The first time I met Chas he was thumbing a lift home to his girlfriend’s house after missing the bus. I was with my friend, Brian Juniper, whom I’d known since I was six – Brian stopped, because he and Chas had gone to senior school together. We dropped him off at his girlfriend, Joan’s – she’s still his wife now – and I saw his records there, and it was all the stuff I liked. Bluegrass like Flatt and Scruggs, and Jerry Lee Lewis. That was 1963. We struck up a musical friendship then that never ended.
We didn’t play together for years, though, because we were both bassists, and Chas was having hits with [British R&B band] Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers [managed by Brian Epstein, and the Beatles’ support act on their final European tour]. But at parties together we’d grab a banjo and go on the piano and start singing old songs. Our relations kept saying we should get together but we didn’t take any notice. We had identical east London families with a singing musical tradition, who knew all of these old songs that many people don’t remember any more, other than the ones we recorded and stopped from getting extinct. We’d all get together every Christmas, our families. I really miss that.
Chas was the most happy-go-lucky bloke you’d ever meet. I never knew him lose his temper all those years. Not once. He was a determined type of bloke too – if he put his mind to something he would do it. When he passed his driving test he couldn’t find the car key, and he’d only been home from the test 15 minutes. But he had this bar of soap out of the back of his house – he’d had the foresight to push the key imprint into it – then he got a bit of metal, copied the imprint in the bar of soap, put it in the ignition and it started straightaway. He was clever like that. Such a clever musician too. A sense of timing like no one you knew. Especially singing the chorus to Rabbit. The timing in that is a different thing. I remember Cliff Richard saying to us: “How the hell do you do that?” But we were telepathic with each other, really. We only had to look at each other to know when the end of a song would come.
Chas really loved gigging. He’d play anywhere – he was a music addict. I’d go around his house when he didn’t know I was coming, and I’d hear him playing inside. He couldn’t stop. But the funny thing is, I think we only had five rehearsals. That is literally true. We used to write a song, forget about it, then get a gig and just get into it. If we made a mistake we’d rectify it as we went along.
We drove a million miles together. Ate a million meals together. I could travel in the car with him for three hours and not say a word – you can do that when you’re so comfortable with somebody. I could phone him up with an idea for a song at two o’clock in the morning and he’d be interested, and vice versa.
And Chas didn’t stop writing, even when he was ill. He rewrote Sling Your Hook to make it about his cancer, and put it on our last album [2018’s A Little Bit of Us], which we recorded in Brian Juniper’s studio. He wrote a song with Paul Whitehouse recently for the new Only Fools and Horses musical. And when we played on Jools Holland in the summer, we played the last song Chas ever wrote, Wonder Where He Is Now, about fishing with his mate when he was a kid. We’re putting it out as a single soon. I thought that’d be a nice tribute for him.
The last time we saw each other we went fishing. He’d seemed to pick up a bit, started to eat properly, and I thought, hello, he’s on the up now. But sadly, it wasn’t to be. We used to have a laugh fishing. Chas used to have a little private fishing lake, and we’d go there, take our little sandwich boxes, and Joan would come along and make us a cup of tea. The last picture I’ve got of us together, we’ve got fishing rods in our hands. I’m glad I’ve got that.
I always say to people, Chas and Dave weren’t just a band, they were a way of life. Our wives were best friends – I lost my wife nine years ago, to cancer as well – and I’m godfather to his and Joan’s three children. We were so intertwined, not just in music. Every aspect of our lives. We were just together in everything.
