'Taking Notes and Stealing Quotes'

A Souvenir of London

There is a comical mismatch between cover and content on the picture-sleeve of Souvenir of London [sic … where did the 'A' get to?]. The record sounds like a bunch of jangly ruffians busking outside a grand hotel, the people on the cover are obviously the sort of toffs who can afford to spend their nights inside. What's the story?

When BBC Radio 1's Annie Nightingale reviewed the Grand Hotel album she played A Souvenir of London as a teaser, asking 'I wonder who can guess who this is?'. Only the Brooker voice could possibly have given away the answer, one imagines, since the Procol hallmark piano, organ, drumming, dramatic lead guitar, and flights of verbal fancy are all missing. So maybe Chrysalis felt it was helpful to dress the single up in the livery of the successful album, so that the public would have a 'handle' of some sort on the music inside.

Backed with Toujours L’Amour, Souvenir Of London (CHS 2015) was released as a UK single in August 1973. It was also a single in France (CHA 109), Portugal (6155 012) and Germany (6155 012), and it spawned two cover versions. In the UK it was banned (for alleged VD references) by the BBC (who nonetheless gaily promoted Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side) yet the ban didn't confer any great notoriety or sales. It's interesting to wonder what would have happened to Procol's 'maestros of dicky-bow rock' tag if, by some chance, this record had soared to the top of the charts. To some, it might not have seemed unlikely. Melody Maker referred to the track as sounding like 'Lennon jamming with Mungo Jerry' (17 March 1973) and the said Jerry were at No 3 in the singles chart the month before Souvenir came out.

It's a jaunty ditty, marking a return to the Procol novelty-song last found in Boredom in 1969. The genres it embraces did not sound typical of the band, but are perhaps not surprising in retrospect given what we know of the breadth of Gary Brooker's taste. It spanned the worlds of the Lovin' Spoonful-style 'jugband' and UK skiffle-star Lonnie Donegan. Donegan, who had spent 321 weeks on the UK chart from 1956-62, and was one of the major influences on the Brooker generation of British rockers: Gary guested on his later albums. Donegan retailed cleaned-up versions of blues songs (such as the coke anthem Take a Whiff on Me, changed into Have a Drink on Me) and mildly risqué comic tunes in Souvenir mode such as Does Your Chewing Gum Lose its Flavour on the Bedpost Overnight? These are part of a British tradition stretching back to Procol's fellow-Zonophonist George Formby, who recorded numbers saucily-not-quite-revealing what he saw When I'm Cleaning Windows. It's a mild oddity that this very English tradition attracted covers by overseas bands.

However the adapted titles of the overseas covers perhaps reveal something of these artists' rationale: the French title is Souvenir d'Amsterdam, the Danish one En souvenir fra Malmø. Malmo is in Sweden, not necessarily favourite terrain of the Dane, and Amsterdam as a destination is considered racy even by the French. In both cases, then, the song is about picking up a nasty foreign infection, a jingoistic comic dimension entirely missing from the original, in which a Londoner seemingly refers to the venereal infections that are rife in his own town. The two Grand Hotel songs in which the narrator contemplates French girls apparently carry no suspicion that they will infect him … it seems to be writing that will do this, in Typewriter Torment where the narrator claims 'it eats up your life like a dose of the clap'. But an interview did reveal some mischievous nationalism … 'It's a song about VD. It's about American tourists coming to London and going home with a souvenir they didn't expect,' Reid claimed in Circus (May 1973). It looks possible that there was some trace of chauvinism in Keith's thoughts – Americans come over here, take our girls, pick up the pox – though the song doesn't actually refer to our transAtlantic 'neighbors' in any discernible way: in fact an American would presumably not have used the word 'Mum' at all. We guess that the narrator lives overseas, or he would not have to face 'the customs' on his way home: but the song is no more explicit than that. Perhaps Keith just alleged that he had Americans in mind to amuse, or needle, a Circus journalist. In a radio interview in 2002 he declared that the idea for the song had sprung from the phrase 'A Souvenir of London' printed on a pencil – designed for the tourist market – that he had been using at the time.

Venereal disease is an established theme of contemporary music, of course. The Paramounts had sung Poison Ivy and Bad Blood themselves, and it's not easy to see why Reid was so evasive talking to the British magazine, ZigZag, in April 1973: 'Who told you that it's about VD? It's certainly about tourism. I think I can safely say that. Certainly about young men abroad, or broad young men. I can say no more, my lips are sealed.' But the quotation is interesting for the light it sheds both on a wryly secretive mindset, and an instinctive capacity for wordplay – whose 'unpacking' is part of the point of this series of articles.

It's worth remembering that the AIR studios were hard by the tourist Mecca of London's Oxford Street, where postcards, tee-shirts and gewgaws of every description proclaim themselves to be 'A Souvenir of London'. Preying on the same customers are the buskers, whose brash sound the present record purports to imitate. The song, which was written in the first half of 1972, features Brooker and Copping on banjos, Cartwright on rhythm guitar, and BJ on mandolin, bass drum and cymbal; some say that Mick Grabham re-recorded Dave Ball's original guitar tracks, but Mick himself told BtP that he was not on the track at all: so maybe we hear Dave Ball's guitar in the mix. The guitar lines are unusual in that – as part and parcel of the album's interest in unusual, semitonal intervals – they place a lot of emphasis on the flattened seventh, which Brooker's 'lot of it about' melody line also ends on. We also hear quasi-barrel-organ sounds, and of course the spoons, played by Ball with roadie Denny Brown. This is a traditional Cockney speciality, descended from the ancient practice of percussing with two bones, and involves one hand clutching the stems of two bowl-to-bowl pudding-spoons, which are clattered between the other hand and a knee or thigh. The song bowls along briskly in G, and its slow chord changes follow some well-worn Procol grooves: G to C, A to D is a similar pattern to the basis of Homburg's chorus; while the G, F, C, G pattern of the Souvenir chorus is found in numerous songs such as The Piper's Tune, The Idol, and Long Gone Geek. Gary's lead vocal is suitably pitched and delivered to carry above street-noise: he has played up the 'busking' image in performance by wearing a cap during this song and holding it out afterwards for coins. The joke ending, 'I'd not finished man' gives a great feeling of spontaneity to the recording, and Gary continued to enjoy extemporising vocally in the playout when the song was heard live (mp3 here).

When Brooker had to migrate from his piano to play this song front-centre, other members of the band sometimes took the unusual opportunity to make stage announcements (mp3 here: the first voice is Mick's). In one concert Gary covered the tuning of the banjo (as he would later have to do before Beyond the Pale too) with a curious remark which his Germanic-speaking audience applauded, possibly without understanding: he advises them, if visiting London, to go to 'Charlotte Street … that's where you go when you've got a souvenir'. Charlotte Street, just off Sunny Goodge Street, is a thriving centre of London clinics, specially those with a research bias, and Brooker's particular reference is to James Pringle House, at No 73, which in the 70s was the leading centre for the treatment of Sexually Transmitted Infections, or 'Venereal Diseases' as they were then called. [James Pringle House is now at University College and Middlesex School of Medicine, W1N 8AA, should you need it]. The tone of this announcement, at once smutty and coy, is typical of the genre to which the song belongs. Other curious announcements during these banjo-tunings included the claim that Copping's grandfather invented the drawing pin, the stool and the easy-open beer-can: the song was generally treated as an occasion for lightening the mood and, in Gary's case, greeting the audience face to face. 'The boys said to me, why don't I do a little bit more than just squat behind the piano there turning purple … so I said, well I'll pull out my Dad's guitar, which he left me in his will, and strum along.' He certainly did play a handsome National guitar at several concerts.

A Souvenir of London was probably first played as early as January 1972, when Procol undertook a short British tour with Amazing Blondel supporting. It was featured in the Rainbow orchestral concert in September 1972, when a lone clarinettist stood up in the wind section and delivered a wailing solo over some increasingly chaotic band accompaniment. It was heard on the German tour (October 1972) and at the Hollywood Bowl orchestral show in September 1973, where the photograph to the left was taken. It was featured, either as a mid-set mood-lifter, or as an encore, throughout 1972 and 1973; at the Orange Festival in 1975 it came in after the middle of the set in order to placate a somewhat unruly audience, but didn't entirely succeed. By the time of the Rockpalast German TV show in 1976 (when Mick Grabham's treated guitar was sounding very like the record) BJ had abandoned his one-man band mini-percussion act, and was giving it some thorough cowbell! (mp3 here). The song has been heard from the New Testament band too; in 1995 at Clacton, very close to Paramount-land, the last two encores were both VD tunes: Leiber and Stoller's Poison Ivy (the Paramounts' biggest success on record) and Souvenir, this time played on the normal five-piece rock instruments, with Fisher's keyboard imitating a squeezebox, and Gary's piano seemingly imitating The Mixtures' Pushbike Song, a sub-Mungo Jerry No 2 hit from January 1971 (mp3 here). Gary also used the song – as he had formerly used Grand Hotel – as a setting for playful bursts of traditionally 'London' tunes: Bye Bye Blackbird and The Lambeth Walk (mp3 here).

• 'Bought a souvenir in London': 'souvenir' is a French word for 'keepsake', implying something that will 'come back' in memory; it's also used ironically for something stolen from a particular place. The sound of '-venir' is so like that of 'venereal' that some have supposed this correspondence could have triggered the whole idea for the song. London, aside from being the capital of England, is the name of four places in the USA and one in Ontario, Canada, not far from Stratford where Procol played in 1969; it's also a record label: its derivation from King Lud is undoubtedly apocryphal, and it is probably based on a conjectural root-word 'londo' meaning something like 'wild'. 'Bought' refers to ordinary buying transactions, but has an additional meaning in Services slang: 'Tommy bought it' means 'Tommy got killed': this sense is partly operative here, since the 'bought' refers to acquiring something that damages its owner.
• 'Got to hide it from my mum': 'mum' is the affectionate, cosy diminutive for 'mother' in English. To 'keep mum' means to stay quiet, keep a secret, which is an appropriate extension of the primary meaning here. 'Mum'/'mother' is also used for sinister or comic effect in criminal and espionage fiction: The New Avengers has a large camp male actor referred to as 'Mother' by his agents. Procol's other 'mum' song is The Piper's Tune, which also concerns wrong-doing by the narrator.
• 'Can't declare it at the Customs': read literally, this implies that the narrator is not a native of London (which could of course be a non-English London). 'Declare' is the standard verb used when passing the frontier control, when one is asked to specify any items of luggage that are controlled by law: things one would not be prepared to declare might include drugs, weapons, pornography, or alcohol in excess of the 'duty-free' importation limit.
• 'But I'll have to take it home': the implication is that this souvenir is not a voluntary possession that could be abandoned; it is the first clue as to the true subject of the song. This is one of a welter of references to 'home'/'house' in this album and elsewhere in Procoldom. As well as having an album named Home and two song-titles featuring the word, the band use the word 'home ' in no fewer than 14% of their published songs.
• 'Tried to keep it confidential': 'confidential' normally means 'secret'; but, as with souvenir, there is a possible criminal meaning, since a 'confidence trick' is one used to swindle people out of their money. It's unusual to find a four-syllable word in a song (except in the songs of Sting and other such Thesaurus-swallowers) unless it's inserted to create a rhyme, in which case the suffix '-ation' is one of the mostly commonly found; Jerry Lee Lewis's High School Confidential, as sung by Liquorice John Death, No Stiletto Shoes et al, doesn't actually contain the word 'confidential' outside the title. There's a tremendous amount of 'trying' in the Procol world: 'trying to find some kinda romance' (Lime Street Blues); 'I tried to stretch out in it' (Something Following Me); 'Phallus Phil tries peddling' (Cerdes (Outside The Gates Of) ); 'to try to throw some light' (Salad Days (Are Here Again)); 'trying to intercept my dreams' and 'I tried to rob a bank' (Seem To Have The Blues Most All The Time); 'what I'm trying to say' (Rambling On); 'I tried to hide inside myself' (Magdalene (My Regal Zonophone)); 'trying to swivel right out of there' (Long Gone Geek); 'trying to sell you cheese' (The Devil Came From Kansas); 'on its tide I tried to hide' (Crucifiction Lane); 'trying to find the words' (Pilgrims Progress); 'trying not to fall' (Barnyard Story); 'try to gauge' (Luskus Delph); 'They tried in vain to bring him round' (For Liquorice John); 'trying hard to win' and 'trying hard to force the pace' (Fool's Gold); 'trying to act the hero's part', 'trying to make a name', 'trying not to freeze' (Taking The Time); 'try and get you off my mind' and 'Trying to relive ev'ry moment' ((You can't) turn back the page); 'Tried to understand her' (The King of Hearts); 'Try to find a diff'rent way' (All Our Dreams Are Sold) and 'eagles only dare to try' (Learn to fly).

• 'But the news is leaking out': in the second verse of the record the word 'news' is replaced by 'truth'. In performance, however, Gary nearly always sang 'truth' both times. The word implies that the fact of having a sexually transmitted infection will be received at home as a sensation, a scandal, such as would make the newspapers. Street-cries of newspaper vendors would be another part of the typical Cockney street-soundscape. Spencer Zahn's illustration in the Grand Hotel lyrics booklet graphically shows the 'leaking'; a well-nigh featureless parcel has grown a crack from which fluid is conspicuously seeping. This image is suitably mysterious and coy; he could scarcely have offered a literal depiction of the urethral discharge to which Reid's words euphemistically refer.
• 'Got a souvenir in London': the word 'got', the usual verb associated with describing how one has succumbed to a disease, has replaced the more fancy 'bought'.
• 'There's a lot of it about': surprisingly, in an era when Reid seemed so committed to rhyming couplets, 'out / about' is the only full rhyme in the whole song. 'There's a lot of it about ' is a faithfully-recorded common parlance heard when contagion is abroad: 'I'm not surprised you caught the flu: there's a lot of it about'. 'It' is of course coy again, being used as an oblique way of talking about sex: a car-bumper slogan of the time invited people to 'Honk if you had it last night'.
• 'Yes, I found a bit of London': this seems like repetition, but the word 'bit' is new, and as well as meaning 'fragment' it is used dismissively of girls: 'a bit of skirt'.
• 'I'd like to lose it quick': this haste acknowledges that many venereal infections are harmless if promptly treated, but can be very serious, even fatal, if left too long. In this connection, it may be worth noting that 'quick', in Biblical language, is the opposite of 'dead'.
• 'Got to show it to my doctor': this is one of the many Chrysalis-era references to doctors, who are generally being looked to for help. 'Doctor' derives from the Latin 'docere', 'to teach'; as with 'souvenir and 'confidence' above it has its underworld meaning, when accounts or documents are 'doctored' … interfered with, altered. The implication of 'my doctor' is that the narrator does not want to reveal it to a London doctor, but will wait until he gets home. 'Lose it quick' and 'isn't going to shrink' both imply his impatience to begin a cure. Other doctors in the songs include 'The doctors say they must operate' (Song For A Dreamer); 'The doctors didn't hesitate', 'The doctors said they knew no cure' (For Liquorice John); 'Doctor where's your remedy?', 'Doctor where's your magic box', 'Doctor please don't lock your door' (Robert's Box); 'Famous doctors all agree' (Fresh Fruit); 'Doctors cause uncertainty' (Pandora's Box) and 'If only my doctor could see that I'm ill', 'If only my doctor would give me a pill', 'But why can't my doctor just say that I'm ill?' (Typewriter Torment).
• 'it isn't going to shrink': the infection will grow, not dwindle: 'shrink' is also of course another kind of doctor. Interestingly although this song doesn't specify exactly what the narrator wants the doctor to do, the narrator of Fresh Fruit actually gives suitable sexual counseling to a sufferer from 'flu', suggestively suggesting that, when 'his tail wags with glee' and he wants his 'vitamin C' he should 'give up meat' and enjoy slurping around in the 'fresh fruit' for a while instead.
• 'Want to keep it confidential': in this verse the lyric switches from 'tried to keep it confidential' to 'want to keep it confidential' which suggests that the 'trying' has failed, but the wish to remain undetected persists. However if 'the truth is leaking out' we cannot expect the confidentiality to hold for long.
• 'But the truth is leaking out': the last verse switches from 'news' to 'truth'. So many Reid songs focus on the truth – 'the truth is plain to see, ' 'in truth we were at sea ', 'dirt in truth is clean, ' from A Whiter Shade of Pale; 'still sees truth quite easily ' from A Christmas Camel; 'I know in truth they envy me ' from Shine on Brightly; 'He only speaks the truth, ' from Rambling On; 'the truth was writ quite clear, ' from Look to Your Soul; 'tell the truth ... in truth it's just as well, ' from Crucifiction Lane; 'the truth is leaking out, ' from A Souvenir of London; 'Nothing but the truth ... harder than the truth, ' from Nothing But the Truth; 'the truth and the word, ' from As Strong as Samson; 'Falsehood for truth, ' from New Lamps for Old; 'the truth of this story, ' from The Worm and The Tree; 'the truth won't fade away ' from The Truth Won't Fade Away – it is suitably and scurrilously amusing that one song in which he seems to pin down what the truth is reveals it to be … beyond reasonable doubt? … a sexually-transmitted disease. But then, as the joke has it, Life is a sexually-transmitted disease. Beckett would have laughed at that one. 

Thanks to Frans Steensma for additional information about this song