The legend of Xanadu lives again

In February 1968 a completely one-off song made it to No 1. It began with flamenco noodling and a voiceover in echoey Spanish. It employed a 35-piece orchestra, and told the story of a doomed romance, a brief love affair in a "black barren land", and the lament of a chap who came off second-best in a duel. There was a bitter spoken-word passage. And there were the eye-watering whiplash effects. It's not something you often hear in mild British pop songs. The lashes and Romance-in-Durango guitars made "The Legend of Xanadu" the first, and only, chart-topper for Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich.

They were a jaunty Mod quintet who started life playing covers and notched up a string of hits between 1965 and 1969; in that period, they spent more weeks in the UK singles chart than The Beatles. The songs, all written by the hit factory of Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, were novelty numbers with strident pop melodies. "Hold Tight" was a football chant set to music. "Bend It" was a pinch from "Zorba's Dance" by Mikis Theodorakis. "Okay" featured a balalaika. "Zabadak" employed African jungle drums and a fake language of incantation that would be considered un-PC today. "Last Night in Soho" utilised motorbike revs to tell a story of mobsters and a tearaway.

This autumn, 40 years after "Xanadu", their hit list is being reissued to accompany a tour. In black shirt, black strides and black shoes, Dave Dee, at 67, is miraculously unlined. The cheery frontman is proud of the band's stamina: "We've played to 200,000 people this year. My theory is that the Sixties audience has never gone away. They've got a lot of disposable income, and they aren't going to start buying rap."

He started life as Dave Harman, the son of a builder from Salisbury, and became a policeman. Dave joined his first band, a skiffle group, at 13. As a policeman, he played with local groups. His break came when he joined Ronnie Blond and the Beatnicks, and met Tich and Dozy. After the front man missed a gig, Dave took over. Renamed Dave Dee and the Bostons, the new group struggled to get a record deal.

Then, one night in Swindon, they met their future. Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley were pop svengalis, managers and song-writers. They looked at the hyperactive Wiltshire quintet, and saw something that could be developed. They changed the band's name to Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich, which gave radio DJs something to chuckle over, and began writing songs for them.

By 1965, they were still unsuccessful and thinking of giving up. Then their third single, the bubblegum-pop "You Make It Move," hit the charts at Christmas. Like many of their titles ("Bend It," "Touch Me, Touch Me") it sounded faintly rude, which suited the boys' cheek offensive. In 1966, the great football year, "Hold Tight," with its terrace-chant riff, was played in stadiums all over Europe through the summer, and stayed in the charts for months.

As Mods, they were nuts about clothes. "It started when we went to Walthamstow Baths. We went via Carnaby Street and bought all this mod gear, thinking how trendy we were. But half the audience was dressed exactly the same as us. That's when we started to design our own stuff, and got this little lady in Cheshire to run it up for us." Television was black and white, so to make a splash on Top of the Pops, the clothes had to be outlandish.

Fans used to rip the boys' clothes off. "I got grabbed so much, I had to tell the Cheshire lady, every time she made me a shirt, to make 10 pairs of sleeves so they'd come away when I got grabbed."

Suddenly they were everywhere. They played the Fairfield Halls, Croydon with the Rolling Stones. At the New Musical Express poll concert in 1966, they went onstage just before The Beatles, "and we got just as much adoration and screaming from the fans as they did". They toured with The Troggs and the Spencer Davis Group, they toured Australia and the Far East with The Animals. Unimaginably, they toured in Germany with Jimi Hendrix and the Experience as warm-up act.

But back home, the bouncy Top Ten songs hit a wall. In 1967, trying to find something new, Howard and Blaikley began to write "story songs". "The Legend of Xanadu" was the first.

The band wound up in 1972, but was resurrected over the years. Dee went solo, without success, then became an A&R talent scout. He went back on the road in 1985, and is probably the only Justice of the Peace to be found singing across the nation about a doomed love in the deserts of Mongolia, and cracking his bullwhip like Indiana Jones.

'The Very Best of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich' is out this week on UMTV