March 05 Newsletter

This photo of me is circa 1965. I can tell by my hairstyle and clothes. My hair is still in a Sassoon bob and I am wearing a Courreges trouser suit and boots, bought in Paris. I am sitting with my first business manager, Eve Taylor on La Promenade Des Anglaises in Cannes, outside the Carlton Hotel.

I had started my recording career in 1964 with"(There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me". In my second year I began to record in French and was surprised by the welcome given to me in my stage shows in Paris. All I did was sing a few songs and wiggle my bare feet at the audience and the champagne corks started popping and I was the toast of the town. I discovered Rue Fauborg St. Honore with a vengeance and came home with my suitcases crammed with Parisienne fashion labels.

This grand success was followed by a countrywide tour of France with the rock’n’roll artist, Johnny Hallyday, the ‘French Cliff Richard’. Johnny, being French, was not the clean living Cliff. He was charming but completely wild as were his band and crew. I learned my French mostly on stage trying to communicate with the audience and backstage trying to fend off the advances of the more adventurous tour members.

Although I had my own English band, the Paramounts (who later became Procul Harum) I was very lonely. I came to expect to be the only girl on tour but never got used to it. It was quite difficult at eighteen to come to terms with the lads’ groupies but even harder to face the wives and girlfriends when they paid the odd visit.

I, on the other hand, went to bed alone. There was a chap back in England, Clive I think his name was, a photographer, but his seriousness and deep affection was not reciprocated. When the well-meaning crew saw my loneliness they organised for him to pay me a visit while in Montpellier but I refused to see him. He flew all the way from London to Nice and straight back again. I had previously met another photographer in Paris, Benjamin. He had long black curly hair and dark Gallic looks. He loved to decorate my feet with flowers and take pictures of them. I had never met anyone like him back in Dagenham!

Evie was my occasional female company. She only came to the glamorous gigs where she could gamble, like Cannes Casino. Modesty was an alien concept to Eve and I spent so much of my early career being excruciatingly embarrassed by her. In 1967 she accompanied me to Vienna for the Eurovision Song Contest. At the airport the day after my seminal victory with ‘Puppet On a String’ there was a massive queue. Eve dragged me straight to the front. The Austrian Customs official joked," She eez not zee Kveen off Enkland.’ To my horror Evie snapped back:" That’s where you’re wrong. Today she IS the fucking Queen of England!" Aaargh…

 

Sandie Shaw Dordogne 2005