From first hearing the theme tune to Crackerjack I was a fan, but today I heard the tragic news.
Chas and Dave have split up.
Yes, Chas and Dave.
Have split up!
This is worse than Michael Jackson dying. Worse than Lennon being shot, worse than the formation and continued success of Coldplay. This is quite simply, bad news.
With their cor blimey guv’nor ‘ave a banana lyrics, it is easy to mock Chas and Dave, until you know their musical apprenticeship. Chas, (the sitting down at the piano one), not only backed Jerry Lee Lewis, played alongside Richie Blackmore in Mike Berry and the Outlaws and found time to be a member of both Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers and Heads Hands And Feet. Dave, (the standing up with the guitar one) was in The Tumbleweeds and worked with Mick Greenwood among others. The pair met in the band Black Claw, before forming Chas and Dave.
I was always a little confused about the fact that there were three people in the band. The drummer Mick Burt completed the line up, although obviously not egotistical enough to insist they were called Chas, Dave, and Mick.
Part Ian Dury, part Small Faces, and part music hall, Chas and Dave were trailblazers among those who decided that false American accents sounded a bit wanky, (not their actual words) and chose to sing in their real voices. Nowadays every posh gimp wants to sound like a cock-er-nee (Jamie Oliver, Damon Albarn, Lily Allen, Kate Nash I am looking at you), but Charles Nicholas Hodges and David Victor Peacock were the real deal.
Peacock announced his retirement following the recent death of his wife, and it is nice to know that this was not the result of a bust up between the two. As tragic as the end of the ‘rockney’ duos partnership is, my thoughts are with him.
As a slightly humorous epilogue, Chas has promised to honour all future bookings with his own band. This gives an element of truth to Bill Bailey’s throwaway quip on an episode of Never Mind The Buzzcocks.
“I went to see Chas and Dave, but it wasn’t the original Dave”
