Sarstedt enjoyed 50-year musical career

SINGER-songwriter Peter Sarstedt (pictured) best known for his 1969 hit Where Do You Go To (My

Lovely), died on Sunday at the age of 75. The musician’s family released a statement announcing his death after a six-year battle with progressive supra-nuclear palsy, a rare brain disease that can cause problems with balance, movement, vision, speech and swallowing. Sarstedt’s most famous song, Where Do You Go

To (My Lovely), about a girl born in poverty who becomes a member of the European jet-set, topped the UK singles charts in February 1969.

It remained number one for four weeks and won the Ivor Novello award for best song composition. As of 1998, Sarstedt was reportedly still making £60 000 a year in royalties from it.

Over his 50-year career until his retirement due to ill health in 2010, Sarstedt made 14 albums, the last of which, Restless Heart, was released in 2013.

He released at least two singles a year between 1967 and 1987, including Beirut, Take Off Your Clothes, I’m A Cathedral and Frozen Orange Juice. Born into a musical family in Delhi, his parents were classical musicians and his brothers, Eden Kane (real name Richard Graham) and Clive Sands (real name Robin) both became pop stars.

His music came to the forefront again when Where Do You Go To (My Lovely) was used in the Wes Anderson films Hotel Chevalier and The Darjeeling Limited.

In the sleeve notes for his self-titled debut album, Sarstedt wrote that Where Do You Go To was based on a girl he “fell madly in love with” in Vienna but who later died in a hotel fire.

But in an interview in 2009, Sarstedt revealed that his explanation had been a lie and the song was actually based on his first wife, Anita Atke. Referring to the song’s protagonist Marie-Claire, he said: “Marie-Claire was meant to be a generic European girl, but if she was based on anybody it was my then Danish girlfriend Anita Atke.

“I had been introduced by a fellow busker while she was studying in Paris in the summer of ’66, and it was love at first sight. She watched as I composed because I was in her room most of the time, so she knows things about me then that others don’t.

“We got married in 1969 and divorced in 1974, but I still see her as we have a daughter and son.”