Having played a number of tracks from it during October 1992, Peel returned to the NME’s 40th anniversary celebration album, Ruby Trax, to play The Fall’s version of a 1968 Number 1 hit for Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.
When I started devouring 60s British pop music during 1992, I saw two tracks by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich on the BBC’s Sounds of the Sixties TV show: the clattering, unstoppable charge of Hold Tight (1966) and the tribal infused, lyrically opaque Zabadak (1967). I loved the former, as did Quentin Tarantino, who used it in the soundtrack to his 2007 film, Death Proof. Put Hold Tight up against any other piece of buzzsaw, freak beat pop from 1966 by The Who, The Yardbirds, Small Faces etc and it stands up well. There was a woman on my BTEC performing arts course called Jean, who 30 years earlier had gone out with Peter Noone, shortly before his band Herman’s Hermits became successful. Given that she had known an actual 60s popstar, Jean tended to be my go-to option to ask for an opinion on various bands I’d discovered. I asked her about Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich and she told me that the perception about them back in the 60s was that they were a bit of a novelty band. Zabadak was of a piece with the group’s singles moving away from the hard rock directness of Hold Tight towards quirkier records which saw the group adopt different musical styles for each release. This may have been because their A-sides were written for them by a songwriting team, Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, and the need to make each one sound ear-catching and different led them down various routes such as the Zorba the Greek rip-off of Bend It, the Latin American knees-up of Save Me or, as mentioned earlier, the African rhythms of Zabadak.
I swallowed the orthodoxy that Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich were no more than a party band, in it for a laugh and playing a game to see how many exotic sounds they could hit on to get on the radio, in lieu of having nothing interesting or profound to say. As I’m shortly about to celebrate my 48th birthday, I’m now able to be far less harsh than I was in my youth and can recognise that their records were, first and foremost, amazing productions as well as musically exciting, especially given that, as far as I can tell, they actually played those same exotic instruments on the recordings.
The Legend of Xanadu was their masterpiece. A dark tale of lost loves and haunting memories, set to a Mariachi feel, with Spanish guitar, bombastic brass and a whip crack effect which saw Dave Dee actually brandish a proper bullwhip whenever the group promoted the record.
The Fall’s version of it is taken at a faster pace, which I prefer to the original which is guilty of dragging a little in its final minute. Mark E. Smith opens with a clarion call of his own, but delivers the lyric in respectfully, deadpan style. There’s a synth effect to replicate the whip crack and they incorporate their own version of the brass figure in the playout. All in all, they do Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich proud.
Peel played the two versions back to back on Radio 1 on 23 October 1992, stating that if he was ever invited to appear a second time on Desert Island Discs, he would include The Fall’s version of The Legend of Xanadu among his 8 choices of record. Unfortunately, this had been but a glint in Mark E. Smith’s eye when Peel had appeared on the show in January 1990.
Videos courtesy of inviciblesticks (The Fall) and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich - Topic.
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