Streets of London
- Þorkell Daníel Jónsson
- Mar 13, 2020
- 2 min read
Song and Lyrics: Ralph McTell
When I was starting to learn to play the guitar, I bought the guitar textbook The Complete Guitar Player, Book 4. According to the book, I was supposed to be a decent guitar player after playing through it. Well, I can't say that the book lived up to that claim because I was still a very stiff player, even though I had played through all the songs in the book. One of those songs was the song Streets of London by Ralph McTell. Years later, when I and a few colleagues were supposed to bring an act to the staff Christmas party, I remembered this fine song. It fits so beautifully with the lyrics of Steinn Steinarr's poem called Tindátarnir (Tinsoldiers). We decided to perform the poem with the support of this song. I wrote up a simple arrangement of the song. You can hear it at the end of this article and you are welcome to download the arrangement if you want to play it.
McTell wrote the song in 1967 and had planned to include it on his debut album, Eight Frames a Second, but canceled it due to the depressing lyrics of the song. McTell recorded the song for his second album, Spiral Staircase, In 1970, a single was released with the song and the song became hugely popular. Over a period of time, over 90,000 copies were being sold a day. More than 200 artists have made a cover of it. Including artists such as Bert Jansch, Sinead O'Connor, Cliff Richard, and Roger Wittager. Fifty years after writing the song, McTell made another recording of it with Annie Lennox and the Crisis Choir. You can hear that recording here.
In the song's lyrics, McTell portrays the lives of homeless people on the streets of London. I'm sure these images came into his mind while he was busking all over Europe. In fact, the lyrics were originally meant to be about the people on the streets in Paris because that's where McTell had played a lot. When he discovered there was already a song called Poor People of Paris, he turned the lyrics up to London. The text, of course, may as well apply to life on the streets of any city.
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