How I wrote 'Greek Street'
'Greek Street' has become my most-played, most-requested, most-spoken about song (at the merch stand at least). I think it has something to do with the universality of the subject. It's about a young lad falling head over heels with a young lass who has other plans. That it's set in London's Soho means that a lot of people have had very similar experiences. Here's how it came about.
I wrote 'Greek Street' in about 2019, and the bones of it came quickly – structure, verses, all there almost at once. But I couldn't leave it alone after that. I picked at it in my notebook for a good few days before I was satisfied it was done. I was reaching for something Bert Jansch-ish, which makes sense given where the song is set: Greek Street was home to Les Cousins, the club I've been writing a book about, so the ghost of that scene was already in the room before I'd worked out what the song was about. What it's about, underneath, is a girlfriend I had in the mid-90s who worked at the Palace Theatre on Cambridge Circus. The backstage door came out onto Greek Street, and I used to wait for her there, then we'd drink at the Spice of Life on Moor Street before wandering down Greek Street, sometimes over onto Charing Cross Road, no particular direction, no particular hurry.
I've recorded it three times and I'm still not sure I've got it right. The first version was a standalone single with Jon Nice on keyboards and Lukas Drinkwater on double bass; the second added Jackie Oates on backing vocals for Before I Knew What Had Begun I Had Already Lost. Both, I think, are a bit overwrought. It's live that the song found its shape – I've played it around 120 times now, more than anything else in the set, and it's changed with every one of those gigs. BONES ended up with two versions for that reason – Jon Nice on keyboards, recorded live at a folk club, and one entirely solo, recorded at the Albion Rooms in Margate. Neither is the definitive one. I think the definitive one only exists on a given night, in front of whoever's there... although I'd love to know which one you prefer. Feel free to let me know in the comments below.
When I sing it, I watch the whole thing happen – the grey Soho morning, the glitter in her hair, the bus to Lewisham, the morning sea at Brighton – like I'm narrating a film I can see with my eyes shut. And I do shut my eyes, for most of it. Six minutes later, opening them and finding an audience there is always a small shock, like I'd forgotten I wasn't alone.
Not everyone's a fan, though. I played it every night supporting Martin Carthy in 2023, and there's a show at Kings Place I still think about (I have a recording of it which I may put out on one of my paid tiers on Patreon sometime soon), where you could've heard a pin drop. Martin, less enamoured, seemed to know every phrase of it by the end of that run. I swapped it out for the last couple of shows, and the relief on his face was hard to miss – something along the lines of, "thank god I don't have to sit through all that again!"
A few people have also picked me up on the 'platform heels' line, too: why would a girl heading to Les Cousins be wearing them, when platforms weren't a thing until the 70s? Fair point, except you have to remember that the song isn't set in the Les Cousins years. It's the mid-90s, when 60s and 70s retro was everywhere, and platforms were back. The club's ghost is in the song's sound, not its timeline.
It's not a hit by any reasonable definition – a few thousand streams, nothing more (although a journalist did once refer to it as one of the great London songs... which, y'know, I'll take). But it's the one people ask for at the merch desk, more than anything else I've written. I suppose everyone's got a Greek Street of their own, one way or another.
'Greek Street' by Jon Wilks is available on most streaming services. It can also be downloaded from Jon's Bandcamp page, where you'll find it on his BONES album: https://jonwilks.bandcamp.com/album/bones
