The Life For Me

Reading this feature about the gorgeous but short-lived 1960s magazine London Life I came across this marvelous bit of pop trivia about a promotional idea cooked up by managing editor David Puttnam (yes, that David Puttnam):

One of his more extravagant (though certainly forward-thinking) ideas was to ask Burt Bacharach to write a song for the magazine. “He was very big at the time and it struck me that if he could write a song with London Life as the title it could help us,” says Puttnam. The idea was that the song would garner huge, free publicity for the magazine through radio play. So Puttnam headed up to the Edinburgh Festival, where Bacharach was performing, to suggest the idea. Luckily, he took Jean Shrimpton with him. “Bacharach was much more interested in meeting her than me,” says Puttnam, and he agreed to the plan. Lulu was to have recorded it: she was unavailable, so Anita Harris did it instead.

It's extra marvelous to me because I work in the magazine business and this is like my dream of what the job should be like. Sadly, my chances of jetting off to meet a pop star with a supermodel on my arm are slim to none. While I'm sure they gave him a large pile of money to do it, I'm still amazed that Bacharach agreed to write a promo song for a magazine, but I guess the presence of Jean Shrimpton will persuade a man to do anything. Hell, I'd write a song for a church newsletter if she asked me to.

I think the story is a bit better than the actual record though. The song is fine but Anita Harris isn't exactly Dusty, let alone Lulu.

Download: London Life - Anita Harris (mp3)

PS: The illustration on the cover above was by a young man whose name you might know: Ian Dury