Sarstedt Brothers: Chinese Restaurant

Peter Sarstedt was the middle of three brothers, I wrote when choosing his Frozen Orange Juice many Sundays ago.

And I went on to say:

As an article on his website explains: 

We were born in India and we came to England in 1954, just prior to the Rock & Roll explosion” Peter explained. “Our story is, we started off as a skiffle group, then got into Rock & Roll and then split up and had our individual successes in the charts. The Sarstedt Brothers had hits from 1961 to 1976; three brothers having separate hits in different eras”. 

The eldest brother Richard, under the name Eden Kane, had great success early in the early 1960s. The youngest brother Clive, who called himself Robin Sarstedt, reached no. 3 in 1976 with "My Resistance is Low".

What I also wanted to say then was that the three brothers had released a single together, but I could not find a mention of it online.

I would have been inclined to think I had imagined it, except that I had such a clear memory of the couplet "The men from Mars/in their Japanese cars."

Now I have found it online, and it turns out to be an interesting record. Do I detect a note of distaste as Seventies materialism replaces the dreams of the Sixties?

The brothers recorded a whole LP together in 1973 - Worlds Apart Together - but this song does not appear on it.

You will also find Chinese Restaurant in a list of Noel Edmonds' records of the week from that era. Studying it reminds he that in those days he was one of Radio One's cooler DJs.

Not as cool as Johnnie Walker, but still cool. It was all a long time ago.