –
and suddenly it’s there again.”
A complete recording of Petula Clark’s
1974 Valentine’s Day concert at the
Royal Albert Hall will be released
later this year.It was nice to
get away from
being ‘Our Pet’.
In France, they
thought I was
sexy – it was great
‘Relationships
are complicated’...
Clark todaythat’s controlled by men. I think
the world would be very diff erent if
more women were in power.”
Clark was fi rst discovered at age
nine on It’s All Yours, a BBC show
that broadcast children’s messages
for the troops. When rehearsal was
interrupted by an air raid, Clark
volunteered to sing to settle the
jittery audience. She found herself
on stage, standing on a box to reach
a big, old-fashioned microphone –
the fi rst she had ever sung into, in
front of the fi rst orchestra she had
ever seen. “I sang, and the orchestra
joined in – just like in a movie. That
was the beginning, really.”
Billed as “Britain’s Shirley
Temple” and “the Singing
Sweetheart”, Clark went on to record
hundreds of songs for the forces
and toured the UK by train. She
recalls sleeping in the luggage racks
alongside Julie Andrews, three years
her senior. “Now, she could really
sing,” says Clark. “We’d get off the
train, do our little things, get back on
and go home. It was fun – and not a
lot of kids were having fun.”
Vera Lynn was “the Forces’
Sweetheart”, and Clark was their
“Little Girl”, representing the
children they had left behind.
She was a good-luck charm for
the troops, her picture plastered
on tanks. “I was sweet and had a
sweet little voice – that was all that
was asked of me, really.” But herРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS
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