The last hit single of this British pop quintet became the title – and title song – of Edgar Wright’s film Last Night In Soho.
Whenever I heard the name of these guys as I was growing up, I thought there were six of them. It took a long time to learn that Dave and Dee were one and the same.
I recall their hideously overblown Tex-Mex-flavoured chart-topper The Legend Of Xanadu, with its whipcracks (or gunshots?), and the even more hideous Bend It, but I don’t recall this – the last of their 13 hit singles in 1968.
It was once described by film maker Allison Anders to Quentin Tarantino as “the best title music for a film that’s never been made.” That changed when Tarantino introduced the song to Edgar Wright, who used it as the actual title of his film Last Night In Soho.
The group was formed in 1961 by five friends from Salisbury, Wiltshire: Dave Harman (aka Dave Dee), Trevor Leonard Ward-Davies (Dozy), John Dymond (Beaky), Michael Wilson (Mick) and Ian Frederick Stephen Amey (Tich).
Lead singer Dee/Harman was still working as a policeman, and had been at the scene of the previous year’s car crash that killed Eddie Cochran and injured Gene Vincent near Chippenham.
He reputedly learned to play the guitar on Cochran’s own Gretsch guitar while it was impounded at the police station, pending its return to his family in America.
After giving up their day job the band – then called Dave Dee And The Bostons – cut their teeth in the clubs of Hamburg and Cologne, alongside The Beatles, but didn’t find success until they moved to London in 1965 and hooked up with the management team of Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley.
The duo saw them supporting their proteges The Honeycombs at a gig in Swindon – Howard and Blaikley had penned their chart topper Have I The Right? – and liked The Bostons’ variety act, which included comedy routines that reminded them of music-hall.
Following a disastrous audition for Joe Meek, Howard and Blaikley took on their management, changing their name to Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich, and writing their songs for them.
They enjoyed a meteoric rise, spawning 13 hit singles beginning with Hold Tight in 1966, but broke up three years later.
Trivia fact 1: Ward-Davies had acquired his nickname of Dozy when he unwrapped a chocolate bar before absent-mindedly discarding the bar and attempting to eat the wrapper.
Trivia fact 2: Dave Dee became an A&R man for several labels and was involved in signing AC/DC, Boney M and Gary Numan. He later became a magistrate and founded the Nordoff-Robbins charity.