Peter Straker
This One’s One Me
Three-CD box set including 1977 solo album produced by Freddie Mercury.
Jamaican-born singer and actor Peter Straker first came to prominence in the early 70s when, following his 1972 RCA album Private Parts, he was touted as the “black Bowie”. He later developed a strong friendship with Freddie Mercury, who agreed to produce his next album, This One’s On Me. That was followed by Changeling (’78) and Real Natural Man (’79).
Mercury might have known very well how to throw a flamboyant, theatrical pose on stage, but compared with Straker he was Lemmy. Rock was not actually his natural element, cabaret and musicals were. His every vocal syllable treads a board. This One’s On Me from a musical perspective is a bit Rock Follies-orthodox, and Straker often preferred, in his actorly way, to leave the script, the songwriting to others. However, his versions of Brecht/Weill’s Alabama Song and Jacques Brel’s Jackie are delivered with expert lyrical emphasis, and The Saddest Clown touches on a theme he would return to frequently: the sadness behind the theatre mask, when the applause and the audience have melted away, masking/unmasking a private sadness.
Changeling was produced by Tim Friese-Greene, later of Talk Talk, and also features Karl Wallinger, later of World Party, on piano, alongside guitar regular and (co-) songwriter Mike Allison, whose sympathy with Straker is evident on the likes of Star Circus. Wallinger offers a welcome change of cadence with his own composition Believer. Friese-Greene, meanwhile, offers a touch of studio atmosphere here and there, for example on Legs. But often Straker is at his best when the accompaniment is most spare and raw, as on the Tim Buckley-esque Talk About Me.
Real Natural Man his its more playfully ironic moments of sexual teasing, including the title track, and Nasty on which he thoroughly relishes a lyric extolling the masochistic aspects of S&M, urging his ‘girl’ to ‘whip me’ and practically woofs the word ‘abuse’. Again, however, sadness is at hand, on It Ain’t Easy, co-written by Straker and Allison: ‘It ain’t easy having a good time/It ain’t easy having to find a rhyme.’
Straker was just finding his songwriting voice at this point, but the album releases promptly dried up and he was lost to the theatre, to Tommy and The Wiz. ■■■■■■■■■■