DAVE CLARK
The DC5 impresario on Freddie, Allen Klein and showmanship.
“WE WON’T talk about Tottenham…” laughs a trim and vivacious Dave Clark to MOJO, knowing your reporter to be a fellow fan of the troubled north London football club [this is before Jose Mourinho’s appointment as manger]. It’s a vow promptly broken before we have to address the reason we’re sat in the gleaming HQ of BMG, the new home of Dave’s musical legacy – the Cuban-heeled stomp of The Dave Clark Five, who in the mid-’60s vied in the singles charts and American box office with The Beatles. As the ’60s wound down, so did the band, as Clark swapped the spotlight for a showbiz career behind the scenes, the 1986 cosmic musical Time and acquiring the rights to Ready Steady Go! among his achievements. Now he’s reissuing, via BMG, the entire remastered DC5 back catalogue, not just on vinyl for the first time in years, but in glorious mono.
With drums to the fore, your 45s seemed to encapsulate the excitement and release of Saturday night…
I didn’t want to copy everybody else, which in those days was three guitars and drums. I wanted a ballsier sound based on seeing a big band at Alexandra Palace with a drummer called Eric Delaney, who had his drums at the front with tympanys. Wow!
I pinched the idea. Our records are about simplicity. A drum fill is straight and simple, never complicated. To my surprise, Berry Gordy of Motown admitted to pinching my licks – The Supremes’ Where Did Our Love Go and Baby Love were released just months after we were all over the American airwaves in April, May ’64.
Unlike other beat combos, the DC5 didn’t have a producer. You did it all. How did you get that sound?
Lansdowne Studios [in Holland Park, west London] was based in the old squash court with a very high ceiling in the basement beneath a block of artists’ apartments. We used the stairwell as the echo chamber because it sounded wonderful. But if someone didn’t use the lift and came downstairs in the middle of a take, you’d have to stop and do it again. The engineer, Adrian Kerridge, was a genius. I had him come down to see us play live at the Royal in Tottenham because I wanted him to recreate that live sound in the studio.
What was the secret of your live success?
Showmanship! Out on the road, especially in America, we had three tom toms in the front with flashing lights and the audience went mad. The greatest compliment I ever had was when Buddy Rich came to a show. He was one of my idols and I told him, “You’re amazing and I can’t play one tenth as good as you.” He said, “I can’t sell millions of records and pack out arenas. Stick at what you do – it’s good for us drummers!” Only decades later did I realise how big we were in America. Tom Hanks had just done Forrest Gump and Philadelphia, and he wrote me a fan letter. Spielberg has said we influenced him, and John Travolta told me, “I had your picture on my school lunch box”!
You became good friends with Freddie Mercury. What did you make of the Bohemian Rhapsody biopic?
Loved it, and I didn’t expect to like it because I knew there were bits in it that weren’t true. I saw it at the Vue, Shepherd’s Bush, with Elaine Paige and [Time co-writer/singer] John Christie, who’d both worked with Freddie, and it’s given him a huge new audience under 30.
Did you recognise the Freddie you knew in Rami Malek’s performance?
Yes, I did, and I thought I wouldn’t. He had his mannerisms, and seeing him gave me goosebumps.
Tell us something you’ve never told an interviewer before. Allen Klein came to a rehearsal at The Ed Sullivan Show and somehow got backstage. I didn’t know who he was. In those days he was an accountant for Sam Cooke. “I wanna buy your recording rights.” I said, “They’re not for sale,” even though we didn’t have any money in those days because we’d just started. “A million dollars and a royalty as well!” I just had this feeling, so I said, “Allen, the answer’s no. I want to be able to sleep at night.”
“John Travolta told me, ‘I had your picture on my lunch box!’” DAVE CLARK