Too good for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

On Thursday, two weeks before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the world’s most idiotic cultural institution, were due to add the Dave Clark Five to its tarted-up pantheon, lead singer Mike Smith died. According to some reports, the DC5, who should have been voted into the Hall 20 years ago, got screwed out of their induction last year because of dodgy ballot tallying at the shabby institution that is more about tourism and commerce than about the art form it purports to serve. This denied Smith a chance to receive the honour he so richly deserved from an institution that was in no real position to honour him. Lead singer/keyboardist in a truly fabulous pop band that had the misfortune to come along at the same time as the most truly fabulous pop band of them all, Smith had bad timing at the beginning of his career and bad timing at the end.

In some ways, The DC5 resemble Slade in that both had an endless string of hits over a short period of time and then disappeared. The DC5 also resemble Slade in that rock critics and the cognoscenti had a hard time taking them seriously. Even people who loved them viewed them more as guilty pleasures than as bona fide rock deities. The DC5 were partly responsible for this. Wholesome and earnest, nicely turned out in their matching jackets and white slacks, the DC5 provided parents everywhere with a safe, well-scrubbed alternative to grubby, satanic ensembles like the Rolling Stones. At least on this side of the ocean, the DC5 were viewed as likeable and harmless – rock with a human face – in a way that the Beatles were not; church groups immediately targeted the seemingly innocuous Fab Four as emissaries of Baal, mostly because John Lennon never seemed quite as choochie as his band mates and because there was something about those mop tops that scared Americans who had been in the military. Appearing on the The Ed Sullivan Show was the passport to success back in the Sixties; until Sullivan had officially laid on his hands by inviting a group onto his show, rock bands simply did not exist. The DC5 appeared on Ed Sullivan more often than any other band. The fact that older people welcomed the DC5 contributed to the perception that they were never really cool. In fact, it is true that they were never really cool – at least not by John Lennon/Keith Richards/Elvis Presley standards. But they were more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Several barrels.

Spike Lee once said that he felt he owed Joe Frazier an apology for being so overawed by Muhammad Ali during his prime that he took the gallant Frazier for granted. Everyone who came of age in the Sixties owes the DC5 the same sort of apology. Because they were so cute, because they were so preppy, because they were trying so hard to be like the Beatles, because they didn’t have anyone like Brian Jones or Mick Jagger in the lineup, it was easy for everyone to overlook how gifted they were. But from 1964 to 1967, the DC5 had a string of hits that stacks up creditably with the catalogues of just about anyone before or since.

The DC5, Londoners not Liverpudlians, are most famous for raucous driving songs (Glad All Over, Bits and Pieces, Do You Love Me?) that sound primitive without sounding raw, insistent without sounding threatening. But they also recorded straight-ahead rock ‘n roll (Anyway You Want It), and at least one gorgeous ballad (Come Home) to go with the somewhat saccharine Because. And at the tail end of their career, they recorded the anomalous You Got What It Takes, which could easily have been a Broadway show-stopper, as well as the plaintive, haunting I Got to Have a Reason, and the rhythmically adventurous You Don’t Try Too Hard. They also recorded At the Scene, which, were this a perfect world, would be one of the most celebrated and adored songs ever written. In the United States, only hard-core DC5 fans have ever heard of it.

With an unusual lineup – drums out front and centre, pianos and guitars off on the flanks, saxophone blaring – the Dave Clark Five were musically equipped to do a lot of things that other bands couldn’t. It helped that in Mike Smith they had one of the pure shouters in the history of rock ‘n’ roll (young Paul McCartney is another), who was also one of the greatest front men ever (young Paul McCartney is another). This is evident in Glad All Over, the band’s first No 1 hit, which dislodged I Want to Hold Your Hand from the top spot on the UK charts. Written by Smith and Dave Clark, Glad All Over is the Ur DC5 single. It is loud. It is thumping. It does not allude to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It sounds like something written by someone who had listened to a lot of Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard records. It is the kind of song you can dance to.

Fifteen years ago, when I moved houses, I forbade my wife to bring along any of our ghastly living room furniture. For the next six months, until we got around to buying a sofa and chairs and lamps, my wife and I and our two small children would gather every night in the barren living room and cut the rug while the Dave Clark Five ripped along in the background. Years later, my daughter would become a big fan of Weezer and Jimmy Eat World. Weezer and Jimmy Eat World are the Dave Clark Five, reincarnated as Young Americans. They write short snappy, songs that get directly to the point: Girls. They don’t use harpsichords and they don’t use sitars. Teach your children well and they grow up listening to rock’n’roll. Teach your children badly and they grow up listening to emo.

Two years ago I drove straight across the United States all by myself. I had 25 CDs to keep me amused while I ploughed through the hinterland. The Stones and the Clash and Sinatra and the Ramones were all included, but so was a hard-to-find number called It’s Only Rock’n’Roll by Mike Smith. The CD, released by Mooncrest Records, included classic tunes such as The Girl Can’t Help It, Reelin’ and Rockin’ and Riot in Cell Block Number 9. These were songs Mike Smith was born to sing and Michael Stipe and Michael Bolton and George Michael were not. I bought the CD after seeing Smith at a tiny club called The Turning Point across the river from my home. Smith was accompanied by what appeared to be Germans. They played well, but he played better. I had never seen the DC5 in concert, because they exited the scene around the time I was entering it, in 1967, when the emergence of Hendrix and Cream and Jefferson Airplane sent a clear single to the very first shock troops of the British Invasion that the pop music era was over and it was time to go back to Tottenham. Smith, who was not allowed to mention the Dave Clark Five in his promotional materials, sang Because and Come Home that evening, but he also sang Can’t You See That She’s Mine? and Glad All Over. He sang them the way they were meant to be sung, as if he were 21 years old and there were 19,000 girls in the room screaming for more, even though he was 59 and the crowd numbered fewer than 100. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a dubious pantheon whose inner sanctum is already home to James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt and Joni Mitchell – none of whom rock – did not choose to honour Mike Smith and the Dave Clark Five until it was too late. If anyone has any explanation for why the Hall of Fame exists, I’m all ears.