The Dave Clark Five: the band that counterculture forgot
It might have taken The Beatles a few years to sprout moustaches and get their hands on some LSD, but the British invasion of the mid-1960s was the root of the American counterculture era that soon followed – a fact signified by the fact that virtually every early invasion group had their own hippie-era hits. Every group, that is, apart from The Dave Clark Five.
When The DC5 first exerted their command over the UK singles charts in 1964, with their landmark record ‘Glad All Over’ taking the top spot from The Beatles’ ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’, the Tottenham outfit looked set to become the next big name in British rock and roll. What’s more, they had already broken America, with that very same single breaking into the top ten on the other side of the Atlantic – a rather impressive feat for the time.
A plethora of subsequent hits followed, the biggest of which was the ‘Glad All Over’ follow-up ‘Bits and Pieces’ and 1967’s ‘Everybody Knows’. While the vast majority of their early contemporaries were turning their attention to the blossoming realm of American hippiedom, though, The Dave Clark Five didn’t seem all that interested.
They did, to their credit, have their own flirtation with the newly emerging psychedelic sound, with songs like ‘Live In The Sky’ from 1968 seeing them dip their toes into that world of mind-expanding expression. However, their psychedelic offerings weren’t nearly as far-out as the kinds of psych-rock that were dominating proceedings by that time. In comparison to a group like The Doors, Love, or even The Beatles, ‘Live In The Sky’ might as well have been recorded by The Archies.
Sonically, Clark and the gang never really moved past the fresh-faced invasion rock that earned them their inaugural UK hits. As a result, they were among the few groups of their ilk that never really earned the adoration of the hippie age.
By the time the 1960s came to a close, they weren’t quite cutting-edge enough to remain in favour with the mainstream pop charts, but they also weren’t nearly as experimental, rebellious, or politically charged enough to become counterculture stalwarts.
The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, even The Kinks; virtually every group that defined the British invasion period had changed tactics by the time that LSD began to rule the rock and roll airwaves, experimenting with psychedelia and penning increasingly switched-on political anthems. Meanwhile, The DC5 were still nailed to their fairly inoffensive brand of pop-rock.
Despite boasting some moderate successes in the UK charts towards the end of the decade, the writing was on the wall for the band; the sands of rock and roll were shifting, if it wasn’t the psychedelic age, then it was the emergence of the hard rock realm, ushered in by Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Dave Clark didn’t fit into any of it.
So, in 1970, the group decided to call it quits, only six years on from the release of ‘Glad All Over’, which first established them as a promising, if ultimately unfulfilled, voice for British rock. Ironically, of course, that particular track has since become a rock standard, being recorded in virtually every style from punk to metal to psychedelia. Perhaps, then, Dave Clark had the potential to become a hippie hero, but the band could never quite get there.
