A long-time listener sent me an email about the Dave Clark Five.
Greetings Mike. The Dave Clark 5 were one of the biggest bands in England in the 60s and were serious rivals to the Beatles (Tavistock spawned of course). As a rock and roll musician, I knew guys who loved the Beatles but liked the DC5 better, albeit temporarily because they rocked harder.
Years ago, I bought a two-DVD set of 'The Story of the Dave Clark Five.' Dave Clark is said to have owned a martial arts and workout gym where the members of the band met, and he made the decision to form a band. Like you, I don't trust any entertainment business's scripted narrative. They soon dominated the London rock scene and went on to international fame and fortune, propelled by the big machine of course. What is astonishing, according to the story in these tapes, is that Dave Clark, from the get-go, made sure that the band retained all of their copyright and publishing royalties along with complete ownership of their master tapes. To my knowledge, he was the only rock superstar who was able to achieve this. Therefore, the band, and particularly Dave Clark, accumulated far more wealth than any of their contemporaries in the music business. The tape featured interviews with prominent artists who were angry and complaining about it. Elton John: (quote/paraphrase) - All of us ended up suing our managers and record companies for ripping us off for a fortune that should have gone to us but never did. All of us except Dave Clark, that is. He never had to. The bastard!! John didn't say the outcome of all those lawsuits, but I know that Tommy James of Tommy James and the Shondells wrote a book titled 'Me and the Mob'. In the book he details how organized crime controls the music business (and all entertainment by extension) and stole a king's ransom from him but he couldn't do anything about it out of fear for his life. He sold millions of records worldwide and received a pittance for it.
Also, in the 60s, James Brown, Otis Redding, & Sam Cooke decided to jointly form their own record, music publishing, and promotion company so they could keep the fruits of their labors as they were getting ripped off as well. Before it could get off the ground, Sam Cooke and Otis Redding died violently under suspicious circumstances. They were officially listed as accidents, but there is no doubt in my mind that they were capped. This scared the living hell out of James Brown, who promptly abandoned the project and became 'the hardest working man in show business', being made to tour endlessly year after year until he dropped. He went to the hospital for a routine procedure and came out 2 days later in a body bag. His son loudly declared his father was murdered, but it was to no avail. Like with Cooke and Redding, no serious investigation was forthcoming. There are likely to be numerous other examples that are similar.
So, the question begs: why was Dave Clark allowed to establish financial independence from the clutches of the music moguls when no one else was? Was he significantly smarter and more fortunate than the galaxy of other musical stars? I don't think so. That would be an intriguing investigation. Perhaps he had a bloodline connection? It's clear that someone or something had his back. You know how vicious and ruthless those scumbags are. Slack is not in their vocabulary.
I know that Dave Clark long ago purchased the rights to syndicate all the episodes of 'Ready, Steady, Go', the most popular British TV Rock/Pop show of the 1960s. It was famous for being filmed impromptu, without a detailed schedule or format like other British music shows and their American counterparts. I would imagine Dave Clark is as rich as or even richer than Billy Shears, with wealth around the billion-dollar mark. Bruce Springsteen's wealth was recently estimated by Forbes at 1.1 billion dollars.
I'm sure you'll agree, they just aren't worth all of that cheddar, but that's how this world works.
Dave Clark Five - Backing Track Failure (Ed Sullivan Show)
