Words matter. These are the best Dave Clark Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I was very, very lucky to spend my youth during the ’60s.
Ready, Steady, Go!’ was the show of the ’60s in London, where the Beatles, the Stones and the DC5, and every other major act started.
To think I thought you could lose your place in history.
The Dave Clark Five was basically a live band. During ’63 we got the Gold Cup for being the best live band in Britain.
We’d play the American bases and found all these wonderful records by Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Sam Cooke. Without American music, there would not have been a British Invasion.
I sort of disbanded the DC5 in 1970. I decided to call it a day when we were still selling records.
That was the ultimate high, playing live. You feel like the Pied Piper, or a conductor, knowing how to take an audience up or bring them down.
Early CDs, I found, flattened out the sound – it took away all the highs.
Who wants to be a 40-year-old rock and roller? You cannot live in the past.
It was always the singer that was the front man, but Mike stood there and played piano and keyboards. He had a great voice and he was the Sixties’ Rod Stewart, and he contributed a tremendous amount to the Dave Clark Five.
You can’t recreate the ’60s.
I believe you have to be honest with yourself. If you believe that the direction you want to go is the right direction, then you should do it.
We couldn’t get enough of American rock ‘n’ roll. We’d hear it when we played American air bases in the U.K.
There will never be another Freddie Mercury, one of the greatest rock and roll singers.
We got our grounding by playing live. You had to fall flat on your face, pay your dues and grow.
I love the music business, but I have no ambition to keep on playing.
You’ve got two sets of teenagers in England – the mods and the rockers. The rockers are motorcycle addicts. The mods dress like we do. We wear four-button jackets, cuban heel boots, shirts of our own design, with high collars and a tab underneath the collar.
I date fairly often, but my work is much more important.
We copied our hairstyle from Prince Charles, not the Beatles.
Classical music is for listening but rock and roll is to have fun with.
I miss physically going out on stage and performing. That’s the ultimate high.
I own a series called ‘Ready, Steady, Go!’ that I bought in the Seventies. I purposely didn’t do anything with it, and wouldn’t sell off any clips. My accountant went crazy when I said I wanted to wait until the 20-year cycle, then put it out so the new generation could experience it.
We’ve got an electric organ, a sax, drums, guitar and bass guitar. We sound less like the Beatles than most of the groups.
I knew The Beatles before because we did our first television with them, ‘Thank Your Lucky Stars.’
When you’re touring, you only see the auditorium and the hotel room. You can’t go out because you get mobbed. You’re tired, edgy and under pressure. The fun had gone out of it, so we decided to walk away from it all.
I enjoyed every moment, but we’d been everywhere, done everything. I wanted to get back to being just Dave Clark, not Dave Clark Celebrity.
People annoy me when they say, ‘Oh, you made a fortune.’
We have our hair cut, but the idea is to look like we didn’t.
People make assumptions when you’re not married. I’ve been best man at five weddings and I said I’d never do it again ‘cos everyone got divorced.
Anyone can look good if you have 500-flash bulbs exploding in your face.
I’d like to make documentaries. Way-out documentaries. I’d like to do one on a tour of the U.S.
I thought I should have a Rolls, for prestige, so I ordered one. But when it came, I realized that I didn’t really need it.
We were the first group where the drummer was the front man.
I made records purely for fun – songs that made you feel good. I left the message songs to people like John Lennon.
You hear many things, take a little from each experience, and tune your imagination to create believable characters and situations.
We were a very popular live band in London, packing in 6,000 people a night, and the record companies that came after us wanted us to be the flavor of the month.
Success doesn’t scare us. I think we have staying power.
They say if you remember the ’60s, you weren’t there. Well I remember the ’60s, I was there and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
My big thrill in life is my Jaguar XKE.
Rick was a real gentleman. He was very kind and had an amazing sense of humour – he was the funny one in the group, and a very talented musician.
