Review: The Dave Clark Five - Having A Wild Weekend (1965)

Tracks: 1) Having A Wild Weekend; 2) New Kind Of Love; 3) Dum-Dee-Dee-Dum; 4) I Said I Was Sorry; 5) No Stopping; 6) Don’t Be Taken In; 7) Catch Us If You Can; 8) When I’m Alone; 9) If You Come Back; 10) Sweet Memories; 11) Don’t You Realize; 12) On The Move.

REVIEW

Technical details first: Having A Wild Weekend was a US-only album, presented as the formal soundtrack to the band’s first and last moving picture, which came out in the UK as Catch Us If You Can and in the US as Having A Wild Weekend, hence the LP title. However, only four of the songs (two of them instrumentals) were actually used in the movie; the other eight had no connection to it whatsoever — a tradition that the Dave Clark 5 obviously inherited from the Beatles. I have never seen the movie, although it might be interesting as the directorial debut of John Boorman (Excalibur, Hope And Glory etc.), and since even Pauline Kael is reported to have given it a thumbs up, it is well possible that it did have some artistic merit — however, it is highly unlikely that any such merit would have much to do with the complex and intriguing personalities of Dave Clark, Mike Smith, Denis Payton, Lenny Davidson, and Rick Huxley. The band did not even play themselves in the movie (rather, they were portrayed as a team of freelance stuntmen), so it probably relates to the music in much the same way as Help! the movie relates to Help! the LP — that is, tangentially at best. The only serious sign that you might be dealing with a soundtrack here is a notable (but not dramatic) increase in «incidental-music» type instrumentals.

Of the two vocal numbers written specially for the movie, ‘Catch Us If You Can’ is the clear winner. It’s one of those ‘Hey Hey We’re The Monkees’-style anthemic songs — announcing the arrival of the band in playfully suspenseful, harmlessly vivacious ways. No genuine aggression or defiance, but just a nice statement of teenage self-assertion — «we’re here alright and what are you gonna do about that, huh?» The pompous bombast of the chorus’ group harmonies riding up on the twin rocket of sax and organ would be nothing new to fans of ‘Glad All Over’ or ‘Any Way You Want It’, of course, but this was the first time when the bombast would serve as the base for an «anthem of youth» rather than a love song; I wouldn’t go far enough to call ‘Catch Us If You Can’ a social statement, but it’s as close as the band made it up to that point. A weird detail is that the harmonica solo in the instrumental break is reminiscent of Lennon’s playing on ‘I’m A Loser’ — probably just an amusing coincidence, but be my guest if you’d like to interpret it as a veiled hint at a bit of self-deflation in contrast to the self-aggrandizing "we will yell with all of our might" lyric.

On the other side, the title track is a relative letdown. ‘Having A Wild Weekend’ tries a bit too hard to paint the band as maniacal rockers who would be truly capable of making their weekends as «wild» as possible. From the opening hoarse one-two-three-four! countdown that feels like a parody on ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ and up to the crazy-mad-delirious instrumental break with Mike Smith whooping and wooing over Payton’s ecstatic sax, this is one of those classic «guys who don’t know how to rock pass themselves for natural-born rockers» moments that triggers gags, cringes, and facepalms. It’s hard to explain why — on the surface, they are doing precisely the kind of stuff that the Beatles do when covering ‘Long Tall Sally’, but with the Beatles it works and with the DC5 it blows. Perhaps it’s just Mike Smith’s vocals, which are much better suited for a «pop» or «soul» style than «rock».

More likely, though, it is the fact that ‘Having A Wild Weekend’ itself is based on a thoroughly pop melodic structure — in fact, that entire «on Saturday night, everybody having fun / you don’t know it but I’m having me some» melody is no rock’n’roll at all, but rather a Jack-and-Jill-went-up-the-hill type of singalong, and when you give it a ‘Long Tall Sally’ kind of arrangement, the resulting clash is embarrassing. My own gut reaction is telling here — these old guts want to go wild along with Ruth Brown’s ‘Wild Wild Young Men’, or Steppenwolf’s ‘Born To Be Wild’, or the Stones’ ‘I Go Wild’, but when it comes to this song, all they send me is a strong signal that the Dave Clark Five are faking it and that they really spend their actual weekends at their parents’ houses, playing cribbage and helping wash the dishes.

Fortunately for us, ‘Having A Wild Weekend’ is just about the only such blatant display of «musical inadequacy» on the entire record. The only other declarative «rocker» here is ‘No Stopping’, which is (a) an instrumental, so the problems with Mike Smith’s voice are automatically nullified and (b) blatantly steals the dangerous riff from Vince Taylor’s ‘Brand New Cadillac’, further enhancing it with a distorted Payton sax lead line to kick-ass effect. They still end up sounding playful rather than outright aggressive, but with a bit of genuine snap — here’s a track that maybe even The Who might have dug (after all, they did cover the musically similar ‘Batman Theme’ a year later, being no strangers to combining a little playful humor with kick-ass rock’n’roll aggression).

The rest of the compositions — all of them credited to band members, though some are more openly derivative than others — predictably veer between unimaginative, but catchy pop-rock and sentimental, but equally catchy ballads. The instru­mental numbers, other than ‘No Stopping’, are okay; ‘When I’m Alone’ and ‘Sweet Memories’ are generic 1964-style movie serenades à la ‘Ringo’s Theme’ from Hard Day’s Night, with moody twangy guitars and nostalgic harp solos taking up the most prominent spots — while the fast-paced ‘Dum-Dee-Dee-Dum’ is a 100% spot-on (and 100% pointless) imitation of Duane Eddy’s twangy-cowboyish ‘Detour’ style (even Payton’s trademark saxophone here ends up sounding like all those Steve Douglas parts on Duane Eddy albums).

Of the vocal numbers, ‘Don’t You Realize’ is perhaps a bit of a standout: the deep, cavernous echo, the variations in tempo, the emphasis on minimalistic bass and organ in the verse gives the song an aura of «deep soul», something that not a lot of British bands were going for in mid-’65 — maybe The Moody Blues and occasionally The Animals, but for the Dave Clark Five this type of sound was a first and Smith’s voice is a much better instrument for it than for the «all-out rock’n’roll» of the title track. However, the song does not really go far enough with this vibe, and none of the other tracks try to milk it either — ballads such as ‘I Said I Was Sorry’ rather hearken back to the Beatles circa 1963. Catchy country-pop like ‘If You Come Back’ sounds more «modern» for 1965 in that respect, but not particularly interesting to write about in detail.

On the whole, Having A Wild Weekend does a good job of keeping the band «on the level» and is a fairly symmetric companion to Weekend In London, though the abundance of instrumentals would arguably take it down a peg or two. And for all the busy nature of 1965, the chronological distance from May to July wasn’t that big, so it would be impossible to accuse the band of lagging even further behind the time than they did last time around. Though, admittedly, copycatting Duane Eddy was a bit of a weird move.

• Only Solitaire reviews: The Dave Clark Five