At the very end of the Seventies, late 1979, I remember Englishman Gary Numan singing “Cars”, from his album “The Pleasure Principle”.
In fact, whenever I hear it or think of Gary Numan or “Cars”, it reminds me of being in not a car but a Transit van, at 4 o’clock in the morning.
We had just finished clearing up after a dance during the student orientation I was running at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Together with the people helping, we had stopped off at a service station, the only place still open, to get something to eat, and I vividly remember “Cars” playing on the radio as we got out of the van.
That was actually at the start of 1980, so obviously the song still got airplay in New Zealand for a while (it was apparently released in August 1979).
Here’s Gary Numan in the promotional video of “Cars”:
I don’t really remember anything else by Gary Numan, but this one has stuck in my mind.
New Zealand band Dragon, who relocated to Sydney, Australia in 1975 had a national hit in 1977 with “April Sun In Cuba”, which reached No. 2 in Australia.
I don’t actually remember any of their other songs, but “Are You Old Enough?” reached No. 1 a year later.
This is “April Sun In Cuba”:
And here is “Are You Old Enough?”:
After splitting and reuniting, with various personnel changes, Dragon reached No. 2 in Australia with “Rain”, played live here in Sydney in 1983:
And now for something completely different… In 1972 Vicky Leandros had a European hit with “Après Toi” (After You), and I went on my first overseas trip from New Zealand, to the French Pacific colony of New Caledonia.
All the time we were in Nouméa, its capital, we heard the song “Après Toi” again and again, and it came to be the theme song of our two week visit – and always reminds me of that time.
Of course I bought the single (see above), although unlike New Zealand singles it had a huge hole in the middle, so I had to find an adapter to be able to play it!
The reason the song was so big in Europe was she had just won the Eurovision song contest with it, on behalf of Luxembourg.
This is “Après Toi”, in French:
And here are the French lyrics:
Tu t’en vas, l’amour a pour toi le sourire d’une autre,
Je voudrais, mais ne peux t’en vouloir
Désormais, tu vas m’oublier
Ce n’est pas de ta faute, et pourtant tu dois savoir
Qu’après toi, je ne pourrai plus vivre,
Non plus vivre qu’en souvenir de toi
Après toi, j’aurai les yeux humides,
Les mains vides, le coeur sans joie
Avec toi, j’avais appris a rire,
Et mes rires ne viennent que par toi
Après toi, je ne serai que l’ombre
De ton ombre, après toi
Même un jour, si je fais ma vie
Si je tiens la promesse qui unit deux êtres pour toujours
Àpres toi, je pourrai peut-être donner de ma tendresse
Mais plus rien de mon amour
Après toi, je ne pourrai plus vivre,
Non plus vivre qu’en souvenir de toi
Après toi, j’aurai les yeux humides,
Les mains vides, le coeur sans joie
Avec toi, j’avais appris a rire,
Et mes rires ne viennent que par toi
Après toi, je ne serai que l’ombre
De ton ombre, après toi
Vicky Leandros is actually Greek, and having spent much of her early life in Germany with her musician father (Leandros is actually his first name), Vicky Leandros sings in numerous languages and apparently she sang “Après Toi” in seven languages.
The English version, which reached No. 2 in the UK, is called “Come What May”:
Think I prefer the French version… for the words and the memories…
Paul
P.S. Vicky Leandros earlier came 4th at Eurovision in 1967 with “L’amour est bleu”, also known as “Love is blue”, which became very popular in the late Sixties in the version by French orchestra leader Paul Mauriat.
