No song about London has been recorded more often than “The Streets of London” – there reportedly have been more than 200 covers over the years. Ralph McTell wrote it years before his first album came out in 1968, but he thought it too depressing to include on his debut LP. It appeared the next year on his second outing, “Spiral Staircase,” but wasn’t released as a single in the UK until 1974, after Roger Whittaker’s cover gave it wider exposure. It went to No. 2, at one point selling 90,000 copies a day.
Considering how beloved the song has become in England, its ironic that it was inspired not by the downtrodden denizens of London, but by the homeless of Paris. McTell was scraping by in the winter of 1965 by busking on the streets.
When we were coming home from our little jaunts in the Latin Quarter, there were a lot of very impoverished people – they call them clochards – sat over the hot-air gratings in the Metro, and I formed this idea of writing a song about those people. … So I started writing “The Streets Of Paris.”
McTell, who hadn’t yet adopted his stage name – he was born Ralph May – had already developed the tune as an instrumental. As he worked on the lyrics he remembered that there was already a song called “The Poor People of Paris,” so he switched the locale to his native land, drawing on his hometown of Croydon. As he learned, he could have set it anywhere – its theme is universal.
For example, there was no Seaman’s Mission in Croydon, but there was a working man’s hostel, but working man’s hostel doesn’t scan terribly well. But people come up to me and say, “I’ve seen that place, I know that place” … When the song is translated to other languages, they just change the city.
The Clancy Brothers frequently covered the tune, with Liam taking the lead vocal, and the Anti-Nowhere League scored a minor UK hit (No. 48) with their punk rendition in 1981. They certainly dialed down the song’s inherent sentimentality.
So did Sinéad O’Connor, in a different way, on her 1994 EP “Fire on Babylon.” McTell said hers was his favorite cover of the song.
