26 October 1972
Others abide Operation Yewtree’s questioning; Gilbert is free. Even with lines like “to me you’re more than a child” and “in spite of our age difference” there’s no implication of anything untoward in ‘Clair’. We know that this is simply the Gilbertian muse in action: take an idea whimsically, run with it schmaltzily, watch it sell like hot cakes inexplicably.
Time makes ancient good uncouth, and today we find this sort of thing far beyond our taste for the saccharine and the socially acceptable, but surely even in 1972 this must have turned as many heads as stomachs. Still, ‘Clair’ was just how a lot of chart pop fans in the early-’70s took their chart pop: escapist and unworldly. A lot of it is simply impervious to critique; there’s no alternate reading or subtext for the happy-go-lucky whistling intro, the key change into the corny harmonica solo (played by Gordon Mills – father of Clair and manager of Gilbert) and the sentimental ending with giggling by the song’s subject herself. The fact that Gilbert and papa Mills would later part ways and end up in court over royalties—the first of two landmark cases won by Gilbert—adds a retrospective cloud of context that nonetheless fails to overshadow the properties of ‘Clair’, such as they are. It is what it is. You like it or you don’t. That said, I’m mystified at how many people did like it and will, come Eurovision 1976, go on to like even more of it.
Of course, as usual, Gilbert teases us with what might have been. The Paul-esque tune is as catchy as kindergarten chickenpox. As on ‘Ooh-Wakka-Doo-Wakka-Day’ the arrangement has a Beach Boys breeziness and shimmer, especially in the dabs of harpsichord. “You can be murder” is an everyday phrase—albeit another of this song’s lyrics that one should no longer say to a child—that shows Gilbert has the astute songwriter’s knack for taking something commonplace and making it strange. It’s redundant of me to plead for that Gilbert, as if my favourite part of the candy floss is the stick. You listen to Gilbert, you better like spun sugar. But you still need the stick.
So, once more I’m torn over Gilbert. ‘Clair’ contains enough shards of magic to reinforce his status as Ireland’s greatest ever pop songwriter. And yet I never want to hear it again. I suspect the Claires, Clairs and Clares of this world may feel the same, consoled perhaps by the fact that no radio station today would ever play ‘Clair’ now. Next up: the one about the dog. The Gilbert conundrum rolls along.
