THIS PAST FEW weeks, shoppers have been bombarded with the usual classic Christmas hits from Slade, Wizzard, Shakin' Stevens and Band Aid, as retailers desperately try to lift our Christmas spirits and loosen our purses. One song you're bound to have heard at least 100 times this (and every other) season was, funnily enough, never intended as a Christmas song. Blame Stiff Records for your annual aural pain. When a canny record label exec spotted a reference to the C-word in the lyrics, which chimed nicely with the song's Salvation Army-style brass band arrangement, the stage was set for Jona Lewie's Stop the Cavalryto join the pantheon of deathless festive hits.
Stop The Cavalry, an anti-war song sung from the perspective of a reluctant soldier, hit number three in the UK in Christmas 1980, and it's now so closely associated with the festive season that it's hard to believe it actually topped the charts in France in the spring of 1981. "The soldier in the song is a bit like the eternal soldier at the Arc de Triomphe," Lewie said. "But the song actually had nothing to do with Christmas when I wrote it. There is one line about him being on the front and missing his girlfriend: 'I wish I was at home for Christmas.' The record company picked up on that from a marketing perspective, and added a tubular bell."
Stop The Cavalrywas not Lewie's first taste of chart success. Earlier that year, he'd had a Top 10 hit with the novelty synth-pop song You'll Always Find Me In the Kitchen at Parties, and, eight years previously, went to number two with Seaside Shuffle,under the name Terry Dactyl the Dinosaurs.
Southampton-born John Lewis was always more likely to be found playing a piano, accordion or ukulele than a conventional electric guitar. He got into blues and Cajun music aged 11 after hearing Big Bill Broonzy, and joined his first blues band, The Corsairs, at 17. He studied sociology at London University, and moonlighted as a solo blues singer and pianist in such London folk and blues venues as the Troubador, Bunjies, Les Cousins and the 100 Club.
In 1969, Lewie joined Brett Marvin and the Thunderbolts as their singer and pianist. The band signed to the Robert Stigwood Agency and bagged themselves a UK tour support slot with Eric Clapton’s band Derek the Dominos.
When Lewie came up with Seaside Shuffle, an accordion-based zydeco tune that conjured up images of deckchairs and end-of-pier sideshows, his band were eager to record it, but felt it didn’t fit in with their bluesy style, so they put it out under the pseudonym of Terry Dactyl the Dinosaurs. With a little help from (now-disgraced) pop impresario Jonathan King, Seaside Shuffle went to number two, but Terry Dactyl was doomed to be a one-hit wonder, and by the end of the 1970s Lewie’s music career faced extinction.
Enter Stiff Records, home of Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Ian Dury and Madness, who signed Lewie as a solo artist, and marketed him to an emerging New Wave audience. He went on the Be Stiff tour with Wreckless Eric, Lene Lovich, Rachel Sweet and Mickey Jupp, and scored a hit with the unlikely party anthem, You’ll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties.
In 2010, a canny advertising exec, noticing the reference to a "kitchen" in the song, thought it would make a great soundtrack for an Ikea ad. The song was remixed by hipster band Man Like Me, and the ad was shot on a set consisting entirely of Ikea kitchens, bringing Lewie into the living rooms of a new generation (he also starred in the ad, as the host of the party). Encouraged by the renewed interest in his work, not to mention the perennial popularity of Stop The Cavalry, Lewie, now 64, is planning to release new material soon. In the meantime, don't be surprised if Seaside Shufflegets turned into a massive Ibiza club hit.
