Dave Dee:
Singer with the pop group Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich
With their name of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick
and Tich, the 1960s hitmakers were never going to have much
credibility, but they made some of the most enterprising and
entertaining records of the era, including "Hold Tight", "Zabadak!"
and "The Legend Of Xanadu".
Their front man, Dave Harman, was born in
Salisbury on 17 December 1943. He loved the advent of rock 'n' roll
music in 1956 and felt privileged to see Buddy Holly at the
Salisbury Gaumont in 1958. He became a police cadet and was called
to the car accident which killed Eddie Cochran in Chippenham in
April 1960. "I was a big Eddie Cochran fan and we took his guitar
back to the station," he recalled. "It was there for two months and
I used to play it from time to time."
Like so many youngsters in the early 1960s, he and
his friends formed a beat group: "We were the Boppers first and then
the Beatniks. We had jackets with 'B' on so we had to stick with
that letter. We became the Bostons and then I became 'D' for David,
and Tich said we should be like Cliff Richard and the Shadows and
call ourselves Dave Dee and the Bostons."
In 1962 Dave Dee and the Bostons, who played
American r'n'b and rock 'n' roll songs, secured a residency at the
Top Ten club in Hamburg, moving on to the Star-Club. Dee told me in
2001, "At the Top Ten, we would play an hour on and an hour off, 14
hours a day for seven days a week. We were absolutely knackered
after the second week, and this waiter arrived on stage with five
rum and Cokes and some Preludin tablets. We took them at two in the
morning and we never went to bed until the next night. I was flying
10 feet off the ground, but it was never a habit I got into."
When they returned to the UK, they became Dave
Dee, Dozy (Trevor Davies), Beaky (John Dymond), Mick (Michael
Wilson) and Tich (Ian Amey). "The nicknames were already there," Dee
said. "We wanted something that sounded original and we were almost
the Slugs. We thought that no one would remember it, but they would
know us as the band with the long hair and the long name. Once
people got used to the name, they wanted to know which was which and
we all had our own following. People used to say, 'Where's Sleepy?
Where's Grumpy?' A lot of people didn't know that Dave Dee was one
person, so it was thought that there were six of us."
In 1964, the band worked a summer season at
Butlin's in Clacton and on a night off they played a ballroom in
Swindon. Topping the bill were the Honeycombs, and Dave Dee and co
impressed that group's managers, Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley. They
were signed to Fontana Records by Jack Baverstock and assigned to
the producer, Steve Rowland.
The group made the Top 30 with their third single,
"You Make It Move", in 1965, but their breakthrough came in March
1966 with "Hold Tight". Dee recalled, "When 'Hold Tight' was a hit,
we went into a transport café and Eric Clapton was there in a
military uniform, having the mickey taken out of him by truck
drivers. He asked Tich how he got the sound on 'Hold Tight' and we
told him about our fuzzbox. I like to think that he learnt something
from us but I'm not sure that he did."
Only Jim Reeves with "Distant Drums" kept the
controversial "Bend It", from topping the charts later that year.
Dee would wiggle his finger while singing the suggestive lyrics. "It
was full of innuendo," admitted Dee, "and the Americans wanted to
ban it. We told them that it was a dance and they believed it."
"Bend It" had a Greek influence and the group made
their singles distinctive with exotic titles and locations such as
"The Legend Of Xanadu" (with its whip-cracking sound) and "Zabadak!".
Dee said, "We also tried to make every record different from the one
before, but not different from everything we had done. We kept
coming back to the 'Hold Tight' sound with 'Touch Me Touch Me' and
'Hideaway'."
They lived the celebrity lifestyle – Dee drove a
Bentley and dated a former Miss World, Dorothy Frankland – and they
were fashionably dressed by Carnaby Street. Dee considered their
best recording to be "Last Night In Soho" (1968) but loathed their
final hit, "Snake In The Grass" (1969). "We were like the Westlife
of the 1960s," he said, "we could have done so much more. People
don't associate us with psychedelia but 'The Sun Goes Down' is as
good as anyone." That claim has to be balanced by their tribute to
public toilets, "The Loos Of England".
Dave Dee went solo in 1970 and released "My
Woman's Man": "It got into the Top 50 but it would have gone much
higher if the record label hadn't moved its distribution plant. No
one could buy the record. I was doing cabaret and hundreds of people
were telling me that they couldn't get my record, which finished me
off as a chart act. I wanted to do some acting, but I didn't go
about it the right way. I wish I'd been like Adam Faith who went
into rep at £15 a week and learnt his craft."
Instead Dee worked in record management for
Atlantic, then Magnet and WEA. He signed many well-known acts
including AC/DC, Boney M, B.A. Robertson and Gary Numan: "In our day
we had never heard of advances; we were just glad someone wanted us.
By then groups had decent lawyers who understood the music business
law, and there was a lot of negotiation." Dee also organised charity
events, including the two Heroes and Villains concerts for the
Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy Centre in the early 1980s, and he
assembled many 1960s stars, including the reclusive Scott Walker,
for a TV ad for Britvic.
Remaining a front man, Dee hosted programmes for
Radio 2, and from time to time worked as part of Dave Dee, Dozy,
Beaky, Mick and Tich, admittedly with a new Beaky and Mick. Touring
with Peter Sarstedt and members of Marmalade and the Tremeloes, Dee
was the presenter of a musical history of the 1960s, "The Story Book
Show". He was diagnosed with cancer in 2002 but returned to
performing the following year, completing UK dates in 2008 as part
of the nationwide "Solid 60s Silver Tour".
David Harman (Dave Dee),
singer: born Salisbury 17 December 1943; twice married (two sons,
one daughter): died Alderley Edge, Cheshire 9 January 2009.