My mates have gone but we had fun, says Beaky

JOHN DYMOND is the only surviving member of one of the biggest pop groups of the Sixties still performing.

He’s better known as “Beaky”, of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, who had a string of hits including Hold Tight!, Bend It!, Zabadak! and The Legend of Xanadu.

Guitarist Beaky, now 79, is still active with the band, who will be part of the Sensational 60s Experience ’24, which is coming to the Reading Hexagon next month.

Formed in Salisbury in 1964, the group also comprised singer-
songwriter David Harman (Dave Dee), bassist Trevor Ward-Davies (Dozy), drummer Michael Wilson (Mick) and Ian Amey (Tich).

The group were known for their wacky outfits and having fun on stage.

Dave Dee played with the band until his death in 2009 while Dozy died in 2015 when he was in his third spell with the band.

Tich died only last month, which was a blow for Beaky as they had been lifelong friends.

He says: “Everything Tich did, I did. I first got introduced to him when he was about 2ft long. He lived at 26 Ashley Road and I lived at 25 and we just grew up together as kids and went through a wonderful childhood.

“Then, when we were about seven or eight, we started to listen to Radio Luxembourg. We heard this music and it was like somebody put the lights on, you know, and that was it — we were hooked.”

The band shared their heyday with bands such as the Beatles, the Kinks and the Rolling Stones. Beaky, who still lives in Salisbury, recalls: “Tich was a very good guitarist and knew people like Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix. He was more famous than them in the Sixties because they hadn’t been discovered yet, you know?

“Then they came up and had hits and of course they were all mates. I mean, you don’t spend a whole evening with Jimi Hendrix if you don’t know your way around a guitar. He was a great lad and so were all of them, people like Eric Clapton and George Harrison. The Beatles were already there.

“We’d do Top of the Pops and we met all these people in the canteen basically. We didn’t ask for autographs because we were part of it. There would be the Tremeloes and the Troggs or the Stones and the Kinks and all those bands.

“We used to go down to the canteen and just say, ‘Double egg and chips, please.

‘All right, George?’

‘Yeah, I’m all right, yeah.’

‘You working?’

‘Yeah, all right.’

“‘No, I’ll have some brown sauce, please’ and that’s how it was.”

The band’s publicist once tried to get them some headline news.

Beaky says: “We were as clean as anything — we were little angels, we were.

“We picked up a Golden Otto award from Bravo magazine in Germany. The Germans voted on who the most popular band was and we were first. I think the Kinks were second, the Stones were third and the Beatles were fourth.

“There was a knock on the door and our publicist, Brian Sommerville, who used to be with the Beatles, said, ‘Look, could you sort of give Mick [Jagger] a little slap on the face? I’ll get a camera and it’ll make every national newspaper in the world’.

“We said okay and it was all set up. So there was a knock on the door, in came Jagger.

“He said, ‘Oh, well done. Congratulations, boys, well done. Lovely act, love the band’ and then walked out and shut the door.

“I went, ‘Well, what could I do?’

“Brian went mad and said, ‘Well, you should have…’

“I said, ‘Well, I couldn’t, he’s a nice guy’.

“So don’t believe anything you read in the papers because it’s all a load of rubbish.”

Beaky left the band to move to Marbella in 1990 before returning in 2013. Tich retired in 2014 as he was suffering from arthritis in his fingers.

Beaky says: “You don’t retire, music retires you in the end. We go on stage and we have a good laugh. John Hatchman is on drums now and he has been with us since 1982.”

That was the year that Peter Lucas (“Mick II”, the original Mick having left in 1974) left the band.

Beaky says: “When Dave left and then Dozy died, then it was either pack it in all together or…

“I thought, cripes, we’re dying in order here, Dave Dee, Dozy… I’m up next. Anyway, Tich beat me to it.

“The big bond I had with Tich had lasted but, you know, we used to say a lot, when we had the hits, ‘Well, if it all ends now, we’ve had a bloody good time’. Now it has ended for Tich but I tell you what, he had a bloody good time doing it and I can say the same.”

The current line-up now features Beaky, Dozy (Paul Cornwall), Mick (John Hatchman) and Tich (Chris Moores).

• The Sensational 60s Experience ’24, which also features the Trems (former members of the Tremeloes), the Fortunes, the Swinging Blue Jeans and Vanity Fare, is at the Reading Hexagon on Wednesday, April 24 at 7.30pm. Tickets cost £28 or £31. For more information and to buy tickets, call 0118 960 6060 or visit
www.whatsonreading.com