Friday 21 Lifestyle | Music Friday, November 15, 2019 e wrote the music for “My Way”, one of one. Would I mind sharing the credit with him for the world’s most popular songs, but the music? HJacques Revaux would like to mention a “I said, ‘No problem’... at the time we didn’t few of his regrets. For one, “I don’t even have a know what we were doing,” Revaux said. And so photo with Frank Sinatra,” the French songwriter the song’s official credit still reads: “Music: laughed. The legendary American crooner may Claude Francois, Jacques Revaux. Lyrics: Gilles have made the song a global hit, but not many Thibaut.” And now, as tears subside, Revaux people know it was actually a French song first. finds it all so amusing. “I don’t regret it,” he said, Fewer still-not even in France, where the credit before admitting that actually he has one or two. often goes to the singer Claude Francois-are “My only regret is that I disappeared as the aware that Revaux wrote the original. composer” as far as the public was concerned, Yet half a century after he wrote the first he said. “Peace be upon his ashes, but Claude, draft of the classic, and despite being elbowed like all the big stars, want to claim the credit.” into the shadows not just once but twice, the That said, Revaux admitted that Francois 79-year-old Revaux is still happy he did it his sang it fantastically and gave a bit of “muscle” to way. The prolific songwriter scribbled down a his “syrupy” original. That summer the former number about a couple falling out of love titled Canadian teen idol Paul Anka heard the song “For Me” in his own rather idiosyncratic English while he was on holiday in France and later in 1967 when he was 27. He took it first to the rewrote its storyline into one of someone remi- In this file photo British singer Rod Stewart performs on stage during his concert as part of his ‘Hits “French Bob Dylan”, Hugues Aufray, who said, niscing on life. Tour’ at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam. — AFP “Bloody hell, it’s good, but it’s not for me,” Re- vaux told AFP. Rights sold for one dollar The British singer Petula Clark and the Having got the rights for a nominal dollar, he Egyptian-born diva Dalida also turned it down gave the song another tweak, especially for before Revaux-who by then had penned a string Sinatra, who had earlier told him that he was of hits-bumped into French megastar Francois in quitting show business. “I’m sick of it, son,” he the Riviera resort of Cannes that summer. They had told him, saying would record only one more ate together and “Cloclo”, as Francois is known album before he hung up his hat. But Anka to generations of his fans, teased Revaux over chipped away at him, and Sinatra recorded it at never writing a song for him. “You do all sorts of the end of 1968 “in one take”, according to the ritish pop stalwart Rod Stewart has spent he finally able to go full steam ahead with the rubbish for everyone else, why not for me?” Re- legend. decades laying down tracks of a different pastime. “I got my own bedroom and built a vaux recalled Francois telling him, even though Released a few months later, it was a massive Bkind thanks to a little-known lifelong layout all around the perimeter walls. Even the singer’s managers had rejected the tune. hit, boasting 75 weeks in the British Top 40 — a hobby-building model railways. The gravel- across the window,” Stewart said. Fast-forward record that still stands-and re-recorded by Elvis, voiced singer has spent the past 23 years cre- three decades and he had become an interna- Slightly done over the Sex Pistol’s Sid Vicious, Robbie Williams and ating an imaginary American city and railway in tional star, but he had not lost his enthusiasm Some time later sitting by the pool at Fran- Julio Iglesias. Today it is the song most played at his Los Angeles mansion. He opened up about for replica train sets. cois’s mansion, the singer asked him again. “Well, funerals in the world. Even so, Revaux had mixed his “addictive” hobby to “Railway Modeler”, Now living in the United States, he decided are you going to play me some of your rubbish feeling when he first heard Ol’ Blue Eyes sing it. bagging the cover page of the British hobbyist to embark on his most ambitious layout yet then?” he demanded. Revaux picked up his gui- “First of all I was happy, it was Sinatra, but magazine’s December issue. “When I take on based on American scenery, becoming a regu- tar-and the rest is history. Francois recorded the shame on me” he failed to realize it was a mas- something creative like this, I have to give it 110 lar customer at two shops selling model rail- song as “Comme d’Habitude” (As Usual), but be- terpiece, he admitted.—AFP percent,” Stewart told the publication in an ex- roads in Los Angeles. The music icon fore it was released Revaux got a call from his clusive interview. acknowledged he was so hooked that he would editor. “He said Claude wanted his name on all “If I’d have realized at the start it would have keep working while on the road touring-even the songs (on the album), and it wasn’t on this taken so long, I’d have probably said ‘No!’” The booking an extra room in hotels to serve as his father-of-eight-whose hits include “Maggie model-making workshop. May”, “You Wear It Well” and his cover of “Downtown Train”-said he began his latest ‘It’s the landscape I like’ and so many different tribes,” Epega told project soon after he built his LA home in the The 74-year-old, who revealed earlier this Slang spreads Reuters TV. “But the one we all speak is pid- early 1990s. He earmarked the attic for his in- year he has been given the all-clear after de- gin.... I think more people will be able to un- tricate cityscape, which he named “Grand veloping prostate cancer, added he was more derstand the opera and feel less intimidated Street and Three Rivers City”. It features sky- of a landscape artist than a train geek. “I can’t message for Nigeria’s ...because I think opera is for everyone.” scrapers, warehouses and hills, alongside rail- tell a Niagara from a Hudson,” Stewart said, ref- Nigerian-born Epega, 38, spent most of her way infrastructure like tracks, stations, tunnels erencing well-known US locomotives. “It’s the ‘opera queen’ formative years in Britain before returning and bridges. “I don’t like to see flat backdrops, landscape I like. Attention to detail, extreme home in 2008. they spoil the illusion, so I went for more build- detail, is paramount. There shouldn’t be any un- ressed in a bright red and blue robe Her ‘Song Queen: A Pidgin Opera’ - for ings and streets than tracks. Just to give it a sightly gaps, or pavements that are too clean.” and backed by a local band with an which she cites Fela Kuti and Katie Bush as great depth,” he said. Stewart is not the only celebrity to have re- Declectic range of instruments, Helen musical influences - debuted in London’s vealed a passion for model railways. Entrepre- Epega beats a steel drum as she declaims Royal Opera House in 2015, where she ‘I got hooked’ neur and film director Walt Disney, dramatically to an unseen audience. The added elements of Cockney slang to the li- The roots of Stewart’s hobby date back to singer-songwriter Neil Young, crooner Frank opera she composed and is performing in a bretto. It transferred to Cape Town the fol- his childhood in Britain, and a family holiday Sinatra and “The Who” frontman Roger Daltrey Lagos theatre is an unusual, trance-like mix lowing year and now she is performing it for aged eight to Bognor Regis on the English are all said to have been fellow enthusiasts. Dal- of classical and indigenous music - but what the first time in her home country. It tells of south coast. The ageing rocker recalled seeing trey was quoted by music publication the NME makes it unique is that she is singing in pid- a family of ethereal singers who try to main- a model railway shop’s window display and in 2014: “The great thing about model railways gin. By writing it in West Africa’s lingua tain peace and balance in the world’s realms thinking “if only I could get paid to build a is you can be doing a bit of woodwork, a bit of franca - a blend of English and indigenous through their songs. “I want to create an model railway like that”. But Stewart, who grew painting, a bit of this, a bit of that, and having languages - she hopes to spread its message identity through art that inspires pride...,” up in Archway, north London, opposite busy fun with your mates and you can listen to the as widely as possible. she said. “I really do believe that music can railway tracks, did not have enough room in the radio.”— AFP “I just wasn’t able to communicate with end all wars.” — Reuters family home for a model train set.