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  CHOOSE ANOTHER VIDEO — SCROLL DOWN FOR MORE  
Canoe
During Pete's music's 'Wilderness Years'
(when he held a senior post in BBC Light
Entertainment, producing many classic
radio shows) this song, often rumoured, seldom heard, came to represent an
almost legendary unattainable treasure.
You'd Better Face It Boy
New to most fans from the CD 'The Colours
Of The Night', this song actually dates from
the earliest days of the James/Atkin song-
writing partnership, first appearing on the
1967 privately-pressed LP 'While The Music
Lasts'. Here Simon accompanies on piano.
The Man Who Walked Toward The Music
Screen-Freak
London venue The Pheasantry on March 9th, 2024, and Pete Atkin kicked off the evening with this pair of Atkin/James songs. Here Simon Wallace accompanies Pete on piano.
The Flowers And The Wine
"The hardest songs to write are small, neat ones – maybe because every single word counts even more than usual. Clive and I always liked the different ways the middle bits in songs could work (the middle eight, the bridge, the release, the second theme)."
Practical Man
March 9th, 2024 -- Pete plays "Practical Man" with Simon Wallace on piano. Pete comments: Here’s an absurdly romantic version of a true story about the early days of Clive’s and my life in the music biz. Only the facts have been changed.
Beware Of The Beautiful Stranger
The title song from Pete's first commercial album and always a sure hit with audiences new and old. The idea for this one came when Clive was passing a travelling fairground and noticed that the fortune-tellers all had the same family name.
Girl On The Train
According to Clive, this story happened on the direct line between Cambridge and Oxford, which really did exist a long time ago, but the girl was reading Lamartine and Clive changed it for the rhyme, even though ‘Verlaine’ doesn’t really rhyme with ‘train’.
Touch Has A Memory
Pete puts down his guitar to sing this, his second encore at The Pheasantry in March 2024. "The idea for a song can sometimes come from just a phrase, and that's what happened with this one. The title phrase here belongs originally to the poet John Keats."
The ‘lockdown’ series #1: Screen-Freak
With the suspension of live performances
imposed in Spring 2020 by the COVID-19
outbreak, Pete decided, with accompanist
Simon Wallace, to give his fans a series of
virtual concerts. This song, from his 1973
album 'A King At Nightfall' was their first.
#2: Girl On The Train
Simon assembled the tracks he recorded
at his home studio in Dulwich along with
those Pete laid down in Bristol, to create
the multitrack videos. Here he replicates
Pete's 1970 strings arrangement using
three cello parts... and a model railway.
#3: Have You Got A Biro I Can Borrow?
What a difference Simon's sweeping, sonorous piano intro makes, to this, one
of the first songs Pete co-wrote with Clive James. The calligraphy, in Japanese kanji (assimilated Chinese characters) spells
out 'Aikido', a Japanese martial art.
#4: The Last Hill That Shows You All The Valley
Another from 1973, with a lyric revisiting
Clive's perennial theme of humanity's folly
through wars down the ages, this version maintains the urgent drive of the original.
A cracking percussion track here, and an
interesting set of changes in the coda.
#5: Driving Through Mythical America
Another percussive treatment, this really
bursts into life where the intro meets the
first line, driven by rock-band bass. Clive's
song about the Kent State shootings puts
the event squarely in his named construct,
society sleepwalk-enacting popular culture.
#6: Razor Boy
A break from self-penned material. Steely Dan fans will recognise this song by Becker and Fagen, from the Dan's second album. Straightforward arrangement here, single-track vocal, though with some nifty piano fills. The video has a real 'live' presence.
#7: The Road Of Silk
Named for the ancient trade route from
China to Europe, a lyric full of half-recalled
childhood imagery as we contemplate the
subject's last days. Especially poignant in
memory of its author, whose magnificent
circus finally left town in 2019.
#8: The Party's Moving On
Pete Atkin and Simon Wallace tackle this
very early James/Atkin song, demo'd by
Julie Covington on February 4th, 1969. It needed just three almost imperceptible pronoun changes for Pete to make it his
own. Marvellous keyboard work!
#9: The Go-Away Man
You'll not have heard this: an unrecorded
(not even demo'd) James/Atkin song from
the late 1960s — a classic Jamesian lyrical
theme from the man who's been around.
Pete and Simon work their magic-at-a-
distance to bring it to us, 50-plus years on.
#10: History And Geography
As lockdown returns to England, Pete Atkin
and Simon Wallace apply their considerable
complementary skills to this new recording
of one of the greatest James/Atkin songs,
complete with an unmistakeable line from
Shakespeare.
The Colours Of The Night
Coincident with the release of his 2015 CD,
Pete visited Clive in the book-lined study/
kitchen of his Cambridge home. Here we
see them in conversation, intercut with clips
from some of the songs, shot in Simon
Wallace's studio in south London.
Payday Evening
Since 2016 Pete has performed regularly
with Simon at The Pheasantry, basement
jazz venue of Pizza Express in London's
Kings Road. Here he sings the song that
gave Midnight Voices its name. Audience
video by Seán Kelly, 31st January 2018.
All The Dead Were Strangers
In 2006 Pete played a special concert for
members of Midnight Voices at the Lantern
Theatre, a bijou 80-seat venue in Sheffield,
with a reception afterwards. It was such a
success that he returned in 2009, when he
played us this song about the Vietnam War.
Tenderfoot
May 2012 saw a very special event. Pete
performed a solo concert at the historic
Château Vieux de Saint-Germain-en-Laye
just outside Paris, plus an all-day event in
an adjacent walled garden. Here he is with
this James/Atkin song from 1974.
History And Geography
Pete's 'comeback' gig (though he'd never really gone away) was headlining the 1997 Monyash Festival in Derbyshire, with Julie Covington as his special guest. This was a song new to everyone there, eventually to appear on 'The Lakeside Sessions' in 2001.
The Old Grey Whistle Test
BBC TV session 25th June 1974 for 'The
Old Grey Whistle Test' presented by Bob
Harris. Pete Atkin plays 'An Array Of
Passionate Lovers' and 'Care-Charmer
Sleep', accompanied by Steve Cook (bass
guitar) and Paul Keogh (electric guitar).
National Steel
This song, dating from the early 1970s,
relates how Pete became the owner of this
fine vintage instrument, an original National
Steel guitar. Here Pete plays the song to an
appreciative crowd at the first Monyash
Festival, Derbyshire, England, in 1997.
Errant Knight (abridged)
Pete proves there was life after 'Live Libel'
(1975). Here he appears on Yorkshire
Television's game show '3-2-1' (Series 2,
Episode 14, 'Folk Legends') in January
1980, in an amusing routine featuring a
pull-along toy horse. The mail man?
The Way You Are With Me
Demonstrating that the best vantage point
for an audience video is the one where you
most need to keep yourself small, I shot
this at the Dulwich Festival in 2009, where
Pete appeared with Sarah Moule, Simon
Wallace and Nicki Leighton-Thomas. [SJB]
Beware Of The Beautiful Stranger
Pete plays this, one of his most perennially
popular songs, at Bernard Hoskin's venue Acoustic Routes, in the basement of the
CB2 restaurant in Cambridge, on the 11th
of October 2014.
More at www.acousticroutes.co.uk
ATKIN GIG GUIDE
The Pheasantry — New date !
Now available for booking, via THIS PAGE
The historic London venue once again presents
Pete Atkin
accompanied on piano by Simon Wallace
Saturday, 20th September
The Pheasantry is at 152 Kings Road (Chelsea), London SW3
The Mermaid Wednesday, 24th September
Pete plays
The Mermaid, Exeter
11b Gandy Street, Exeter EX4 3LS
Full details HERE
The Lamb Wednesday, 20th May 2026
Pete plays
The Lamb Folk Club
High Street, Eastbourne BN21 1HH
Catch Pete on his other gig, keyboarding with Bristol-based
alt-country sensation THE SHRINKS on songs by the likes of
Waits, Prine, Newman, Hiatt, Parsons and... David Brown.
SITE BLOG
LATEST ALBUM: WHERE IT HURTS
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Next Shrinks gig:
— when we find out we'll let you know!
Interested in booking Pete Atkin?
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DISCOGRAPHY of all Pete Atkin recordings
— includes listing of all known songs, recorded or not —
with lyrics, chords, annotations and session notes
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The Luck of the Draw
The Clive James – Pete Atkin Songbook, Volume 2
New arrangements of Pete Atkin classics, plus some never before recorded. With Simon Wallace and band. Released September 1st 2023
Hillside Music On-Line Shop

The Clive James Website, restored!
Following the collapse of Web hosting for Clive James's website in 2018, with loss of all content, we have constructed, with the blessing of Clive's daughter Claerwen, an enhanced and updated replica of the original site, true in style and content to Clive's vision, as far as possible given the loss of the original files. Our “Clive James Website Archive” is huge, contains almost all of his published work, and is hosted on a subdomain of Claerwen's new clivejames.com. Find the Archive at
archive.clivejames.com
cartoon by David Parkins for Edinburgh Fringe 2008 show
[David Parkins]
Julie Covington — The Beautiful Changes

Not a Pete Atkin album as such, but Julie Covington's debut LP belongs firmly on this page. It came out in 1971, five years before Julie's massive success with "Don't Cry For Me Argentina". Back then she was little known outside Cambridge Footlights, but there she was already becoming recognised for her fine vocal interpretations of Pete's songs. The record features 11 Atkin/James compositions, and some of the same noted rock sessioneers who played on Pete's second and third albums. After decades of existence only as a rare vinyl collectable, and then two CD reissues, "The Beautiful Changes" is now available as an MP3 download.

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peteatkin.com
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Disclaimer : I, Stephen J Birkill, operate Smash Flops, the Pete Atkin Website, as a spare-time non-profit venture, to provide a free source of information and entertainment for fans of Pete Atkin. Though it has Pete's blessing, it remains independent: this isn't an official site in the usual sense of being sponsored or financially supported by the artist or by any commercial or publishing body. All rights are reserved, but if you believe I'm using something of yours I shouldn't, please let me know. If I am, I'll remove it — SJB.