The Dave Clark Five

[Rolf Lundgren]

Dave Clark has recently loosened his white knuckled grip on the DC5 back catalogue and released a greatest hits. Emblazoned on the album cover is the sentence 'THE DC5 SOLD OVER 100 MILLION RECORDS' in case you were thinking of criticising them.

Revered in America as being one of the bands at the vanguard of the British Invasion but largely ignored over here since their sixties heyday, it's hard to know where to place them. I knew the big hits but I watched Tom Hanks' Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame induction speech which got me thinking maybe there's more than meets the eye and it didn't take much digging to find out about Dave's questionable behaviour with the band such as putting them on a salary, allegedly stealing credit for songwriting and talk of session drummers on their more successful songs.

For everyone knocking Dave, there's a fair few who stick up for him too for having the foresight to run the band like a business and hover up all their song and performance rights. If the plan was to record a few belting songs and make it big in America then mission accomplished but in terms of sustaining a legacy they've been hampered by Dave apparently not willing to let their songs be used as much as they could have.

So what do other readers think about them? If we get bored we can talk about how Dave looks like a Klingon nowadays.

[studpuppet]

I really, really, really want an unauthorised biography. His self-puffing documentary has made me yearn to hear a different viewpoint on his life.

[DrGreggles]

"Based on melodies originally whistled by Dave Clark"

[non capisco]

And I'm feeling..
BOMP BOMP
*Grandstand theme plays*

[Shaky]

So what do other readers think about them? If we get bored we can talk about how Dave looks like a Klingon nowadays.

I'm happy to jump straight into that, tbh:

[daf]

Not even the best drummer in the Dave Clark Five!

Bobby Graham : "The truth of the sessions is probably better known now than any other time. It only recently was revealed that I played the drums on the Dave Clark Five records, for example. That fact was hidden and I didn't mind. It didn"t make me a fortune, but I didn"t feel aggrieved in any way, that the stuff I played on made a lot of people rich.  We were being paid a hell of a lot of money back then. My rent money was about £5 a week in the early 60s and I was getting £7.50 a session. I drove a Jaguar, had a lovely home; I can't knock it."

"Dave wanted to produce and he couldn't be up in the box and down in the studio at the same time. Mike Smith had written 'Glad All Over' with him and they weren't too sure what they wanted from the drums. I was playing how I would normally play with the hi-hat, snare and bass and Dave asked, 'Bobby, can you make that simpler please?' He didn't want complicated fill-ins he couldn't play himself on live dates as that would have given the game away. In the end, I did this four-to-the-bar feel, a flam beat, and he said, 'That's lovely.'"

"I was on a lot of the hits but Dave did play on album tracks. The journalists wanted to catch him out. I got a call from the News Of The World who said, 'We've just spoken to Dave Clark and he has told us that you're drumming on his records.' I said, 'Not me.' I was paid to do a job and I didn't see why I should be exposing him."

[Sebastian Cobb]

Can't read this without hearing it in Kevin Turvey's incredulous voice.

[McChesney Duntz]

Revered in America

Ehhh, dunno 'bout that. What following they have left in the States is probably more among cinephiles than anything (Having a Wild Weekend aka Catch Us if You Can being considered the best of the Hard Day's knockoffs by some measure). "Because" is still a lovely little number, though.

[studpuppet]

I'm happy to jump straight into that, tbh:

[daf]

Interview in the NME from 1967 :

[Attila]

I love the DC5 -- one of my favourite things about Dave's deathgrip on the back catalogue is that, way back when I taught a module on the history of rock music, I'd have to bring in a turntable to play the DC5 stuff. The students were more fascinated with the turntable than the actual songs.

Yonks back he allowed the release of a two-CD retrospective that I think I paid £10 for (History of the Dave Clark 5) -- it was named amongst the contested items in my divorce, as my ex was determined to try to take as much of my stuff away from me as he could (my 1981 purchased copy of Let it Be was another; Christ, I think that was $150 new, and it took about 6 months to arrive when my mom ordered it for me).

[NattyDread 2]

Don't know much about them but 'Concentration Baby' is an out and out banger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po3m8uiRy7s

[kalowski]

Catch Us If You Can is a cracker. And if the Kiss version is anything to go by, I dig Anyway You Want It too.

[gilbertharding]

Are the drums too loud on EVERYTHING they did?

And did he get paid every time they played Bits and Pieces on the Radio 1 Roadshow for twenty six (26) years?

And does he still own the broadcast rights for Ready Steady Go?

Was it The Rock'n'Roll Years, or Sounds of the Sixties where there's that clip of him trying to announce The Tottenham Sound as a credible rival to The Mersey Sound? This was the first time I noticed what an utter pillock he was.

So many questions...

[boki]

Aaaand now I need Walkers to bring back Bitza Pizza smdh