Any version of Lerner and Loewe's 'Wand'rin' Star' would make for an odd chart topper, but this version is odder than most. Taken from that year's big screen version of it's parent musical 'Paint Your Wagon', the overly misanthropic tone of the lyrics should surely see off any hope of mass appeal at birth, and it's not helped by the fact that this version is 'sung' by hardboiled American actor Lee Marvin, a man with a voice that makes Johnny Cash sound like Jimmy Somerville. To take us even further into the Twilight Zone, Nelson Riddle's orchestration plays for a good minute and a half before Marvin even starts up. It's hardly something conducive to radio play (yet it kept The Beatles off number one), it's almost as if Marvin is too embarrassed or afraid to open his mouth. And yet his slightly modulated drawl (you can hardly call it singing) understates the quiet resignation of the song and provides the genuine aura of a man destined to never find happiness. It generates the believability that makes this interpretation something greater than novelty:
"Do I know where hell is, hell is in hello
Heaven is goodbye forever, its time for me to go"
I have to confess I've never heard any straight version of this tune other than those that parody Marvin's croak, which shows how completely he made the song his own. I can also confess I can't imagine any other singer - Tom Waits excepted - delivering those lines with the same pathos but absence of self pity than Marvin manages. A strange number one maybe, but it's a good type of strangeness.
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