When the Beatles led the first wave of the British Invasion, the band that challenged them in popularity wasn’t the Rolling Stones, who were still playing blues covers — it was the Dave Clark 5.
Unlike the skiffle-influenced Merseybeat sound of the Beatles and other Liverpool bands, the north London-based DC5 were straight-up rock-and-rollers. They started out in 1958 as the backing band for a popular singer, but broke off on their own in 1962 under the leadership of Clark, their drummer, who also became their manager, a situation that hurt the band’s legacy in later years.
This was their first hit — one so popular is knocked “I Want to Hold Your Hand” out of the No. 1 spot in the UK charts in January 1964.
The band scored 17 Top 40 hits in the U.S. between 1964 and 1967, but they couldn’t adapt when the psychedelic sound became prominent. They disbanded in 1970, the same year as their invading compatriots, the Beatles.
Their legacy suffered in the decades since because Clark owns all their master tapes and, for reasons unknown, has re-released little of the material (speculation is that it’s because the band, Clark in particular, weren’t all that proficient at their instruments, and much of their studio output involved studio musicians). Much of it was never released on CD, though it’s now available on iTunes.
Clark also has been accused of taking writing credits for songs he had no part in composing (a common practice among producers back in the day), something keyboard player and lead singer Mike Smith, who actually wrote some of their hits — including “Glad All Over” — has refused to talk about publicly. Clark also settled out of court with a British musician named Ron Ryan, who said he wrote many of their songs without credit because Clark wanted it to appear that the band wrote its own songs, just like Lennon and McCartney. Ryan sued because the said Clark went back on a handshake deal.
The song itself remains a British Invasion standard. Here’s an all-star lineup, led by John Fogerty and including Billy Joel, John Mellencamp and Joan Jett, bashing it out at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2008, the year the DC5 made it in.
