Peter Sarstedt

Peter Eardley Sarstedt (10 December 1941 – 8 January 2017) was a British singer-songwriter and instrumentalist. He was the brother of singers Eden Kane, a teenage pop idol, and Clive Sarstedt, with both of whom he also recorded and performed as The Sarstedt Brothers. The Sarstedts had the distinction of being the only family from which three siblings separately attained chart success without any of them ever charting as a combined act.

Although his music was classified as pop, it generally encompassed ballads derived from traditional folk music rather than traditional rock and roll. He is best known for writing and performing the song "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?", which topped the UK Singles Chart in 1969. Set to a "faux European waltz tune" and described as "a romantic novel in song", it won an Ivor Novello Award. The record remained Sarstedt's biggest hit. He had one more hit single and one hit album but despite numerous releases never had chart success again.

He released the album England's Lane in 1997, which continued the story of the fictional Marie-Claire in the song "The Last of the Breed"; a planned third installment titled "Farewell Marie-Claire" did not materialise.

Sarstedt continued to tour mainly in 1960s revival-type shows, until his retirement in 2010 due to ill health.

Early life

Sarstedt was born, as one of six, in 1941, to English expatriates Albert James Sarstedt, an accountant and civil servant and his second wife Cora (née Byrne), in New Delhi in what was then British India. His ancestors were long resident in India; his ancestor Christian Ludwig Wilhelm Sarstedt, was born in 1841 in Hanover, Germany and migrated to India where he died in 1893. Both of his parents had trained as classical musicians.