The History of The
Dave Clark Five

The Dave Clark Five were among the better bands of the mid-sixties British Invasion. As with The Beatles, it took them a few years before they developed their sound and had success. They had no grand ambitions. The band formed for the temporary goal of making enough money to afford passage to Holland for Dave’s youth club soccer team. Members of the team played instruments, but there was no drummer, so Dave bought a drum set for ten pounds (twenty-eight dollars) from a Salvation Army outlet and learned the rudiments.

The band was good and gained a following, appearing often at the Tottenham Royal Mecca Ballroom. As exciting as the group was live, they weren’t convincing when they auditioned for record companies. There were few labels interested in signing the group, and those that did wanted to furnish the songs and define how they were to be recorded. Dave, though, believed in the band’s ability to make exciting records. He realized that he could control the repertoire if he paid for the sessions himself. He used the £300 ($840) he made for two days of stunt driving in a movie—crashing cars for a character played by singer Adam Faith—to pay for the recording. He then made a deal with EMI’s Columbia Records in the UK (and Epic in the US), and bluffed the label into giving him a high royalty by asking for three times the going rate, thinking that would give him more room to negotiate when the company made a lower counter offer. Columbia didn’t have to risk the expense of recording, so, to his surprise, they agreed. He also asked for the masters to revert to him after ten years, and they agreed to this as well. Nobody thought that this music would have longevity.

Dave left school at fifteen. His family was poor. He wasn’t academically inclined. Somehow, though, he had a natural instinct for making good business decisions. He learned from his agent, Harold Davidson, and others. This led him to form a publishing company for the band’s compositions. Income from songs was usually split 50 percent for the writers, 50 percent for the publisher, which meant that Dave made money not only from the songs he helped to write, but also from the publishing. It’s one thing to take note of what songs dancers respond to, and another to eavesdrop on them between sets to pick up on phrases around which to build songs. Such eavesdropping resulted in the band’s first two big hits, “Glad All Over” and “Bits and Pieces.”

The importance of band-composed songs was brought home in October 1963 with their first charting record. The group loved American rock ’n’ roll, and recorded a cover of The Contours’ 1962 hit “Do You Love Me,” which skirted the Top 30 in the UK. Dave had seen the Motown vocal group perform it live on tour in Britain. But it was bested by a contemporary, beat group (i.e. like The Beatles) arrangement by Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, which made it to number one. In contrast, The Dave Clark Five’s version was slower, more rhythm and blues in feel, and superior. If the band relied mostly on their own songs, they wouldn’t risk being beaten out again. (Seven months later, “Do You Love Me” became the group’s third hit in America, rising to eleven. Brian Poole’s version failed to chart.)

Dave was a controlling person. He was disciplined in the martial arts (including karate), and as a stunt man he was used to being precise. It was unheard of for a member of a rock band to also be the producer of their records, which Dave was. On the first few releases, unsure of how his attribution would be perceived, he credited the producer as Adrian Clark, utilizing his engineer Adrian Kerridge’s first name and his own surname. Kerridge was on staff at Lansdowne, London’s first independent recording studio. He worked with Dave to create a sound that was unique to The Dave Clark Five (aka DC5), utilizing four-track recording machines. Reverb featured prominently on their records. Rather than relying on an in-place echo chamber, Kerridge placed a microphone in the stairwell of a concrete bunker at the back of the studio. Reverb provided a novel hook to the group’s next single, “Glad All Over,” which topped the charts in England.

Dave was also the band’s manager. It was a function he’d provided from the beginning, and he didn’t feel a need to change when the group became popular, to give control to somebody else, even if he were more experienced. Having aspired to be a professional soccer player, he was, as a member of the band, more like the captain of a team that worked well together. He made good choices in solidifying the band’s lineup. Mike Smith was the musical genius of the group. In addition to having a superb voice, he was classically trained on the piano, and cowrote many of the songs with Dave. Lenny Davidson played guitar, Rick Huxley bass, and Denis Payton sax.

The longhair era of rock signaled attitudes that were antiestablishment and free-wheeling, and skirted the rules. In contrast, in February 1964 Dave had his group members sign conventional, five-year employment contracts, almost as if they were in a 1940s dance band. Each member received a weekly salary of fifty pounds, four weeks of paid vacation a year, but no artist royalties on the records. They were on call twenty-four hours a day, were responsible for maintaining their own instruments, and had to follow Dave’s guidelines on hair and dress. His lineup stayed intact for the nine years of the band’s duration.

Ed Sullivan had a highly watched variety show in the States. His ratings soared when The Beatles were guests, and he thought The Dave Clark Five would be a good follow-up. American teens, especially girls, loved these British newcomers. They looked different with their long hair, their English accents were novel, and they seemed polished and charming compared to local grown talent. Handsome Dave was the epitome of charm, whether he was addressing girls with “luv,” or complaining that he couldn’t get a good cup of tea in America.

When Ed’s people contacted Dave’s agent, he turned them down. Dave had no interest in going to America. From performing at US air bases in Britain, where off-duty soldiers had a good time getting drunk and behaving badly, he thought America “would be the pits.” He was persuaded when the show offered a fee of $10,000 and a luxurious, all-expenses paid trip. It was an enormous amount of money compared to the fifteen pounds a day Dave had made as an extra in films and TV. It proved to be a turning point.

Ed loved the band. It wasn’t so much that he related to their music, it was more how clean cut they all were. Displaying black and white matching stage clothes, neat haircuts, dazzling smiles, and matinee-idol chins, The Dave Clark Five were the best looking and most stylish of all the bands of the British Invasion. Their debut on his show on March 8, 1964, incited the same mania the teenage members of his studio audience showed for The Beatles the previous month, so Sullivan booked them for a return appearance. It was only then, in the face of the reception they received in America, that the band quit their day jobs and made the commitment to turn professional. The DC5 eventually racked up twelve appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, more than any other rock band.

Realizing the expanse of the US market, Dave focused his energies on the States, organizing a tour that commenced May 25 at the Mosque Theater in Newark, New Jersey. The group commanded $10,000 per show. For touring the US, a Martin 404 propeller plane was leased from the Rockefellers. “DC5” was painted on the exterior, which would have been more appropriate if it had been a McDonnell Douglas aircraft, the DC initials for Douglas Commercial.

The band toured the States six times—to The Beatles’ three. This resulted in the DC5 having more hits in America than in Britain. During 1964 they had seven Top 20 hits in America, all but one band-composed, and were second only to The Beatles in popularity. Because The Beatles style was described as Merseybeat (owing to Liverpool’s River Mersey), the media described the music of The Dave Clark Five as the Tottenham Sound. Although there were a large number of bands from Liverpool, many of which also became successful, like Gerry & The Pacemakers and Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas, there was no comparable scene in the north London suburb of Tottenham, and hence no other proponents of the sound.

On tour The Dave Clark Five mirrored the experiences of The Beatles: motorcades from the airport, sneaking into hotels through kitchens, fans chasing them and hiding in their hotel rooms. Among the hundreds of dolls and other gifts they received was a sheep. Dave didn’t know what to do with it, so he left it in their hotel suite. Upon returning from the show, he discovered that the sheep had chewed every credit card and every piece of furniture. As he said, “We didn’t trash hotel suites, but the sheep did.”

Their live show was a different matter. It was the best production by a rock band for its day. It commenced with a dramatic, pounding cover of Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn Theme.” On “Five By Five,” another instrumental—the band had primarily played instrumentals in its pre-hit years—Dave got up from his drum kit to stand at an array of large floor tom drums, to pound away as purple and red lights flashed from inside the drums. During such moments, black light made the band members seem to glow in the dark in their white shirts.

By 1965, the DC5’s popularity was exceeded by Herman’s Hermits and The Rolling Stones. The band still produced good records, but they were no longer perceived as hip. Their lineup included a saxophone, an instrument more identified with the pre-Beatles era. Coming a year after the release of The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, and only a week after their Help!, the group’s feature film, Having a Wild Weekend (Catch Us If You Can in Britain), was pessimistic in tone, overly ambitious in its satire of consumerism and, ultimately, boring. It suffered from a lack of memorable songs comparable to those of The Beatles’ Lennon and McCartney. The DC5’s status fell further when they failed to progress as The Beatles had, whether embracing more ambitious concepts or psychedelic drugs.

The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and other groups success with self-composed songs resulted in the confidence to depart from the rock ’n’ roll covers that were part of their repertoires in their early years. After a very successful first year of Dave Clark and Mike Smith compositions, the DC5 fell back on covers of American rock ’n’ roll hits “Over and Over” (Bobby Day), “I Like It Like That” (Chris Kenner), and “You Got What It Takes” (Marv Johnson), songs Americans at the air bases had turned them onto. Or maybe the change in repertoire owed to the group not having composed as many hits as they claimed? In a 2009 interview, Ron Ryan, once a friend of Dave’s, claimed that he—not Dave—wrote “Bits and Pieces,” “Because,” and “Anyway You Want It.” Because he was also a friend of the other band members, he agreed to a paltry settlement because he didn’t want bad publicity to adversely affect the momentum of the band.

As fans became savvy, they realized how little value for money they were getting when they bought DC5 albums. The group’s first two American albums averaged twenty-three minutes of music; their first Greatest Hits totaled twenty-three minutes, and More Greatest Hits, twenty-two minutes. The Beatles’ and Herman’s Hermits’ first two American albums averaged twenty-seven minutes. (American albums had fewer tracks than the English ones owing to a different way of allocating publishing fees.) The Dave Clark Five had good album tracks, but not enough to make good value the seven albums they released in their first two years, making the listening experience less satisfying than albums by The Beatles, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, and Herman’s Hermits. All of these factors contributed to the group being dismissed as lightweight. Their popularity slid further, and after the summer of 1966, they had only one more Top 30 hit in America. When they tried to be progressive, with such singles as “Live in the Sky” and “Inside Out,” they missed the mark. Dave gave up touring in 1967, and the band’s activity slowed. He produced two records that made the Top 10 in England in 1970, before the band announced its dissolution in August of that year.

Being a fan of their music, one was often met with derision. It took so long for the group to be voted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it was almost an embarrassment when they were inducted in 2008. Joel Stein, writing in the Los Angeles Times, made a joke at their expense when they failed to get enough votes the previous year: “Monday, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame turned down The Dave Clark Five for allegations of totally sucking. Even the sluttiest sixties groupie didn’t want Dave Clark getting glad all over her.”

Pop music fans had no concept that the exciting and charming rock bands that they saw and loved performing on TV and in concert may not have played on their records. Of course, it didn’t matter. The records were judged and enjoyed on their own merit.

Mike Nesmith broke the code when, troubled that The Monkees were prevented from playing on their own records, he voiced his frustration in an interview with the Saturday Evening Post. As musicians were being perceived as artists, that session musicians might have been used in their stead knocked points off their credibility.

When, years later, I heard that noted session drummer Bobby Graham had played on most of The Dave Clark Five’s hits, I felt betrayed. Through the years I had been defending the group’s records, I promoted them when I was on the nominating committee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I championed Dave as a skillful drummer.

No musician as part of a band wants to be replaced by a session man. It means that you’re not good enough. When George Martin replaced Ringo Starr with Alan White for the recording of The Beatles’ first single, “Love Me Do,” because George was unsure of his ability, Ringo was devastated. Dave assessed that his drumming was only adequate, and wisely realized that hiring an accomplished drummer would help to make a better record. In listening to the recordings, Graham’s superiority is evident. Graham also drummed on hits by other rock bands, including The Kinks, Herman’s Hermits, Them, and even on Brian Poole’s “Do You Love Me.”

Despite their dull personalities, the DC5 were no cretins, and they distinguished themselves on many counts. In the first place, they were the only successful band of the time to be essentially self-managed, by Dave himself. In the category of drummer as composer, he’s probably credited with more hits than anybody else from that era. The band’s Coast to Coast album was the first by a British group to feature all original songs. And the identifiable sounds of the group’s records, with uncommonly loud drums, were influenced by Phil Spector, and owed much to experimentation. “Anyway You Want It,” “Can’t You See that She’s Mine,” and “Catch Us If You Can” were the most chaotic hit records of their day.

I met Dave during a visit with Mike Chapman in the studio when Mike was producing Smokie. As it was during a session, we didn’t talk much. Dave mentioned that he had been taking acting lessons with Sir Laurence Olivier, and explained that his arm was in a cast because of a skiing accident. Before the band happened, Dave had wanted to be an actor, but was relegated to stunt and extra work. He appeared in forty films and TV shows. His interest initiated TV projects for the band as well as their feature film. Given an opportunity to star in the band’s own film, he realized his limitations when he saw the results. After his musical projects diminished in the early 1970s, he studied acting.

Dave channeled his aspirations into theatrical production. In 1986 he achieved the rare feat of cowriting and producing a hit West End production. Time, a science fiction musical, broke ground with its use of multi-media and special effects. It starred Cliff Richard, who was succeeded by David Cassidy.

By the mid-1980s, The Dave Clark Five hits had been unavailable in America for ten years. Dave refused offers to release the masters even after the proliferation of the CD format. He reasoned that, the more he kept them off the market, the more pent-up demand would become. Dave didn’t need the money—he’d invested well in real estate—and could afford to wait for the huge advance he desired. Starting in 1984, I wrote him yearly for five years expressing our interest in releasing his catalogue. Only in the last year did he send a letter saying he wasn’t interested. He didn’t anticipate that, by keeping the records out of the stores, he would diminish their value. Oldies radio programmed fewer of the hits, as they were not available to the stations. Similarly, the records did not get exposed in other media such as feature films, TV shows, commercials. He also was insensitive to music fans who wanted to hear the records. Some wore out their vinyl copies; others replaced their turntables with CD players. Much of the band’s great music faded from memory.

In 1989, the Disney Channel made a deal with Dave to program the 1960s English music show Ready Steady Go! during evenings, to attract adult viewers to the kids’ cable channel. Dave had purchased the existing shows—only a small percentage of those produced—and reedited them, adding footage of the DC5. He taped new introductions that were shown before each show.

Although Disney’s in-house record label was successful in the fifties and sixties, by the 1980s it was relegated to issuing soundtracks of Disney movies. The new regime, wanting to cultivate teen and adult record buyers, formed Hollywood Records to break new artists. This was similar to Disney establishing Touchstone in 1987 as a separate film division to attract more adult and mature teen movie patrons.

In the first two years of its existence, the label was a disaster. The president, Peter Paterno, acknowledged as much in a letter to Disney’s chairman Michael Eisner and president Frank Wells, dated October 31, 1991. He referred to the perception of the label as “the Titanic captained by the Three Stooges,” expecting losses in the coming year of between $20 and $30 million. Paterno understood that profits from catalogue sales could finance new artists until they become profitable. He signed Queen to release a new album, as well as their catalogue. In the letter, he refers to the Dave Clark “fiasco.”

Five months earlier, Hollywood Record’s Bob Reitman had sent a letter to Dave enticing him in many areas. He expressed interest in rereleasing Dave’s catalogue, and referred to the “high priority” the company would have to get his songs in Disney, as well as other studios’ feature films, and in TV shows and commercials. There were enticements relating to the theme parks, Disney stores, TV specials, and trailers plugging the product in movie theaters and Disney home videos. It was enough to make one’s head spin, or in this case, for Dave to extract an agreement with Paterno for two million dollars. When Frank Wells heard about the deal, he blew a gasket, and nullified it. Paterno scrambled together a settlement, for a scaled-down deal paying Dave an advance of one million for two audio releases.

My partner Richard Foos and I had a good relationship with Wesley Hein, who, with his brother Bill, had started Enigma Records. Wes wanted to break out from the company, and in 1989 accepted a job as an executive vice president at Hollywood Records. Knowing Rhino’s expertise with catalogue, he called Richard to see if we wanted to be part of the deal. It was smart of him. Between Gary Stewart, Bill Inglot, and me, we had three knowledgeable DC5 fans who could make suggestions on the repertoire. Comparatively, Hollywood had no DC5 fans. And Rhino’s involvement and contribution to Hollywood’s advance meant that their risk was diminished.

Richard made the deal with Wes. I was happy to be involved, happy that we might help create a package that would be much better than if we didn’t participate. Our $300,000 advance seemed like a lot for the rights we were getting, made all the more questionable when Shelly Heber, the cohead of Image Marketing, predicted, quite presciently, that sales wouldn’t be much more than one hundred thousand. Richard lessened our risk by making a deal with Warner Music Enterprises, one of Warner’s two mail order divisions, guaranteeing an order of a certain amount of albums to be marketed through TV commercials.

Dave knew about Rhino’s involvement. In the contract it stated that we had exclusive rights for direct sales to customers through a TV-advertised campaign, as well as non-exclusive rights to sell through mail-order companies. Hollywood retained the much larger retail market. Dave didn’t know that we were directing the creative elements of the release. By mistake, Dave was sent a layout of the proposed package, created by a Rhino designer, that hadn’t excluded Rhino’s standard “manufactured and marketed by” credit. He caught it and had it changed, and quizzed Wes Hein on any larger Rhino participation. Wes mollified him. We were otherwise careful not to credit any Rhinos for their involvement.

It was a good package, but not up to Rhino standards. First, the package itself was cheap, two CDs in a jewel case (as the boxes are called) that normally included one. In order to scrimp on the number of pages of the booklet, small type was used, ignoring the diminishing eyesight of the original, now much older fans, who would most likely buy the album. It was Hollywood’s call. They were trying to save money to recoup their advance. We provided track suggestions to Hollywood, who then relayed them to Dave, who had the ultimate decision. There were better tracks than some he included, but at least we got him to add “Try Too Hard,” a number twelve hit in the States that he excluded. Bill Inglot also had problems with the mastering relating to a number of tracks, but, again, it was Dave’s call.

The History of The Dave Clark Five only sold 110,000, which disappointed everybody. Even though the contract didn’t terminate until 2002, Dave wanted to get the product off the store shelves early. He embarrassed Disney into deleting the album from their catalogue, but he failed to consider the rights that Hollywood had given Rhino. We had over thirty thousand pieces of inventory that we had paid for. Although sales were light, we had the rights to sell it to our own mail order customers and to other companies.

By 1997 none of the executives Dave had dealt with were still at Hollywood Records. I wrote him a letter expressing our desire to succeed Hollywood’s deal—after all, Hollywood never issued a box set—or to make a new deal. Dave faxed us a curt reply that he was not interested. Given that we were highly respected in the industry, were enthusiastic Dave Clark Five fans, and willing to put a substantial amount of money into Dave’s pocket—although not as much as he wanted—he could have at least been courteous.

When Dave became aware that Rhino was still selling product, it bothered him. He couldn’t tie up loose ends and move on. It wasn’t as if he wanted to make a deal with another company. In November 1998 he was in town and invited me to lunch at the Bel-Air Hotel to talk about it. I looked forward to spending more time with a man whose musical contributions I respected, but I was put in an uncomfortable situation. Rhino had not made a deal directly with Dave, and his desire put us in an adversarial position. It was a mostly pleasant lunch, sitting on the patio. Dave reeled off a few stories, but he was not an enthusiastic conversationalist. Or maybe he was focused on trying to alleviate the Rhino horn that suddenly poked his side. He kept reiterating his position, seemingly attempting to verbally bludgeon me into submission.

A year later Dave was in town, and I invited him to visit Rhino so he could see that we weren’t a rinky-dink operation. In my office, I told Dave the extent that we had helped Hollywood with the album. He explained that Disney had all but promised him so much more than a label like Rhino could have delivered. From how things turned out, he admitted that he should have made the deal with Rhino instead.

I offered to sell him our inventory, at our cost, in order to get it off the market. His preference was that we destroy the albums, but then we would have lost that revenue. Whether or not the outstanding inventory was sold to customers—and even if it was destroyed—Dave had already been paid on both the artist royalty and the publishing. (Usually royalties are earned when a record is sold, but in this deal Dave was paid upon manufacture.) The bluff on my part was not stating the obvious, that we were never going to come close to selling our inventory. In most record deals, the company is able to salvage money on nonselling inventory by dumping it for a vastly reduced amount as cut-outs (product cut out or deleted from the catalogue). Because of our contract with Hollywood Records, we couldn’t do that.

From the meetings and phone conversations, I felt good about Dave, but when he returned to London, he became nit-picky. I received faxed letters from him, his accountant, and his lawyer for minor infractions. He ordered a CD from Collectors’ Choice, which proved that they were selling the album outside of the US, which they weren’t supposed to do. Practically speaking, how many could they have sold of the more expensive double CD when a cheaper, single disc collection was available in England and other parts of the world? I notified Collectors’ Choice that their sales were restricted only to the US, with which they complied. Next we received a letter from him complaining that Rhino mail order was discounting four dollars off the twenty-eight dollar list-price album. Forgetting that retailers had discounted the album, and even Amazon had sold it at 40 percent off list price, were Rhino’s small sales a threat? I responded to Dave’s letter, and had our mail order manager raise the price. The Dave Clark Five’s music had brought me countless hours of happiness, but I couldn’t please the man most responsible.

Prior to this scrutiny, I, on behalf of Rhino Video, offered Dave an advance of $250,000 to put his Ready Steady Go! shows on DVD. In 1989 he had released six VHS tapes—and laser discs—but they had never been on DVD. I assumed the amount wasn’t enough, as I never received a response. As of this writing, he has yet to grant a license for the format. He never made a subsequent license for his DC5 masters in the US, except to make them available to download.

Everybody lost financially on the deal: Hollywood Records, Rhino, and Warner Music. Dave pocketed a large advance that wasn’t close to recouping, but his catalogue was further devalued. The poor sales of the History of album made it appear a failure, and there was no subsequent product, which meant that his masters weren’t available to the fans, and his copyrights weren’t generating income. The group’s original albums have never been issued on CD, nor has the band’s oeuvre been appreciated in a significant box set, even though Hollywood Records had the rights to issue one.

Despite Dave’s obdurate negotiating manner, and his low-key nature, I kind of liked him. In October 2001 I faxed him a letter that I was leaving Rhino. I was surprised when he called me from London, telling me I am “a gentleman,” and wishing me “good luck.” I’m glad we left our relationship on a positive note.