The Dave Clark Five vs. The Beatles

As a nine-year-old American (but an official Beatnik) boy in Los Angeles, I was upset with the Kennedy assassination in November 1963. Still, six months later, I was perturbed by something more urgent, the Dave Clark Five vs. The Beatles. Like most of those who turn to the transistor radio for music, The Beatles captured something magical, and the undocumented masses could share it. On the other hand, who is/are The Dave Clark Five? I only heard of them once I purchased (more likely my dad) the above publication.

It makes more sense if it was the Stones vs. The Beatles, but the DC5 were such an unknown presence in my life, except for their one glad Glad All Over, which is good, but it didn’t have the sting of I Want to Hold Your Hand, which to me as a young boy, a revolutionary statement. The “rivalry” between the two groups made me turn off Dave Clark and company. I purchased many records and magazines of that time, but the Dave Clark Five were forbidden to enter my world. Their stance to take over the Fab Four was obscene to my thinking and, very slightly, a tad rude.

As much as I liked Glad All Over, I preferred the sounds of The Honeycombs, specifically their Have I The Right, which has a similar sound to the DC5. While Dave Clark is very present, The Honeycombs’ sensually were subline and textural to me. It was decades later when I read the producer of The Honeycombs, Joe Meek, was convinced that his studio was bugged, and therefore DC5 was ripping off his sound. I now suspect that is true. So over the years, and even the decades, my doubts about the DC5 became tarnished by its history of going up against The Beatles and the Joe Meek essence of the sounds he was making in his Holloway Road home studio. And stories of Dave Clark’s possession of his recordings and not allowing any re-releases didn’t add a mystique but more of a business decision than anything else. I believe the works of the mighty Five will be, or are, fully released in 2023.

In 1965, John Boorman directed his first feature-length film, Catch Us If You Can, starring The Dave Clark Five. One would think it would model itself after The Beatles’ Hard Days Night. Still, it was an existential piece of cinematic work and more intuned with the world of Michelangelo Antonioni than anything else. It was one of the first times I went into the cinema and expected something, and that wasn’t it. Due to that, I have only seen pictures of Dave Clark smiling; I couldn’t imagine him having a frown.

A few months ago, I purchased a used copy of their first album released in the United States, Glad All Over. It was an impulse buy, and I wanted to hear this 1964 album for the first time with my sixty-eight-year-old ears. It’s not the songs but the sound Dave Clark and his engineer gives to the beat. It’s almost a minimal piece of music with little change, and it charges to the finishing line with nothing to stop them. Interestingly, the British releases of their albums are different, and I noticed variations in songs.
In contrast, their American release comes off as a prototype of the first Ramones album. The vocal arrangements on all DC5 recordings are good. Almost doo-wop or Beach Boys-like, but with the robust Mike Smith vocal. The tracks I’m impressed with are the instrumentals, such as Time, which sounds like a British version of Dave Brubeck. I wished there was more of that side of the DC5 sound, but it is what it is. They are not The Beatles, and that’s perfectly fine.