To Harry Albert Bob Garner
Special thanks to Daniel Bunyard
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Foreword
Introduction
Part One: Chas Before Dave
Chapter 1 First Memories
Chapter 2 11, Harton Road
Chapter 3 Irish John
Chapter 4 Schooldays and Rock ’n’ Roll
Chapter 5 I Become a Rock ’n’ Roller
Chapter 6 Jerry Lee for Me
Chapter 7 First Real Job
Chapter 8 Butlins with Billy Gray & The Stormers
Chapter 9 The Outlaws
Chapter 10 Jerry Lee Lewis Tour
Chapter 11 Gene Vincent
Chapter 12 The Outlaws vs. The Beatles
Chapter 13 Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers
Chapter 14 Fishing Stories
Chapter 15 Cliff and the Rebs Split
Chapter 16 Now What Can I Do to Get some Money?
Chapter 17 Heads Hands & Feet
Chapter 18 H H & F – RIP
Part 2 The Chas & Dave Story
Chapter 19 The Beginning
Chapter 20 First Record Deal
Chapter 21 Second Record Deal
Chapter 22 Bob England and ‘Gertcha!’
Chapter 23 How do we Follow ‘Rabbit’?
Chapter 24 No Pleasin’ You
Chapter 25 Knees up Down Under
Chapter 26 Bob Bails Out
Chapter 27 I’m a Grandad!
Chapter 28 Troublesome Roadies Number 1 and Number 2
Chapter 29 Millennium and the USA
Chapter 30 Hootenanny!
Chapter 31 Glastonbury and On
Chapter 32 Better all the Time!
Discography
Copyright Notices
Copyright
We’ve just done a show and we’re back at the hotel having a drink and a chat. We sit around for a while and I start to feel pretty knackered.
Chas says to me, ‘I think I’ll go up and do a bit more on the book.’
I think to myself, ‘How can he get his brainbox working at this time of night?’ (It’s three in the morning). Maybe he wants to write something down before he forgets it. This is just one little instance I can recall when Chas was putting all this together and I for one am really glad he did.
There’s tales in these pages even I hadn’t heard before. It’s all here, my mate’s account from when he was a nipper in Edmonton, right up until the time he got tangled up with me.
Then the whole story up to now.
Have a butcher’s. I think you’re going to like it!
Dave Peacock
Why are you reading this introduction? I never do! If I’ve bought a book about somebody I like I wanna get straight into the story to find out what sort of things he got up to and what makes him tick.
But perhaps you ain’t bought it yet and you’re reading this bit in the shop in hopes it’ll give you an idea of what it’s all about and if it’s worth spending your money on? I’ll tell ya one thing. It’s got a few swearwords in it. But you see, that’s the way I talk. I use ’em like perfect punctuation. You don’t notice them. But you would if they weren’t there. The same as if you had no full stops or commas, the words would be there but the flow and rhythm would be lost. Now I might slip up on me full stops and commas here and there, but I do know where to put a swearword.
So what’s it about then? Well, for starters, it’s about my life up until I got together with Dave. The school days. The early Rock ’n’ Roll days. The fifties. London street life. The serious bits. The funny bits. The days spent on the road with mad but likeable blokes like Gene Vincent and Jerry Lee Lewis. The laughing and learning. The Soul Scene in the sixties with Cliff Bennett & The Rebel Rousers. Touring with The Beatles. The daft but exciting American tours in the seventies with Heads Hands & Feet. The skint and the rich times. The hit records and the flops. The wonderful and the wallies. In short, the bits you look back on as all part of growing up. And then there’s meeting Dave…And that’s where a whole new set of stories start!
I hope you do enjoy this book ’cos one day, when I am grown up, I might write another one.
Well I did actually.
The second half of this book was written a quarter of a century later after the first. Have I grown up? Don’t know. But I enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoy reading it. The main course, the Chas & Dave story, rambles from the ‘Gertcha!’ days to the Glastonbury days and everything in between. With Rock ’n’ Rollers, royalty, and punks to politicians, all agreeing in principle that Rockney Rules. All in favour say, ‘Gertcha!’
I’m Chas, the one who plays the piano in Chas & Dave. I was born in the North Middlesex Hospital, Edmonton on 28 December 1943. Albert and Daisy Hodges were the ‘proud’ parents. (So my Mum tells me, and I believe everything my Mum says.) Brother Dave was nearly three years old. Mum wanted me to be called Nicholas but Charles was the traditional family name on my Dad’s side. So I became Charles Nicholas. ‘Chas’ was also the familiar nickname for Charles around Hackney, where my Dad came from, so ‘Chas’ it was.
My earliest memories were when I was about three. Music