— Mark Ellen
As chart bronze medalists go, they don't get much bigger than "Stop the Cavalry". 1980's Christmas number one stakes ought to have been a thrilling race with credible challengers Adam & The Ants, Madness and The Police all in contention. (Curiously, both ABBA and Blondie released their swansong imperial period chart toppers — "Super Trouper" and "The Tide Is High" respectively — too early on in the autumn for a serious push come December) Still, none of these groups delivered their best work and it ought to have been left to perennial also-ran Jona Lewie and his poignant wartime anthem to take that year's crown. And it would have had it not been for Mark David Chapman and a children's choir. "Stop the Cavalry" got stuck in the trenches with no chance of further advancement.
In the aftermath of his shocking assassination in New York on December 8, 1980, there was a glut of John Lennon product filling the shelves. While the Americans loyally took the already released "(Just Like) Starting Over" to the top for over a month, the British had a great deal more to choose from. "Starting Over" was already slipping down the charts by the time Lennon was gunned down but it had a head start on its rivals and rebounded by flying straight to the top a week later. Others would join it soon. The week of Christmas there were three Lennon singles in the Top 10 (the other two being the seasonal classic "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" and the now often unfairly maligned "Imagine") and it put them in competition with each other. (A week later the three singles remained in their exact same chart spots before "Happy Xmas" managed to climb two places in the first week of 1981, a sign of how high the demand was for Lennon material at this sad point) This left a spot open for Jona Lewie, who unfortunately ended up getting usurped by the St. Winifred's School Choir with their unspeakably awful "There's No One Quite Like Grandma".
Sally Lindsay was a seven-year-old student who sang on the unexpected Christmas number one and who would one day go on to play the character of Shelly on Coronation Street. She has said how bad she felt that they deprived Britain of having Lennon top the charts over the holiday because their record was "crap". But the real shame was that Jona Lewie's vastly superior Christmas record didn't have the legs to beat out both of them.
Lewie was one of those people who had been signed to the Stiff label and, thus, was tied to the pub rock scene. Like of a lot figures attached to it, he was older than your average pop star, having been a veteran of a variety of bands throughout the seventies. The pub rockers had some things in common — they tended to place a premium on songwriting and had their roots in sixties' pop — but the music itself varied greatly from one artist to the next. Lewie had been raised on blues and jazz but he also had talents that gravitated towards folk. Those pub rockers knew their stuff and could play damn-near any style requested of them.
As Mark Ellen notes, Lewie had been left behind as his colleagues ventured beyond the Canvey Island clubs. The charts alluded him until the spring of 1980 when "You'll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties" gave him a much needed Top 20 hit. Sounding like a much more laid back Ian Dury, he spins a humourous yarn about, er, always being in the kitchen at parties. He's backed by a vaguely reggae beat and plenty of sythny bits which are interesting if not quite engaging. If it happens to be a novelty song then the gag wears thin pretty quickly; if it isn't a novelty then it just seems like a joke and not even a very funny one.
"You'll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties" gave Lewie a foothold in the hit parade but it's likely that "Stop the Cavalry" would have done well regardless. He may not have written it with Christmas in mind — though isn't it odd how these unintended Yuletide numbers always appear just in time for the big day — but the combination of the season, the song's message, the instrumentation and a tune that thousands of people could get behind ensured that it was going to do very well.
That bit of reggae remains from its predecessor — albeit slowed down and played as if on a pump organ — but the synths are kept in check by what Ellen calls a "sort of Salvation Army backing" of "tubas, drum rolls, sleigh bells, etc.". (Again, why is it that sleigh bells always end up in songs that aren't supposed to be meant to be Christmassy?) While "...Kitchen at Parties" tried too hard to be jolly, there's nothing similar going on here. Lewie plays the part of a simple Tommy and it is his less-than-lettered observations that make the song so charming ("...I'll run for all presidencies": a vow he clearly didn't put much thought into); by contrast, lyrics that hint at much more aware soldier ("while the Tsar and Jim have tea": I feel compelled to look up who this 'Jim' is meant to be but I also feel like I shouldn't have to) distract a bit from the concise narrative. But why nitpick when I can happily listen and sing along?
There's nothing especially brilliant about "Stop the Cavalry" but it's difficult to imagine a Christmas compilation or playlist without it. Yet, there are worries that it may gradually fade from Britain's seasonal canon in favour of olde time American classics by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, as well as Mariah Carey's slightly overrated "All I Want for Christmas Is You". The British deal with reality in their Christmas songs, even if it's a fantasy of said reality. It was bad enough when Mark Chapman and some brats from Manchester ruined Jona Lewie's chances of nabbing the Christmas number one but the chances of someone like him getting that close again are growing increasingly remote.
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Ellen describes this eight song mini album (which, strangely, qualified at the time as a single due to only being available on tape) as "Brilliant!" but he neglects to mention the music within, so I chose to disqualify it as a de facto Single of the Fortnight on those grounds. Malcolm McLaren's charges that he nicked from the original Adam & The Ants as well as teenage vocalist Annabelle Lwin were expert at pressing people's buttons as well as keeping a more genuine punk spirit alive, even if it was as contrived as Jimmy Pursey put upon rage. After-all, no one else championed tapes like they did: they released the first cassette single (with a blank second side) and this was in effect a brand new LP available only in this most D.I.Y. of formats. A triumph of packaging and marketing to the extent the music within hardly matters.
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