DC5 ‘History’: A Nostalgic Treat for Fans

You say that you love me

All of the time

You say that you need me

You’ll always be mine.

Those were the opening lines of the Dave Clark Five single that entered the U.S. charts in February of 1964 and established the group in the minds of American teens as the first British rival of the Beatles, whose “I Want to Hold Your Hand” had entered the charts just a month before.

By the end of the year, the Dave Clark Five--whose music reflected many of the bright and bouncy characteristics of the Beatles’ early work--had released six other Top 20 singles, including “Bits and Pieces,” a remake of the Contours’ “Do You Love Me” and “Can’t You See That She’s Mine.”

Those seven hits are among the 50 tracks spotlighted in “The History of the Dave Clark Five,” a two-disc retrospective from Hollywood Records. It’s the first time the music has been released in the United States for almost 20 years because Clark, who owned the recordings under a 1963 deal with EMI, hadn’t authorized a collection of them since the early ‘70s.

Now that the music is available again, “History” serves as an engaging piece of nostalgia for pop fans old enough to remember the DC5--and a treat for younger fans who would like to hear how one of the Beatles’ chief rivals sounded.

While there is undeniable charm and craft to the best of the records, it’s equally clear that the group--Clark on drums, Rick Huxley on bass, Lenny Davidson on lead guitar, Denis Payton on sax and Mike Smith on lead vocals and keyboards--didn’t possess the creative ambition of the Beatles.

In Ken Barnes’ excellent liner notes, he points out that Clark, who produced the records, didn’t have any false sense of self-importance. Clark, too, marveled at the Beatles’ body of work.

In interviews over the years, Clark “repeatedly showered praise on the Liverpool lads and particularly John Lennon, contrasting Lennon’s acerbic commentary with the DC5’s deliberately innocuous lyrical style,” Barnes writes. “Clark has stressed that the DC5’s records were strictly for enjoyment, an approach that worked wonderfully well for the time.

“Later, that cheery, all-in-good-fun approach, combined with the group’s neatnik image, worked against them. When more rough-hewn, ‘dangerous’ acts like the Rolling Stones and the Who came along, the DC5 would be unfairly typecast as lightweight pop merchants inclining more toward the polite branch of the British Invasion rather than the gritty Stones/Kinks/Them axis with which the Five actually had more in common.”