Rick Huxley

Rick Huxley, who has died aged 72, played bass guitar with the Dave Clark Five, one of the British pop groups which enjoyed spectacular success in the mid-1960s.

Rick Huxley (left) with other members of The Dave Clark Five

Best known for their hits Bits And Pieces and Glad All Over (the latter still has a regular airing as the anthem of Crystal Palace football fans), the Dave Clark Five followed the Beatles as one of the leading bands of the “British invasion” which took America by storm after 1964. They had 14 consecutive Top 10 hits in the United States, and appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show shortly after the Beatles.

Glad All Over reached No 1 in the British singles chart in January 1964 (it made No 6 in America), and later that year the group went to No 2 in the UK with Bits And Pieces. Among their other hits were Catch Us If You Can and a cover of The Contours’ Do You Love Me?

Richard Huxley was born on August 5 1942 at Dartford, Kent (the birthplace a year later of both Mick Jagger and Keith Richards). In 1958, when he was 16, he answered an advertisement for a guitarist in the line-up of a band led by the drummer Dave Clark — at this early stage the group featured Mick Ryan on lead guitar and Jim Spencer on saxophone.

Within 18 months the band was proving popular on the Mecca Ballroom circuit, mainly with their covers of American R&B standards. By the early 1960s the line-up that would become famous was in place: Clark on drums; Mike Smith on keyboards and lead vocals; Lenny Davidson (lead guitar and vocals); Denis Payton (saxophone, harmonica, guitar and vocals); and Huxley on bass, vocals and occasional acoustic guitar.

In 1963 the group moved from the Pye label to EMI, and in late 1963 they released Glad All Over, written by Clark and Smith, which took the top spot in the charts immediately after the Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand.

By 1967 the Dave Clark Five had been left behind by musical fashion, although in November that year they reached No 2 in the UK singles chart with Everybody Knows. In 1970 the group split up, Huxley later recalling: “Dave called us all to a meeting at his flat, and we mutually agreed to call it a day.”

For two years Huxley worked for Vox, which supplied amplifiers to the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the Kinks among other bands. From 1973 to 1987 he and a friend, Doug Jackson, ran Music Equipment, a company based in Camberwell, south London. Huxley then earned his living in the electrical wholesaling business.

In 2008 the Dave Clark Five were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

Huxley, formerly a heavy smoker, had suffered from emphysema. His wife, Ann, died last year. The only surviving members of the group are Dave Clark and Lenny Davidson — Denis Payton died in 2006 and Mike Smith in 2008.

Rick Huxley, born August 5 1942, died February 11 2013