How we made: Stop the Cavalry

Jona Lewie, singer and songwriter

I never intended for this to become a Christmas single. It started life as an antiwar song. I had this line in my head – “Can you stop the gallantry?” – and found a melody for it. Then I changed “gallantry” to “cavalry” and everything just fell into place.

I started thinking about the Crimean war and the Light Brigade, about how officers would yell “Charge!” and few of the men who did so would come back. Then I started thinking about other scenarios, like the trenches in both world wars. Back then, in the late 1970s and early 80s, the possibility of nuclear war felt very real, so I also penned the line: “Mary Bradley waits at home, in the nuclear fallout zone.”

The opening line – “Hey, Mr Churchill comes over here / To say we’re doing splendidly” – wasn’t a dig at Churchill, who was a great leader during the war. I just imagined a tired private who was fed up with Churchill forever trying to gee up the troops, who would be shot if they deserted. I imagined my soldier standing for prime minister and saying: “If I get elected, I will stop the cavalry.”

I signed to Stiff Records with 50 demos to my name. When I played Stop the Cavalry to Dave Robinson, who founded Stiff, he said it was “just another antiwar song”. I’d just bought an electronic keyboard – the Poly Moog, as used by Gary Numan – so I went back and beefed up the arrangement, playing the melody on a kazoo. Dave loved it.

The festive angle came from the line: “I wish I was at home for Christmas.” My soldier is in the trenches, daydreaming about Christmas dinner with his family. When we recorded it properly, I got a Salvation Army brass band to play the kazoo parts and the co-producer, Bob Andrews, suggested adding a tubular bell. That made it even more Christmassy. To make the video, we went trudging around London’s Hampstead Heath in military gear in late November 1980. It was snowing and I was freezing cold and bloody uncomfortable. So you could say I was method acting.

The song sold 4m copies. It was kept off the top slot that Christmas because John Lennon had just been murdered. He was at No 1 and No 2. I was just thinking: “Wow! I’m at No 3!” The song has been on Christmas compilations ever since. I earn more from Stop the Cavalry than from the rest of my songs put together. It was the biggest hit I’d had since Seaside Shuffle with Terry Dactyl and the Dinosaurs.

Jona had songs coming out of his ears. He’d talk for hours about how every one of them was a work of genius. My wife still shudders to remember how I wouldn’t come home for ages because I’d be in a meeting with Jona.

I thought “Hey Mr Churchill” was a bit corny, but Jona’s lyrics were always very out there. I got Bob in to produce the single and he got a great synthesiser sound, but Jona didn’t like anyone interfering with his material, so they fought all the time. Jona would have met someone at the bus stop who’d told him a grand piano was the perfect instrument for it.

I’ve always loved a Christmas single. I think it was me who suggested the brass band, actually, to make it more Christmassy. We argued over that too. Jona’s a passionate, lovely, talented geezer. He has tapes full of ideas, and never gives up on any of them. He recently played me some ideas for a new album. I said: “Jona, these are the same songs I rejected 35 years ago.”