For years, I’ve been listening rather blissfully to this record unaware of any of its background. Only recently did I realise that this Ralph McTell Streets of London record on my shelf is not a new album he recorded at the time of the hit, but a compilation released by his previous record label to cash in on it.
Almost everyone knows Streets of London as a timeless song going back decades. McTell wrote it in 1965 but didn’t include it on his debut album because he thought it was too depressing. When it finally appeared on Spiral Staircase in 1969, it was modestly received. The version most people remember, the one that went to No 2 in 1974, was actually a re-recording that sounded fuller and warmer.
By 1975 he had moved to Warner Bros Records and released a new studio album. The label wanted to call it Streets of London. That was the obvious commercial move but McTell refused. He didn’t want his new work judged by the success of an old single. So the compromise title became simply Streets....
And that is where the record industry did what they often do. His former label, Transatlantic Records, quickly issued a budget compilation of his earlier material and titled it Streets of London. Same name as the hit, but a different album of older recordings. In the record shops, Streets of London was sold next to Streets..., thus confusing people.
Later, those same early recordings were licensed to Pickwick Records. Thin sleeve, economical packaging, explanatory notes on the back by one Albert Gayol, aimed at the listener who only knew the one famous song. These were the copies that ended up affordable, accessible and slightly misleading, which explains the record I own.
When I play “Streets of London” on this LP, I’m not hearing the 1974 hit version. I’m hearing the original 1969 recording from the Transatlantic years. It is a sparser sound that's closer to the folk-club setting where the song was born. Mostly voice and guitar, far less produced than the hit.
There’s a quiet irony in all this. McTell resisted using the title because he didn’t want to be defined by one song. Yet the marketplace defined him anyway. The compilation sold widely. His new material risked being overshadowed. He later admitted that his refusal may have been an error of judgement.
As for me, I rather like that my copy carries this small piece of industry history. It looks unassuming but it tells a story beyond the song itself. Not just about homelessness and forgotten people, which the lyric addresses, but about labels, contracts and timing. And about how, sometimes, the record on your shelf is not quite what you thought it was.
Here are the notes from Albert Gayol on Ralph McTell's album, Streets of London:
Ralph McTell left home in London and took to the road with five pounds in his pocket, a guitar on his back and little else besides a flourishing musical talent and the yearning of a free spirit to roam the streets of Europe playing for his supper.
The road which led him through the cafes of Paris, where McTell entertained the crowds as a busker, was eventually to take him nearly ten years on into the hallowed precincts of London's Royal Albert Hall and International prominence.
From busking, McTell began touring the circuit of British folk clubs, often booked on the sole recommendation of the highly respected guitarist/songwriter John Renbourn, but soon becoming something of a minor legend in his own right as he took to playing the large universities and concert arenas.
A series of highly successful albums followed establishing him, among other things, as one of the worlds finest finger style folk guitarists; he made regular appearances on television, including a film about his childhood in London that was inspired by a song of his called The Streets of London held by critics and the public as one of the best compositions by a British folk singer for years.
Ralph was not meteoric in his rise to success, more the gradual, but sure development of a gentle, quiet man who never went looking for fame and who only put out "Streets" as a single some ten years after having written it and after some thirty other artists had recorded it across the world.
His music heavily influenced by the jug bands of the twenties and the blues underlines a warm sensitivity and simple directness that is a true reflection of the man, and witnessed in the manner he is able to reduce the vastness of over 6,000 people crambed (sic) into the Albert Hall to the intimacy of a fireside chat.
It's a natural warmth that shows through on this record as well. The haunting melodies of his songs, their whistful (sic) delicate wording will command your attention from beginning to end, whether he is graphically portraying an imaginary scene in Brighton in the early 1900's or gently reciting tender words of love to his wife - Nannas Song.
Said simply, Ralph McTell's songs 'move you'.
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