Dave Dee & Group – ’Zabadak!’/’The Sun Goes Down’ (Fontana TF 873) September 1967

Dave Dee & Group | Zabadak! | Fontana | 1967 | When I first heard that someone had found out that “Zabadak” meant “rubbish” in some strange language I chortled with glee (having not heard the record) and thought of all the evil things I could use THAT for in the review.

Serves me right, I like this record. Even though I know I shouldn’t because it is highly pretentious for a group like this to try to sound like a group of chanting African natives. Ah well. It has a hideous charm with conga drums and strings (well maybe Africans do play violins).

Quite honestly I don’t see it being commercially successful because it doesn’t sound like anything like anyone at all. And what I’d really like to say is how DO Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley get away with it? (Penny Valentine, Disc 07/10/67)

DAVE DEE blasts at the knockers: To hell with ’em!

‘Money may not be everything but it’s ahead of all else’

THE WORD being whispered around the pop business this week is that “Zabadak” is going to give Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich their first No. 1 hit. And after four narrow misses —”Hold Tight,” “Bend It,” “Save Me” and “O.K.A.Y.”—one might reasonably suppose they deserve the distinction.

But the roar from Rosko in last week’s Hit Talk will undoubtedly prove only the prelude to a stream of abuse for Dave Dee from every self-styled hippie on the pop scene.

Rosko remarked: “Sorry Dave Dee, but I think you can do a lot better than `Zabadak’,” and then added absurdly—since all but two of Dave Dee’s previous seven singles have gone high into the Top Ten—”You must think commercially.”

What, one asks, could be more commercial than a Dave Dee Disc? Yet a lot of other people are going to chorus Rosko’s comments and accuse Dave Dee of again churning out a non-progressive corny record that deserves a place in the dustbin rather than the Top Ten.

Why anybody who has met him should want to sneer at Dave Dee is surprising. A more engaging, entertaining, amusing companion you couldn’t wish to know. And those knocks used to upset Dave and his quaint colleagues. “But then we began to tot things up . . . five hits . . . six hits . . seven hits . . . to hell with ’em!”

And Dave Dee gave a huge grin. Continued success and his placid personality have taught him not to care a toss about his critics.

“Look, what is a pop record? It’s something that sets out to be popular,” he comments. “What is music? It’s a form of relaxation and when a bloke comes home from work he wants to hear something simple and easy on the ear, something he can whistle—not the complicated sort of music that we set out to avoid.

“It’s the public that makes a pop group. They are the people who see the shows and buy the records and that’s where the proof of our success lies every time.”

He glanced at Tich, garbed in a blaze of colour they’d be proud to cultivate in Kew. “When we started making hits, we designed our own flash clothes and people laughed at us. Look at the groups now, though —they’ve all copied us. So, for a group that never progresses, we’ve led the way for two years!”

Another big grin – but he has his serious side, too. “I once said that anybody in pop also claims that they’re only in it for love of their music is kidding himself. I’ll also say that anyone who says material values are unimportant is kidding himself.

“I’ve bought a house, I’ve got interests in a block of flats, I’ve just bought a Bentley and ‘I’m proud of my possessions. And why not? After ten years of bloody hard graft in this business, I’ve got something to show for it all.

“It’s not everybody who’s lucky enough to be successful but, Good God, you don’t knock it.

“Money may not be everything, but it’s streets ahead of everything else.” Another grin. “I may be a fink—but ‘I’m an honest fink.”

And, being honest, how could people possibly knock the boys for relying always on the compositions of their managers Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley?

“Why should we change? You can’t knock success. It’s like a one-armed bandit. If you put your sixpence in and it pays out, you put in another sixpence. For eight bits (including “Zabadak”), the formula’s been right so what more can you say?

“It is great for us, because I can well imagine the worries other groups have over selecting a new single. But we just walk into the recording studio and along come Ken and Alan with another hit. They work by hitting on an idea and then finding a song to suit the idea.

“My God, it makes me so mad the way they get knocked, too. People call them the Terrible Twins, but they work for success. They’re always rushing around. Like us, they can’t sit back and take a rest.

“They call us the most hard-worked group in the business. For example, last Saturday we were at Leeds, Sunday in Vienna and Monday at Cardiff.”

But why the hard work? Most groups, given Dave Dee’s status, would ease up on appearances, cut down dates. “A top pop group has a high running expense—it costs us £1,000 a week to tick over—and if we stopped work for two weeks, our system would collapse.

As it is, all the people in our organisation are honest, efficient and everything is planned down to the last detail. Dave Dee and Co never make national paper scandal headlines because there are never any mishaps.”

Very materialistic you may find Dave Dee. But basically still the same nice bloke out of the West Country. “Of course, your sense of values must change when your cost of living for a week now adds up to what you earned in two full months back in the old days—but success for us came gradually, and so we adjusted by stages.

And the knockers? Tell them, I just smile at them now.” (Disc & Music Echo, 28/10/67)

Dave Dee treads the Advertising trail

MEMO to all groups! Stop schlapping up and down the M1 and making hit records and get in on the advertising record scene.

Dave Dee Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich took time out from plugging Zabadak! this week to spend two days recording for Coca Cola and it’s rumoured they will get something like £50,000 from it over the next year. Not bad when you consider their earnings from a big hit, like Bend It is around the £12,000 mark.

” The money is ridiculous,” agreed Dave. “This is the first one we’ve done but you can say we are very open to more offers. Beaky says he wants to do one for Lassie.”

The records are sold in supermarkets and big stores throughout the Continent and include a Coke jingle.

We turned to the group’s other methods of keeping the smile on ‘the face of their bank manager. Like Zabadak! currently confounding at least one reviewer by roaring up the Pop 30.

“We weren’t sure about it either,” said Beaky. “Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley usually give us the songs scribbled on lots of little bits of paper and when we got this lot it was a bit of shock. Actually the words don’t mean anything at all.”

“Everybody said it was too complicated, which surprised us agreed Dave. “After you’ve heard it enough to analyse it you realise it is really very simple indeed.”

I wondered if it presented problems for live shows.

Jawbone

“No said Dave. “Mick and Beaky both play the percussion things and get a good sound although we did have a few more things in the studio. But now we have conga drums, timbales and that Chinese thing that I can never remember the name of.”

I asked what the peculiar instrument was that Dozy had manipulated on Top Of The Pops.

“It’s a genuine jawbone of an ass — just 1ike what’s-his-name smote the Philistines with,” explained Dave. “The noise is made by the teeth rattling. It gives a very weird sound.”

Future plans for the group include a new album and they intend to spend a lot of time on it.

“We did the last two very quickly and this time we really want to take our time,” said ‘Beaky.

Japan

Dave agreed: “We have written stuff on our previous albums. This time we’ve written some really good songs. We are going to make sure we have 12 good numbers before we start putting them down.”

A tour of America, with possibly additional dates in Japan, is also being lined up.

“We’ve been to the States once before said Beaky, “when we did the Australian tour with Paul and Barry Ryan. But that was only for TV. This time it will be a real tour and we are still trying to make up our minds what we will do. We aren’t sure whether to do a comedy act or a straight show.”

Have they had much record success in America?

“No comment said Beaky. “Actually ‘Bend It’ was a hit in some States but not in the national charts.

“At the moment we are negotiating a change of record labels and we hope that that, together with the our tour, will get us off the ground over there.” (Melody Maker, 28/10/67)