Before I begin this rather-poignant entry, let me, first, remind you that summer’s here … and, like ANY rockaholic, you’ll want be where the action is! And that’s in Orlando in the sunny, sandy state of Florida! From Mouse to House, you’ll dig the music, merriment and more as you get into your Orlando rental home. Check out the site, rockers … and get ready for a swingin’ summer.
Now … on to business:
As you know, the legendary keyboardist/lead vocalist for the Dave Clark Five, Mike Smith, has been hospitalized with tetraplegia — meaning, he can’t move more than his head and one hand — due to an accident at his Spanish hacienda about four years ago. I’ve been following this situation, and his improvement, intensely … and can find no better way of telling his story than to use the words of Doug McPherson, from Keyboard Player Magazine. (Note: This is rather lengthy, but SHOULD drive home the importance of continued stem-cell research … providing we get someone in office with the sense to ALLOW it!)
Mike Smith quotes Kipling: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors as just the same…”
From Mike, it’s more than an oft repeated poem.
Back in the 60s, Mike’s band, The Dave Clark Five, were as big as The Beatles. Their first big hit, ‘Glad All Over,’ knocked ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ off the top of the UK charts and paved their way as one of the most successful acts in the British Invasion of America.
Forty years on, and the hysterical screaming that drowned every note Mike wrought from his Vox Continental has faded to the gentle trill of summer birdsong in the sunny gardens of Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire.
The r’n’b holler that drove the fans wild on hits like ’Do You Love Me’ and ’Bits And Pieces,’ has been reduced to a soft-edged croak, as Mike sits in an electric wheelchair.
Paralysed from the shoulders down since a freak accident, when he fell and broke his spinal chord in three places during a fall at his Spanish home four years ago, he can now move only his head and, barely, his left arm.
Beside him is his glamorous and attentive Indiana-born wife, Charlie. They met on his first, triumphant tour of America in ‘64 - only to lose touch for the next 35 years. Reunited in 1999, they married in 2001 and, with Mike just starting to tour once more, after decades off the road, they were about to begin a new life together in America at the time of his accident.
Triumph and Disaster…. those two impostors…
Mike reflects on the words he has just quoted then says quietly, almost distantly, “That’s very true. They are both the same.”
And Mike has treated them as such. Despite the constant round of medical procedures that dominate his day, and his occasional need to break off conversation to take in oxygen from a canister, he is cheerful in a way that would shame most able bodied people. He is positive about his future and hoped for release from hospital in the coming months - and equally happy to field questions about his glorious musical past.
He was born towards the end of the Second World War in Edmonton, North London, not far from Tottenham, where the Dave Clark Five would make its base, first at the South Grove Youth Club and then at the Tottenham Royal. So strongly associated with the latter did the group become, that when the ballroom’s management shifted them to a sister venue in Basildon, 300 girls marched on Tottenham Town Hall with a 4500-strong petition demanding their return!
It’s ironic for the creators of ‘The Tottenham Sound,’ that their flagship song, ‘Glad All Over’ became the terrace chant to this day, not of their home team, Spurs, but of south London rivals Crystal Palace. But that’s another story.
Learning that his current interviewer is a Tottenham boy himself, Mike recalls, “There was a very good second hand record store in Edmonton where I used to buy a lot of my records. One was ‘Do You Love Me,’ by The Contours. Another was ‘Twist & Shout,’ by the Isley Brothers. That’s where I first heard them.”
The records were to change the life of the young pianist, who had begged for lessons after hearing his father play for his own amusement.
“I started playing when I was five, studying classical music until I was 13. I passed all my exams to go to Trinity College, but I never did go. I ended up playing rock’n’roll piano in a few pubs instead.”
His first band were the Impalas, who had a residency in a large pub in Edmonton.
“We played on Friday and Saturday night, Sunday afternoon and Sunday night for a grand total of five pounds - which was amazing. It was all rock’n’roll from America. I would buy it, listen to it and play it. It was so much better than anything we had over here.”
Later, when The Dave Clark Five stormed America, Mike got to meet one of his rock’n’roll piano heroes, Little Richard - in circumstances that the young English fan found perplexing.
“He was playing in some seedy little bar in Atlantic City. We were doing a big concert there and as we were driving in I saw a sign saying he was playing there the next night. So I went there and there were all these people just eating and drinking and not really listening to him. And me and the rest of the boys were absolutely enthralled. He was brilliant. We got to meet him afterwards, and he was smashing.”
With a chuckle, Mike says, “He did me the great honour of saying I’d been born the wrong colour for the way I play. I said thank you very much, I take that as a compliment.”
Did Mike feel guilty that he and the other English beat groups were pushing their rock’n’roll heroes, like Richard and Fats Domino, off the charts?
“To be quite honest, we were not aware that we were doing that, but I get what you’re saying. In America at that time they would never play black music, they would only play our stuff. We had a big hit with ‘Do You Love Me,’ and they wouldn’t even play the original version. I thought it was strange that they invented the music but we were playing it and having hits with it. I couldn’t work that out because I always thought their versions were much better than ours.”
The confusing thing for the fans, meanwhile, was who exactly was Dave Clark? Most assumed it was the guy who did the singing - but that of course was Mike, while bandleader Clark played drums.
“It caused total confusion with everybody,” Mike chuckles. “A lot of people still think I’m Dave Clark, even now.”
Not that it mattered when The Dave Clark Five hit the stage and the girls screamed so loud that not even the band couldn’t hear the music.
“At most concerts I never heard a thing. At the beginning of every song, everyone looked at me, I shouted ‘1,2,3,4…’ and in we went and we just had to hope that we all finished in the same place!”
The Five and The Beatles were portrayed as rivals, but Mike says, “That was just a media thing, North versus South. We knew the Beatles from the early days. We did our first TV show together: Thank Your Lucky Stars. Del Shannon was top of the bill. The Vernons Girls… and two hairy groups, The Beatles and The Dave Clark Five.
“When we played the Hammersmith Odeon together they said could you show us around? So after we’d finish, they’d smuggle me out the back door, we’d get in a car and I’d show them around all the clubs, and finish about four in the morning.”
After seven years of hits and sell out tours, it’s perhaps unsurprising that, when the DC5 disbanded, Smith was happy to withdraw to the anonymity of studio work.
“It meant I could go out to dinner and not be bothered. Because in the band you couldn’t go out to dinner, go for a walk, do anything without being bothered. It was the price you had to pay, but it was a bit of a pain and I wanted to return to normal.
“I decided to take a year off. Then someone approached me to try and do some commercials for TV. I thought, well, they’re only 30 seconds long, I could do those all day. But I found out it’s a totally different art and you have to learn how to do it. I didn’t get anything accepted for two years, so my nose was pushed right out of joint.
“But it was a good learning curve and in the end I did learn how to do it. I did a lot of commercials, for British Airways and all the major products.”
Mike also moved into the role of producer, making several albums with Michael Ball to whom he was introduced by Cathy McGowan, now Ball’s wife but then a journalist whom Mike had known since she presented 60s pop TV show Ready Steady Go.
“I thought he had a terrific voice and said I’d love to produce him. He did Eurovision and fortunately came second, otherwise he would always have been known as a Eurovision winner, and he‘s gone on and made a wonderful success out of his career.
“I also produced Shirley Bassey. I was advised not to on the grounds that she was such a diva, but I found her very pleasant and I liked her very much. She’s only a diva queen when somebody does something stupid or she does something stupid herself. She doesn’t suffer fools gladly. She works hard and she has an unbelievable voice.”
In 2003, Mike returned to the road with Mike Smith’s Rock Engine.
“I don’t know why, really, apart from the fact that I’ve always enjoyed playing the piano. I sat down with a bunch of musicians and really enjoyed myself, so I thought I’d get a band together and away we went.”
Life on the road as a mature man, says Mike was “much more fun” than it had been the first time around.
“I really loved it. It was nice being able to take my wife with me and show her all the places I’d been, like Carnegie Hall, where I’m not sure if we still hold the attendance record, but we held it for a long time.”
It was then, just as Mike’s life seemed to be at its happiest that he made the simple mistake of locking himself out of his Spanish villa. With Charlie in the States, house hunting for the couple, he tried to regain entry by climbing over his garden wall, tripped and landed on his head.
Four years on from that literally life shattering moment, Mike is stoical about his condition.
“I can move my head. I can talk. I can just about control this wheelchair and threaten everybody in the hospital with it…
“It is hard, when you’ve had such an active life, and you have to face it on your own. No one can help you. No one can say, ‘I know how you feel,’ because they don’t know how you feel. Because you don’t feel. You can’t feel a bloody thing.
“But I have a very good wife who looks after me and comes up here almost every day to see me and bring me things and cook for me. I have a lot of good friends, like Peter Noone, who jumped in so gallantly as soon as he heard something was wrong and motivated all his fans to do something for me. And there are other people who call me and write to me and visit me from all over the world.
“So you have to accept it and realise that your life isn’t over, just a part of it is over, and you’re now starting a new life. All the things you knew, you have to learn again, in a different way. How to talk. How to eat. I can eat a little with my left hand. Now I’ve learned how to write with my left hand, which I never thought would be possible.
“So life isn’t ending… it‘s just beginning.”
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