Chart entered : 18 August 1973
Chart peak : 3
Number of hits : 25
In the second half of 1973 Messrs Cassidy and Osmond suddenly found themselves being nudged out of the centre pages of Jackie and Fab 208 by a home-grown hunk. While it's generally known that the likes of Rod, Elton and Bowie served a long apprenticeship in the sixties, I don't think so many realise that's true of David as well.
David was born in Plaistow in 1947 to an East End docker and his Irish Traveller wife. He had a connection with West Ham United juniors as a teenager but was more interested in music initially as a drummer but then as a singer . He worked in a factory during the day and worked in the clubs at night. In 1965 he got a contract with Fontana who released his first four singles. His first "And The Tears Came Tumbling Down" was written by The Ivy League's Perry Ford and is a fair Pitneyesque pop ballad or at least it would be with a half decent vocal. David sounds like a hopeless X-Factor reject. I haven't heard the middle two "Can't Nobody Love You" and "This Little Girl of Mine" but "Thigh High" from July 1966 is staggeringly bad, It's a clumsily recorded stab at a Tom Jones -style brash pop number with crudely sexist lyrics and a wildly theatrical vocal which slips into an unwarranted cod-Jamaican accent for the final line of the chorus. It justifies Fontana dropping him on its own. In 1967 he began a sideline career in acting with an uncredited part in Smashing Time which I saw recently but didn't spot him.
He returned to the fray nearly two years later with "Love Story" on Uni. The song was written by Randy Newman and the single was produced and arranged by Mike Leander. You could guess the writer from the vaudeville touches and the cynical lyric. Whether intentional or not David 's vocal sounds like a Marc Bolan parody. Six months later he was on Pye with "Just For Tonight" a Barry Mason/ Tony McAulay song. It's a decent snshine pop number and David sounds like he's had a few singing lessons.
By 1969 he was on Decca working with the Ammo team on "That Takes Me Back" which I haven't heard. His second single with them in September was "The Day The Earth Stood Still" which has nothing to do with science fiction but is a heavily orchestrated Tom Jones style number which needs a stronger vocalist to really do it justice.
David's fortunes really started to improve in 1971 when he got the lead role in the hit musical Godspell during its original London run. This led on to his star making role in the rock and roll revival film That'll Be The Day in 1973 for which he won a Most Promising Newcomer BAFTA. David didn't sing on the soundtrack which used all original recordings so to take advantage of the film's success he had to record something new.
David had become acquainted with a young American producer Jeff Wayne who had composed the score for his father's successful musical Two Cities and he produced and arranged "Rock On". It's fair to say that no other teen idol has launched their hit career with such a left field record. David's lyrics are a loose jumble of rock and roll tropes but he realises that nostalgia is a dead end - "And where do we go from here, which is the way that's clear ?" - so he allows Wayne to take the music into the realms of contemporary urban soul with a sparse ominous bassline by Herbie Flowers accompanied only by a clipped percussion motif for much of the song. There's no guitar or backbeat on the track ; colour is provided by the sort of dread-laden strings also profitably employed on Hot Chocolate's Brother Louie. The song seems better suited to a gritty blaxploitation movie than That'll Be The Day and it's no coincidence that it was David's only significant hit in America. David's music would rarely be this interesting again so this is one to savour.
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