LOS ANGELES — After nearly seven decades in the business, several Grammys and countless hit records such as “Downtown” and “I Know a Place,” Petula Clark believes she’s “beginning to get the hang” of singing.
“I tell you what, I get more enjoyment out of it now,” said Clark, who turned 81 last week. “I am singing better now. This is just a bit of luck. I don’t do anything for it. I don’t warm up. I just go out and sing.”
The British singer returned from a tour of her homeland performing her classics, as well as tunes from her new CD, “Lost in You.” And she’s heading for Australia next year.
Her new disc features some of Clark’s own compositions, as well as a cover of “Downtown,” which, she said, is “a very different take on it.”
Clark also covers John Lennon’s “Imagine,” because, she said, she had a great rapport with the late Beatle. Clark met Lennon when he and Yoko Ono were staging a bed-in for peace at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal in 1969.
Clark was in Montreal at the time performing in concert. Because she had recorded songs in French before she hit the top of the charts in the 1960s in England and the U.S, she decided to do a bilingual concert. But the audience wasn’t happy. “When I was singing in English, the French weren’t pleased. When I sang in French, the English weren’t pleased.”
Though she didn’t know Lennon, Clark thought he might have some advice on how to deal with the Montreal audiences.
“I went over to his hotel, and the concierge recognized me,” she said. “I just went in, and they were sitting in bed. John was so sweet and funny and totally got the problem. He put it in perspective.”
He also invited her to go into the living room and have a glass of wine.
“There were one or two people I knew and a few I didn’t,” she said. “There was this music going on. I didn’t realize at the time they were recording. We all started singing along with the music — it was ‘Give Peace a Chance.’ So I just happen to be on the record. I think Timothy Leary was on it and one of the Smothers Brothers.”
Clark began singing and acting professionally as a child in the 1940s, appearing in several films, including 1952’s “The Promoter” with Alec Guinness.
