Chas Hodges of Rockney duo, Chas & Dave, talks to Buzz about their final tour, being sampled by Eminem, a rock star wedding and onions.
words: REBECCA BRYNOLF
Buzz: Morning Chas.
Chas: Wotcher!
B: You were originally only supposed to do 30 dates, but it looks like you’re doing six days a week for two months; are you guys not knackered?
C: No! No, we feel great. I could go joggin’ now, and I’ve never bin’ joggin’ in me life.
B: How’s the tour going so far?
C: Absolutely excellent. If anything, better than we expected.
B: Is this definitely the last time?
C: Yeah, definitely… yeah it definitely is. Cause I’m on the road with Chas Hodges And His Band, I still do all the Chas & Dave hits, and I’ve got my own solo album out. Dave is enjoying this tour, but he’s a master caravan builder and restorer, he loves riving his horses… he’s more of a stay-at-home person than I am, I suppose. So, yeah, this is gonna be our final tour.
B: How did the decision come about to tour one last time?
C: Well, Dave’s wife died over a year and a half ago, and as we all know, when someone close to you dies, everything goes out the window. You can’t think straight, but as time goes on, you can think a bit clearer. It’s only time that helps to heal it. We got talking and I don’t know whose idea it was but we decided that it would be nice to do a final tour, so this is the one.
B: Will you do anything special to celebrate once it’s all over?
C: We’re doing it now! Every night’s a celebration. Last night at Southend we had 1500 people all singin’ Chas & Dave songs and it was absolutely fantastic. They know our songs now; even when we had the big hits years ago they didn’t know ‘em like they do now. We can turn up at gigs now and we don’t have to sing anything, they sing ‘em for us. It’s a great feeling. I’ve just done six nights in a row, it’s a nice day, I feel so good I might go over me allotment in a minute; do a bit of diggin’.
B: Oh, nice. What have you got in your allotment?
C: I haven’t got anything at the minute! I’m just getting it all prepared and manured just now but the first step is going to be putting some onions in on me next day off.
B: When you tour on your own you do a lot of Jerry Lee Lewis numbers. What’s the relationship with Jerry?
C: I go back a long way with Jerry Lee Lewis, right the way back to when I as a kid and I was in a skiffle group, an’ I seen him. . He come to my ‘ometown in 1958 and my Mum was a pian-ah player and she always wanted me to become a pian-ah player, but I become a guitar player first. But when I saw Jerry Lee Lewis I was absolutely hooked. Not long after I bought meself a bass guitar and in 1963 I was in a band called The Outlaws with Ritchie Blackmore on the guitar and we went on the road with Jerry Lee Lewis as ‘is’ backing band. That’s when I really started to learn to play the pain-ah. I worked with Jerry Lee and recorded with him many times since. His guitar player told me a couple of things he said: that I was his favourite bass player of all time and that he knew I’d make it as soon as I gave up the bass and went on the pian-ah. He don’t give you any compliments to your face, Jerry Lee, but you’ll hear it through the grapevine. It’s always been said that Jerry Lee taught me the pian-ah but he didn’t know he taught me. I was just watching him on tour every night.
B: Is there anyone you would have loved to tour with?
C: Well, there’s been a lot of them that we’ve already toured with. With The Beatles, we’ve toured with them. Paul McCartney took us in the studio and produced a song for us. I actually became a member of The Beatles at one brief point.
B: Really?
C: Yeah, at Eric Clapton’s wedding. He got married in the Eighties and invited me and Dave and our wives. They had a big marquee set up in his garden. It had a stage in it with some amplifiers and a drum kit and that in case anybody wanted to play. We’d just had Gertcha out and there was some little kids bangin’ away on the drums and one little kid recognised me; “Ere, you’re Chas, int ya? You do Gertcha, dun’t ya? Come up and do Gertcha!” So there was a pian-ah there and I got up, dun some Gertcha, then I started doing some rock n’ roll stuff. “I’mma gonna write a little letter gonna mail it to mah local DJ,” things like that. I looked up and I saw that Ringo was on the drums, and I thought, “Oh, that’s good”, I carried on playing. Anyway, then I looked up and next minute, Paul’s playing the bass, followed soon after by George pluggin’ in his guitar. We were just rockin’ and rollin’. John wasn’t there, unfortunately, but for one brief minute I thought, “Ere, I’m the fourth member of The Beatles, ere.” Ringo, Paul, George and Chas.
Actually they took pictures that day, and Ringo’s wife, Maureen, she’s sadly died, but she was talking to my wife and said, “Oh, I’ll let you have the pictures when they come out”, but at the end of the night she was told that she mustn’t let the pictures out of her sight. Hopefully they’re still around somewhere. P’raps they’ll come to light some day; probably in a Beatles memoir. They’re very protective over that sort of stuff.
B: You’ve written a memoir, haven’t you?
C: About 20 years ago I wrote a book called, Chas Before Dave. A publisher read it and loved it so he asked me to bring it up to date. To cut a long story short, I did. There’s a book out called All About Us: The Chas and Dave Story, by Chas Hodges.
B: You two were famously sampled in Eminem’s My Name Is…. He used the iconic riff from Labi Siffre’s I Got The sessions. Did you guys ever see any of the royalties from that?
C: No, we didn’t. We were told that we might and we signed a thing to say that somebody might collect for us, all good intentions and that, but we never got anything for it.
B: Did you know beforehand that you were going to be sampled?
C: No, it just happened, really. My son went, “Hey, have you heard of…”, whoever it was his name is, he said, “It’s a worldwide hit and you’re playing on it!” He’s acknowledged that he sampled that record, but we’ve never seen anything from it. I just get on with the gigs.
B: I’ll let you get to your allotment in a second, but I have a question from a friend who wanted me to ask this: do Sainsbury’s sell rabbit?
C: Does Sainsbury’s actually sell rabbit? You know, I’ve never asked, but a mate of ours, Mark Lamarr, he asked and apparently they do sell rabbit, but only in cat food.