Peter Sarstedt

Listening to Peter Sarstedt today, you might think he's the creation of some TV movie producer who tried to build a story around a character based on Donovan and only got it 25 percent right. Sarstedt recalled Donovan, and to a slighter extent such other British pop/folk singer/songwriters of the era as Al Stewart and Cat Stevens, with his lilting phrasing and earnest ambition. Like those artists, he was also prone to being a bit fruity and smug. And if you thought Donovan's production could be overly pop-conscious, Sarstedt's arrangements were a far more determined admixture of wordy lyricism and bouncy commercialism, their brassy orchestrations often sounding like juiced-up refugees from easy listening sessions. Sarstedt actually has a surprising musical pedigree, in that he is the sibling of early-'60s British teen idol Eden Kane. He was born in New Delhi, India, to Albert and Coral Sarstedt, both in the civil service in what was still a British possession in 1942. The following year, his parents moved the family to Kurseong near Darjeeling, in the shadow of Mt. Everest, where Albert took over the management of a tea plantation. Sarstedt was one of six children and, like his siblings, was educated at boarding schools favored by the British living in India for much of his childhood. From the time he was five years old, the family relocated to Calcutta, and later -- amid the turmoil and uncertainty following independence in 1947 -- the family finally moved to England in 1954. Albert Sarstedt had passed away during the extended preparation for the relocation, and it was a truly new existence that they began in South London that year. Sarstedt's older brother Richard -- who had seriously entertained notions of studying architecture -- soon found himself sidetracked into...