Mike Smith
Mike Smith
Lead singer and songwriter with the Dave Clark Five whose Glad All Over toppled the Beatles in 1964
The Dave Clark Five took their name from their drummer but the group’s lead singer was Mike Smith, whose powerful voice on such records as Glad All Over and Bits and Pieces helped them to challenge the Beatles’ domination of both the British and American charts in the mid-1960s.
Smith also co-wrote many of the group’s hits with Clark and if their songwriting partnership did not quite have the glittering ring of Lennon-McCartney, they nevertheless created a unique sound and a healthy smattering of memorable crowd-pleasers that can unite several different generations on a dance floor to this day.
After the group broke up in 1970, Smith concentrated mainly on producing other artists and writing television advertising jingles but a horrendous accident in 2003 left him permanently paralysed from the waist down.
Born Michael George Smith in 1943, in Edmonton, North London, he took classical piano lessons as a child and passed the entrance exam at Trinity Music College at the age of 13. His other childhood passion was football and he first met Clark when playing in the same team for the St George Boys Club. They shared an enthusiasm for the early imported American rock’n’roll of Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, but initially played in different, semi-professional, North London groups; Smith in the Impalas and Clark already leading the quintet that bore his name. Some time in 1961, Clark asked Smith to replace his original singer, Stan Saxton, on vocals and keyboards, and with Lenny Davidson on guitar, Rick Huxley on bass and Denis Payton on saxophone, the line-up that was to endure for the next decade was in place.
The group made its first recording in 1962 with Chiquita, an instrumental on which Smith’s keyboards were to the fore and the following year they signed to EMI. Their first minor hit came with Do You Love Me, although it was a version of the same song by Brian Poole and the Tremeloes that got to No 1. Nevertheless, their basic sound was in place as Clark’s thundering drums, Peyton’s sax and Smith’s Presley influenced vocals gave them a quite different style from most of their guitar-led rivals.
The approach was perfected on their next single, Glad All Over. Written by Smith and Clark, with its stomping, irrepressible beat and unforgettable hook, the song hit No 1 one in January 1964, displacing the Beatles’ I Wanna Hold Your Hand from the top of the charts. Claims at the time that the Tottenham sound was taking over from Mersey beat as the primary force in British pop were somewhat wide of the mark and overlooked the fact that the Rolling Stones were coming up fast on the inside rail and would soon be the Beatles’ main rivals. Nevertheless, when Glad All Over hit the US Top Ten in the spring of 1964, they were only the second group after the Liverpool quartet to make the American charts, and their success helped to usher in the British invasion.
Further hits followed with Bits and Pieces, Can’t You See That She’s Mine, Because and Any Way You Want It ensuring that they were never out of the charts throughout 1964. The hits continued into 1965, the year of the group’s film debut in the John Boorman-directed Catch Us If You Can, a rather blatant but appealing attempt to replicate the success of the Beatles’ first film, A Hard Day’s Night.
The group ended 1965 with Over and Over, a minor hit in Britain but a No 1 in the US, where they were now more popular than at home, with six coast-to-coast tours and a record 13 appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. The arrival of psychedelia finally ended their run of US hits in 1967 and they were ill-equipped to make the transition to “serious” albums. Instead, they enjoyed a late flurry of pop success in Britain where a cover of Raymond Froggatt’s Red Balloon made the Top 10 in 1968, followed by 1970’s Good Old Rock’n’Roll and Everybody Get Together.
The group disbanded that year, although Smith and Clark were forced to release several more records to fulfil a contractual obligation to EMI. Smith then briefly formed his own band, Rock Engine, before retiring from performing to concentrate on producing records for Shirley Bassey and Michael Ball and writing jingles for commercials.
In 2000 he put together a new line-up of Rock Engine, playing for fun on the Costa del Sol, where he lived. However, in 2003 he broke his spine after a fall when trying to climb a security gate after locking himself out of his home. The accident left him confined to a wheelchair, and he spent most of the last five years of his life in Stoke Mandeville Hospital.
He was discharged last December and had hoped to attend a ceremony to induct the Dave Clark Five into the US Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame this month. He contracted a chest infection and instead of taking a flight to New York to share the stage with Madonna, he was returned to hospital, where he died.
He is survived by his second wife, Charlie. A former girlfriend from the 1960s with whom he had lost touch, she tracked him down in 1999 and they were married two years later.
Mike Smith, singer, was born on December 6, 1943. He died of pneumonia on February 28, 2008, aged 64