“This one is about meeting someone for the very first time and chatting her up on the streets of Soho and thinking I’d closed the deal and she got in the taxi and went home.” – Damian Lewis
We are getting very close now.
With Damian’s new single “Sweet Chaos” finally here and the album with the same title coming in June, the excitement is building. We’re in that waiting period— in the very best way.
So while we wait for the album to drop, we’re continuing our “Song of the Week” series, going back to the songs Damian has written and the stories behind them. And this week’s song takes us to Soho… because, after all, it takes two to tango 🙂
What sounds like a playful Soho story turns out to be the first chapter of a love story. And before I get to unpacking this song for you, if you missed the previous “Song of the Week” posts, you can catch up with them here.
I love the playful storytelling in Damian’s songs, and Soho Tango is no exception. Boy meets girl, boy flirts with girl, boy does not get the girl… 🙂
Two in the morning
Smokin’ on a Soho street
You told jokes, and I was laughin’
I asked if I could kiss you, please
But you said “no”
And you were gone
“I ain’t kissin’ you”
I said, “Why?”
But you had flown
You said, “‘Cause I ain’t in love with you”
As the boy and the girl tell jokes, laugh and smoke on Soho streets, Damian’s lyrics gives an accurate description of London street life in the wee hours from people stumbling on the streets to neon lights shining blue to rolling cigarettes. It makes me laugh when Damian sings the “Why?” and “What?” in such a surprised tone when the girl says she isn’t kissing him. Oh, and I adore Damian whistling in the song. Here is a recording of Soho Tango from Damian’s brilliant performance at The Tabernacle London as part of the London Jazz Festival back in November 2022.
Before performing Soho Tango at his live shows, Damian often shares a story from many years ago. One night in Soho, he spent hours on a street corner talking to a beautiful girl. He pulled out his best jokes, his best lines, and was sure the night would end with them going home together. But just as it seemed certain, a taxi pulled up, she thanked him for a lovely evening, and disappeared into the night.
For a long time, I wondered whether we knew the girl in the song. And only at his show in Stroud in March 2024 did Damian finally reveal the twist: she was the very same one for whom he wrote Little One.
Well, this is one very beautiful girl indeed.
“I got her in the end. And I got a song out of it.”
Soho Tango is one of my absolute favorites on Mission Creep. It is a playful song and I have a soft spot for songs with a whistling part to them. Oh, and I am not surprised one bit that the woman in the song turns out to be Helen. I salute her for saying she is not kissing him because she is not in love with him.
An older gentleman I met backstage in Poole on the second leg of Damian’s “Mission Creep” UK tour in spring 2024 knew Helen before he met Damian. And, guess what, he was familiar with the evening Damian sings about in Soho Tango. He told me that Helen knew Damian was the one very early on but she took her time with him. Good job, sister!
And when I share with Damian after the gig in Stroud that I love what Helen does in Soho Tango, he says:
“That’s why I married her.”
Being true to myself—and to the promise of sharing every bit of insight I can uncover in the Song of the Week series—I’ve tried to place this meeting within Damian’s timeline. My best guess is that the evening described in Soho Tango took place sometime between Helen’s run in Uncle Vanya at the Donmar Warehouse in late 2002 and then at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in early 2003, and the two of them acting together in Five Gold Rings at the Almeida Theatre in early 2004.
Even though I can’t find the original interview, I vividly remember Damian sharing that he saw Helen on stage for the first time in her captivating role as Yelena in Sam Mendes’ critically acclaimed revival of Uncle Vanya at Donmar Warehouse. Damian was with his father and he was very impressed by Helen’s performance that he told his father they should go backstage and meet her after the play. And I assume they did.
So this is very likely the evening the two first met. And I guess, sometime after this meeting, (or maybe before, or maybe that very night, who knows?) they had that evening in Soho, with Helen thanking Damian for a nice evening and getting into a cab and heading home 🙂
And then Damian, I think, started to work on getting her! One of the things he did was to call Helen and convince her to do a play called Five Gold Rings with him. Damian shares in an interview with The Evening Standard, which by the way, is one of my favorite interviews with him. The fact that the interviewer, Charlotte Edwardes has known Damian since they were in their early twenties may be what makes their conversation lively, real and playful. Read it!
“I persuaded her (Helen) to do a play which was not well-reviewed and she said: “Those were the worst reviews I’ve ever had and I blame you for making me do the play.’’’
But at least he got to snog her?
“Natch.”
This picture from play’s rehearsals speaks volumes for the two of them!
Matt Wolf, a theater critic who interviewed Damian at Times Talks London in May 2014, spends quite some time talking to Damian about each and every play he has done to date at length, well, except for one: When it comes to Five Gold Rings, Wolf mentions it briefly and as more of a personal highlight than a professional one for Damian!
Matt Wolf: “One production at The Almeida called Five Gold Rings was perhaps not that successful except that it has the woman whom you ended up marrying so I would assume it was a success in that way.”
Damian laughs: “Yeah.”
In the play, while Damian’s character Daniel and Helen’s character Miranda were falling in love, Damian and Helen were falling in love, too. Michael Attenborough, who directed the play, comments on his two leads’ on-stage chemistry:
“I could have warmed my hands on it! It was like directing a fire. They were playing two characters who shouldn’t be falling in love with each other – he was falling in love with his brother’s wife. And Damian and Helen were incredibly sexy together.”
Still, their romance was a slow burning one. Damian had a playboy reputation (I am glad I did not know of him back then — I like family men!) while Helen did not want anything but a committed relationship (Way to go, Helen!) Helen shared in an interview with The Evening Standard in 2006 that it took a year after Five Gold Rings for them to get together…
Damian shares with the Daily Mail:
“I had to work hard. And in this circumstance, every man in the world knows what working hard means.”
This should be one of the first, if not the first, picture in the media of the two of them as a couple. It seems they wanted to take their time to make their relationship public, probably the best strategy to get to know each other without that undesirable spotlight on their relationship.
