I kissed him, said ‘I love you’ & ‘I’ll see you in the morning’ but no, he died in the night
Brother of ‘Dapper Don’ had been in ill health
Bunny girls. The actress went on to appear in TV’S Only Fools and Horses, The Bill and, more recently, It’s A Sin.
Chas had played bass for Jerry Lee Lewis and supported his pal Paul Mccartney with The Beatles.
But in the 1970s he teamed up with musician Dave Peacock, who he met while hitchhiking. Over the next five decades, they played Knebworth and Glastonbury and released hit after hit.
Joan hit it off with Dave’s wife, Sue. All four went down to Margate to promote the Chas and Dave smash about the seaside town.
“We were one big family,” says Joan. “I remember being outside our house once and this kid said, ‘Here, are you married to Chas and Dave?’ Sue used to get the same. She’d say, ‘Yes, we are married to both of them.’” After Sue died of lung cancer in 2009, Dave credited Chas, Joan and their three kids for helping him through.
Now Dave supports Joan as they mourn Chas. She reveals: “Dave says, ‘I’ll be sitting with a glass of wine and I’ll think of a song – and my immediate thought is to ring Chas.’
“As I said to him, Chas and I had a marriage of love, but Chas and Dave had a marriage of music.” Dave still finds it painful to listen to their vast back catalogue, which includes hits such as
Gertcha, Rabbit and There Ain’t No Pleasing You. And Joan admits there are drawers stuffed with music she can’t open at her home near Stevenage, Herts.
But last year son Nik – who played drums for Chas and Dave – decided to pay tribute to his dad by pulling together the tracks for the new album, Right At Home.
That’s when Joan listened to Chas’s music again. She says: “It’s taken a while...but now I can enjoy and love it.
“It’s great that he’s here and his voice is filling the house again as it should.” She can still be hit by feelings of grief. Recently she was reduced to tears after finding a letter she wrote in 2002. “It was a love letter to say how much I loved him, admired him and all the rest of it,” says Joan.
“That just knocked the socks off of me. I had a good old cry, I blooming did. It can happen but you can’t bottle it up. It doesn’t do you any good.”
Joan keeps a little shrine – an everlasting rose, photos, a love poem he wrote and that flickering candle – in what she calls “Chas corner”.
She had to give up his allotment – the subject of her favourite track from the album, Rock ’n’ Roll Allotment.
But she donated his greenhouse to a school. She says: “They call it Chas’s greenhouse. He’d be over the moon.”
Joan is now writing her memoirs. She says: “He used to say to me, ‘Come on, finish that book.’ So, I’m writing every day.
“I might call it From Bunny To Rabbit, because it’s from me to Chas and Dave.”
She adds: “We were together for so long. And, always, the minute I heard him coming in through the door, I’d get excited he was coming home.
“That never, ever stopped, even after 52 years. I loved him all my life.” ■■Right At Home: Selected unreleased home recordings 2007 – 2017, by Chas Hodges, is out now, via the Demon Music Group.
We had a marriage of love. Chas & Dave had a marriage of music
JOAN HODGES ON HER LATE HUSBAND’S LIFE
MOBSTER Peter Gotti, the one-time Gambino crime boss and successor to notorious brother John ‘Dapper Don’ Gotti, has died in jail aged 81.
Gotti, who was sentenced to 25 years after being convicted of racketeering and other charges in 2003, died of natural causes at the Federal Medical Centre in Butner, North Carolina, US.
He spent more than 17 years behind bars and had recently been seeking an early release because of his poor health.
His attorney James Craven said even “Stevie Wonder could see” the former mob boss was not dangerous.
Writing in court papers in December 2019, he added: “We are truly afraid he is dying now, he feels he is.
“As his lawyer, I am afraid this will all become moot soon if nothing is done.”
Gotti, who was blind in one eye, had been suffering from thyroid problems, according to Lewis Kasman, a former confidant of Gotti’s brother John.
Kasman described Gotti as a “regular knock-around guy who didn’t let his title go to his head”. He added that his kindness meant he was not cut out to head the Gambino crime family.
“He was trying to do his brother’s bidding and had a tough task,” Kasman said. “A lot of the captains were very upset with him because he wasn’t a strong boss. The Lucchese family walked all over him.”
Gotti served as Gambinos boss from 1999 to 2002 after brother John was jailed for murder and racketeering.
John, known as the ‘Dapper Don’ because of his expensive suits and silvery swept-back hair, was serving a life term when he died of cancer aged 61 in 2002.