A Conversation with Dave Clark – HuffPost 5.7.14

Mike Ragogna: Dave, it’s the fiftieth anniversary of The Dave Clark Five, can you believe it?

Dave Clark: It seems like another lifetime. I always remember when I had the group, if we mixed with anybody in their thirties we thought they were old, and then when you reach thirty you don’t think they are old. Fifty years is another lifetime.

MR: What is your perspective on the British Invasion, how it hit America and your part in it?

DC: I don’t think anybody can answer it now, but at the time one never expected it, because everything that influenced me was American. We never thought it would be the other way around. It wasn’t until Sullivan contacted me to do the show, I had no idea at all. Tom Hanks inducted us into the hall of fame, and he actually summed it up: as a teenager in those days the tragedy of President Kennedy being assassinated, America was in mourning. I think the difference with English music was that it was very free-for-all. I always believed it’s because–and nobody’s really addressed this–when I was a teenager, I automatically knew I was going to be put in the military. We call it National Service; you call it the draft. But we were the first generation, The Beatles, us, The Stones, and everybody else weren’t drafted because they stopped it a few years before. I think that’s the age, when you’re eighteen to early twenties when your creative juices are flowing, you’re a bit rebellious, whatever. But you go into the military and it’s all knocked out of you. So we were the first generation that happened to. When it hit off in America, it was something fresh. I just think it was at the right time and it was different. I’ll always remember Elvis Presley saying to me that they were always told what to say in interviews and what not to say and I think the reason when John Lennon was interviewed and they all thought he was very off the wall, he was just being himself. You weren’t told what to say, you just answered it. I think that was the way. A lot of the music wasn’t manufactured, it was very raw and earthy.
MR: And it’s interesting, the “British invasion” wasn’t viewed as such at the time; it was British music reflecting on American music. Yet when you see its influences and people’s views on how it influenced the time, you realize it was probably the most important thing to happen to American pop music, and it seems to me that The Dave Clark Five were the initial flag bearers.

DC: Well we were the first group to tour America. The power of Sullivan…we did it two weeks running and then went back and did our first English tour. In fact, the Kinks were the opening act. Eight weeks later we were touring America and playing packed-out huge arenas. That would never happen today. It was just the power of Sullivan, the excitement. We recorded Chuck Berry’s “Reelin’ And Rockin'” and I’ll always remember the drummer of Cheap Trick [Bun E. Carlos] said to me, “I thought it was a fabulous original song, and then I looked at the label and it was an American writer, Chuck Berry. You reintroduced us to our own music!” That’s what you’ve just said, actually.

MR: The mirror works both ways, it’s really beautiful.

DC: It’s not because I’m talking to an American, but bottom line, it was American music that made us want to play music. It was for me, it was Elvis, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, all these people.

MR: I’ve heard it said that if The Beatles hadn’t happened in the United States, that spot would’ve been taken by The Dave Clark Five.

DC: What The Beatles did was phenomenal. They were first here and they deserved all the accolades and success they had. We were very blessed becase we were the first English group to tour. For practically two years it was just us and The Beatles, which is exciting. It was wonderful.

MR: Can you remember some of your favorite moments from that period?

DC: Just coming to America. You didn’t imagine it to be as big, and the sort of people that you meet. The opening acts on our show were my idols! We had Chuck Berry, Little Richard, The Supremes, Aretha Franklin, all these amazing acts that, to me, should’ve been top of the bill, and that’s not being modest, that’s being honest. It was a thrill. For Buddy [Rich? 9:00] to come to one of our concerts, he was my idol and I couldn’t play one tenth or one hundredth as good as him. It was amazing.

MR: Did you get to jam with some of your favorite artists from that period?

DC: No, because our tours were non-stop. We were doing forty-six centers and we had our planes, as soon as we finished we’d be off to the next gig. It was so crazy that we had a thing, you’ll see in the documentary, we water skied because it got us away from everybody, to switch off, chill out. There were lots of restrictions. I don’t know how much of the documentary you’ve seen, but I did a motor racing course and I actually went in a formula two race at Brands Hatch which is in England. It was before sixty thousand people, I did the race and it made the front page of the big tabloid in England at the time called The News Of The World. Monday morning we got a phone call: “You’re no longer insured if you do sport.” So I was stopped from doing any sports, but they allowed me to waterski, otherwise we weren’t insured. It had its down moments. If you watch the documentary and you see a lot of waterskiing, it’s because it was the only sport I was allowed to do.

MR: All of a sudden you’re famous. How did that affect you personally?

DC: Well I’m going to reveal all of that in my book, but I think what I said in the film is correct: You start to lose your own identity. But I’ve always been a firm believer that if you believe what the press writes, they want to make it jump off the page more so they give their own slant on it. I always believed we were as good as our next record. The bubble could burst tomorrow, and if you take that attitude you won’t be sucked in believing it’s going to last forever, and that’s always a danger. When I sang about the press, sometimes they write really flattering articles and some people believe all their own press and that they’re the next God or they’re this or they’re that. I’m sorry, but as soon as you do that, that is the kiss of death, I think. I had a good family and so did the boys, we were all very grounded. There was no big egos or anything. Looking back now at what happened to The Beatles, The Stones, everybody, I think I was very blessed because we never had one legal letter between us and now we’re fifty years on. We’re all mates, and it worked and everybody’s contribution, however little or large made it work. It was a team. All of the boys made it work.

MR: That’s a nice way to reflect on that, especially because I wanted to talk about artists believing their own press and you actually said it.

DC: Well they do! I’ve seen it. I’ll tell you a little story: In England in ’64 you didn’t have commercial radio and the unions ruled the BBC as it was in those days. They were only allowed three hours a week needle time–that means playing records. If you wanted to get your record played you played live, but it didn’t matter how successful you were, you had to go and audition. So we went to this audition and then another group came in and this little guy with a choirboy fringe, suit, white shirt and tie, butter would melt in his mouth and his mother brought him in. Three years later he was throwing television sets out of windows. That was Keith Moon, another drummer. He was a great drummer, my two very favorite drummers of that period were John Bonham of Led Zeppelin and Keith. But a lot of people felt it was sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. By all means have a great time, but it’s sad when you think a lot have passed on because of it.

MR: You know, I think The Beatles were more sensational as far as press, the same for The Rolling Stones, The Who… But with you guys, it remained about the playing, the chops and hard work. Even Bruce Springsteen acknowledges that you rocked harder than The Rolling Stones and The Beatles.

DC: It was because of the lineups. I was blown away by the people that we influenced. They were not the people that The Beatles influenced. It was really heavy metal groups, even down to punk rockers like The Ramones and people like that. I remember Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick said seeing one of our concerts was like being on drugs before drugs were invented. And yet, because I stopped in 1970, people who weren’t even born then or never saw you in concert rewrite your history and put you down as being kind of pop whatever. We paid our dues, we’ve had beer cans thrown at us, we had pennies thrown at us–in those days they were huge–but then in the end we won over and we were playing the Royal Tottenham at six thousand people a night and we got the gold cup for being the best live band in the UK in 1963, and the Mecca Circuit, which was a huge ballroom that was in the documentary. They had them all over England, Scotland, Ireland, they catered to over a million punkers a week. That was the best compliment we could get paid. We had to play three and a half hours a night, which is a long time!

MR: It doesn’t hurt that at time you were selling, as Stevie Wonder points out, a hundred million records. That’s amazing!

DC: Yeah. It’s pretty hard to take in when you do it. It’s years after the even that you stop and looking back you think, “Wow, it was amazing.” In the days when you sold records, [that’s the reason all the fuss with us and the Beatles weren’t poor, said it very clearly which was nice. 17:10] The whole Mersey sound, not just The Beatles, Gerry & The Pacemakers, Cilla Black, Billy J. Kramer, all those were dominating the charts in the UK and we were the first London group that really took off. We were doing a hundred and eighty thousand records a day and we had to sell a million and a half to knock the Beatles off the number one spot because it was their biggest-selling single ever and we ended up doing two and a half million copies. But that was in the days where you sold records, because there were no other influences. There was no cable TV there were no computers, there were no videos, there were no DVDs. When you bought a record in those days it was something special.

MR: Yeah, and as this was happening, you guys must have been “Glad All Over,” right?

DC: [laughs] Oh, well and truly, well and truly. And I think paying our dues, playing at the American army bases, which was tough and it was fun, and playing at the Royal Tottenham and the early clubs where they throw beer cans at you is paying your dues. It makes you work hard and makes you better. I think when it hits off for us it doesn’t frighten us, playing for a quarter of a million people, which we did in The Phillipines. Whether it was a few thousand or tens of thousands, it didn’t phase you. It’s very hard to explain, but once you’ve done the smaller things where you’re paying your dues and people are throwing things at you and whatever until you actually win them over, it’s good grounding.

MR: Dave, what advice do you have for new artists?

DC: Well, I think I’ve more or less said it. I think you’ve got to believe in what you do and just stick at it. In our business there are no guarantees. You’re always waiting for the phone to go. I’ve always said if “Glad All Over” had been three months earlier or three months later it might have still been a number on but it would never have caused all that fuss. The same for The Beatles, it was being in the right place at the right time. But I always believed you should have the second string to your bow. I did film extra work and stunt work for a living, the boys worked in offices and factories. But it was just that until it takes off you need to subsidize it, and if you’re lucky enough to take off, don’t believe everything that’s written about you, good or bad. Just believe in what you do, that’s all. You can only do your best.

MR: Very nice, thanks. So other than your book, what are you working on?

DC: I originally started this–I said I’d never do it, but–when we did the Hall Of Fame, Tom Hanks has been a fan for a long while and he said, “Come on, you’ve got to write a book. You’ve got to do a documentary.” Bruce and Steve Van Zandt and–sadly Mike [Smith] had just died a few days before the Hall Of Fame–they said, “You owe it to the boys, you owe it to yourself, you owe it to history.” I thought, “Well…maybe I’m being a bit selfish,” I was very proud of it, it was nothing to be ashamed of, so I thought, “Well maybe I should do it properly,” but a book will actually get into the nitty-gritty which people often want to know about, but I think if you put it in a program it will slow it down. I wanted to make something that was entertaining, which was what the DC5 was all about.

MR: Beautiful. I wish you luck with that. When you saw the documentary in the end, what were your first thoughts?

DC: I was a bit embarrassed, actually, because of some of the comments. I said Elton John’s comment shouldn’t really be in there and he said, “I said it, and I meant it!” It was so complimentary. I know Mike and Dennis and Rick would be up there smiling, they’d be delighted. I know that for a fact. I felt embarrassed, and I’m not trying to be modest, but at the same time very, very flattered.

MR: I learned from the Elton quote that you had played The Ed Sullivan Show more times than anybody else. Wow.

DC: Yeah. There was one act that beat us actually, Topo Gigio.

MR: [laughs] “Eddie? Keesa me goo’night!”

DC: [laughs]

MR: Dave, you are awesome. Thank you so much for your contributions to the culture, this interview and your time. All the best, thanks so much.

DC: Cheers…bye!

Transcribed By Galen Hawthorne