They might have been as unmistakeably cockney as jellied eels and pie and mash but Chas Hodges and Dave Peacock sold more albums in Scotland than anywhere else.
They first got together 50 years ago and always went down a storm in Dundee.
To celebrate, we have opened our archives to look back at some of those memorable gigs.
They include the night the boys stepped in to save the day for Dundee Tech students in December 1979 after being paid £250 and a couple of cases of Newcastle Brown Ale!
That wasn’t the first time the band performed in Dundee and it wouldn’t be the last.
When they returned for the final time in 2007 they were more popular than at almost any time in their career and serious fans of hometown heroes The View.
So let’s go back to the start.
Chas and Dave and Mick the Stick
Before founding Chas and Dave with Peacock and drummer Mick Burt in 1972, Chas worked as a session musician and played for a wide range of artists.
The band’s debut album, One Fing ‘n’ Anuvver, was released in 1975 to critical acclaim.
Chas and Dave were the opening act chosen by Led Zeppelin for their final two British shows at Knebworth in August 1979, where 200,000 people turned up each night.
There were slightly fewer people there when they performed in Dundee in December 1979, although the students were just as rowdy during an event that ran from 9pm to 6am.
The students’ union was known as the Bowling Alley and former DJ Brian Wilson later recalled how the deal was struck for them to headline the Snoball.
“Every year in December, on the last Friday of term, the union organised an ‘all-nighter’, known as the Snoball,” he said.
This young bloke came in and said: ‘We’ve been researching where your records sell the most and you’ll never guess where?’ and it was Scotland.”
Chas Hodges
“The entertainment consisted of six bands, two discos and a couple of female ‘novelty acts’, spread over two rooms, and ran from eight in the evening until six in the morning.
“On the Wednesday leading up to the 1979 Snoball, Martin Webster, the VP Entertainments at the time, received the shock news that Friday’s headline band had pulled out of the gig.
“He immediately started phoning round the agents, and eventually found out that Lindisfarne were playing at the Caird Hall on the Thursday night and had a free night on the Friday, before playing Glasgow or Aberdeen on the Saturday.
“Martin asked about the possibility of Lindisfarne agreeing to play at the Snoball and the agent said he would get back to him.
“Within a couple of hours, the agent reported back that Lindisfarne were looking forward to their night off but the support band, Chas and Dave, could be agreeable to a suitable offer.
“It was arranged that Martin, Pete, my disco partner, and I would meet up with Chas and Dave after their set on Thursday evening.
“I should say that Chas and Dave had previously played at the Bowling Alley and had gone down a storm.
“We duly arrived, stage left, during their last number and when they finished their set, suggested that it would be fine to go somewhere that served beer to discuss things, so we took them round to The George in Castle Street and, over pints, in a traditional Dundee pub, a deal was thrashed out, involving what is known in Dundee as a ‘back-hander’ and a case of, if my memory serves me well, Newcastle Brown Ale.
“The Bell Street students appreciated the lack of ‘airs and graces’ and general ‘let’s have a knees-up’ attitude that Chas and Dave displayed as, at that time, the majority of Bell Street students were Dundee born and bred.”
The band had a string of hit singles in the 1980s including Rabbit, London Girls, Margate, Snooker Loopy and Ain’t No Pleasing You, which reached number 2.
The pair also recorded songs with Tottenham Hotspur FC including Ossie’s Dream (Spurs Are On Their Way To Wembley).
Who can forget the embarrassed Ardiles singing the line “In the Cup for Totting-ham” with the cockney duo and the Spurs squad on Top of the Pops in 1981?
Throughout the 1990s they switched their attention to new projects and returned to the advertising world when Heinz Baked Beans used ‘The Diddlum Song’ for a TV advert.
They found themselves back in demand after the turn of the millennium with bands such as Carl Barat and Pete Doherty’s The Libertines citing them as influences.
Chas and Dave’s cockney singalongs London Girls and That’s What I Like were also covered by Tori Amos, with the US songstress’s Grammy award-nominated singing voice tackling lines such as, “pie and mash ‘n’ liquor and walking about in the rain, reading books, comical looks, pianos, tramps and trains”.
Returning to the Caird Hall in 2007
But things got even better in 2007 when Chas and Dave returned to Dundee to perform at the Caird Hall for the first time since the 1970s during a six-date Scottish tour.
I got in touch with the band’s management and a phone interview with Chas was set up.
I called up at the agreed time and his wife answered.
“He’s just coming, he’s out doing the gardening,” she said.
We had a great rabbit and he spoke about performing at the Snoball in 1979, although he did struggle to remember being paid in Newcastle Brown Ale for the show.
He told me: “We were on tour in Scotland and had a couple of days off.
“A student from Dundee Technical College said: ‘Could you do a gig?’ and we slotted one in for them.
It doesn’t matter where you come from, you should always sing in your own accent – that’s our feeling and that’s what we did.”
Chas Hodges
“A couple of years ago we did research.
“This young bloke came in and said: ‘We’ve been researching where your records sell the most and you’ll never guess where?’ and it was Scotland.
“When me and Dave started we were rock ‘n’ roll based, and prided ourselves on being good musicians but, to be honest, in London we were misinterpreted a lot.
“I remember we used to get write-ups from Scotland and they got us in one.
“They said: ‘These boys are great, they play good, they entertain well,’ and I thought, ‘They see what we’re doing in Scotland more than they do down south’.
“Down south they had us down as these couple of beery blokes that had just come out the pub so, yeah, I’ve always had great respect for the Scottish audiences.”
The chat was full of interesting little anecdotes.
For example, the hook used on Eminem’s My Name Is was from a Labi Siffre tune, I Got The – featuring music from Chas and Dave.
Chas also played bass guitar for Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers in the 1960s, who supported The Beatles on their very last European tour in 1966.
Back in 2007 he said: “Paul McCartney – he’s a big Chas and Dave fan now, which is great, but I remember when I first started talking to him, and he played us Revolver (though it didn’t have a title at the time).
“When he got to Yellow Submarine he looked me in the eyes as he played it all the way through it, looking for a reaction.
“I didn’t know whether I was supposed to laugh or not!”
Chas and Dave’s vinyl LPs from the ’70s and ’80s were put on CD on the back of the fresh wave of attention following the endorsement from The Libertines.
Chas said: “We got to know them and it turned out we were big influences on Pete and Carl Barat when they were younger and they still love us now.
“We’re getting a younger following in any case but that sort of really gave it a kick and we were getting youngsters coming to see the gigs, saying: ‘Yeah, we’re Libertines fans but now we’re Chas and Dave fans as well’.
So what was his own favourite Chas and Dave song?
“If I had to pick just one, I’d pick Ain’t No Pleasing You,” he said.
“I remember speaking to Dave and saying: ‘It’s never been done. I’d love to write a song on a serious subject sung in my own accent, for want of a better word, cockney, and Ain’t No Pleasing You was the one that did that.
“Obviously we love all the other ones – there’s Rabbit and the Sideboard Song and Gertcha – you know, the sort of fun songs – but if I had to pick one that was an ambition achieved for me it would be that.”
Chas was a fan of the Dryburgh heroes
Chas also gave a glowing endorsement to Dundee band The View.
He was a big fan of the band because they shared Chas and Dave’s characteristic of “singing songs in their own accents and writing about things they know”.
The View’s songs, of course, include references to their upbringing, writing about their parents’ aspirations of having a “house in the Ferry”, the experience of meeting “a girl in the Campbeltown Bar” and going to “gran’s for tea”.
Chas said: “What we set out to do when we got together was to write songs – which we’d never seriously done before – and to write songs about things that we knew and sing them in our own accents.
“It doesn’t matter where you come from, you should always sing in your own accent-that’s our feeling and that’s what we did.
“You’ve just got to be yourself and write about what you know.”
The Caird Hall gig started off as a relaxed affair and featured a first half of tunes that had inspired them before they took questions from the Dundee audience.
The boys returned suited and booted after the break to play all the old classics!
Young and old danced together and after the gig, in true cockney fashion, Chas pulled out a suitcase and began flogging their CDs to the punters for £10 a pop.
You don’t get that when you go to see U2 or The Red Hot Chilli Peppers!
Dave retired from the group in 2009 after his wife Sue died from lung cancer, but the band reunited two years later and continued to tour.
They performed at the Royal Variety Performance for the first time in 2013 before a sell-out headline show at the Royal Albert Hall the following year.
Chas disclosed in early 2017 that he had been diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus after he struggled to swallow a glass of water.
He had chemotherapy and began performing again but, in August, Chas and Dave cancelled their forthcoming gigs on doctors’ advice.
Chas died aged 74 in 2018.
Partner Dave Peacock called him a “fabulous musician and a fabulous mate”.
He said: “All he wanted to do was play music.”
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