The unlikely band who almost became more popular than The Beatles
By now, six decades’ worth of ink has been spilt about the British invasion of America in the 1960s. One would think that it’s physically impossible to rhapsodise more about those years when The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Animals seemed primed to become the biggest bands in the world. Yet despite the number of words printed and spoken about those heady days, one act gets relegated to an afterthought. An act that many at the time thought poised to be just as big as the Fabs themselves. This is the story of The Dave Clark Five, which begins with the band’s namesake, leader, and drummer.
Dave Clark, a Tottenham native, started playing music the way many others of his generation did when the skiffle craze hit his part of town. The difference is that his group wasn’t formed out of a desperate desire to be a musician. Indeed, Clark claimed to have been a working stuntman at the time. Instead, his football team was invited to a tournament in the Netherlands, and a band was formed to raise money for the trip. There’s no word on whether the trip was successful, but the band ended up travelling a lot further than Holland.
Over time, the group grew from a skiffle project into a fully-fledged backing band for fellow north London singer Stan Saxon. Clark, not content with drumming, was also their manager, producer and co-songwriter. If anything, this was where his true skill shone. First, he put together a full-time line-up and started a residency at the South Grove Youth Club. Then, after The Beatles started getting national attention with their “Mersey Beat” sound, they marketed the Five’s Spector-esque Wall of Sound production and singer Mike Smith’s belting vocals as the “Tottenham Sound”.
The gamble worked, and in January 1964, ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ was knocked off the top spot of the UK singles chart by The Five’s sixth single (and Crystal Palace walkout song) ‘Glad All Over’. Suddenly, the British press had a rival to the Beatles’ all-conquering success and, in a more general sense, a feeling that what The Beatles and The Five represented wasn’t a flash in the pan but a full-on movement of British music. An ‘invasion’ if you will. Once the labels turned their attention toward the states, The Five were in a perfect position to become a very, very big deal. So, did they? Well… kind of.
The band had a string of high charting hits on both sides of the Atlantic, topping the US Charts in December the following year with a cover of Bobby Day’s ‘Over and Over’. However, if we think that pop moves fast today, it’s got nothing in the mid-60s. Bands and artists were putting out multiple albums a season, let alone a year, and the music would develop further as a result. Put it this way, in January 1964, ‘I Wanna Hold Your Hand’ was at the top of the charts. By December 1965, the Fabs had already put out Rubber Soul.
It’s true. If you compare every band to The Beatles, then pretty much everyone is going to suffer. But at a time when even The Monkees were starting to develop their sound, The Five and their “Tottenham Sound” became an albatross around their necks.
They still had hits at home, though, all the way until they split in 1970. Leaving behind a legacy of what could have been. After all, no lesser authority than Andrew Loog Oldham once said, “If The Beatles ever looked over their shoulders, it was not The Stones they saw. They saw the Dave Clark Five.”
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