Part One: Prologue

1940’s-1960’s

Part one of the timeline will take a look at the Chad & Jeremy that (comparatively) very few knew, the pre-fame lives of the dynamic duo...

In 1964, the pop music scene changed forever. The breakthrough of the Beatles in the United States marked the beginning of the British Invasion, and in their wake came a wave of British acts. This is the story of one such act, Chad & Jeremy, who would find their own place in the annals of music history. Like their contemporaries, Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde were long-haired, witty, and exceptionally talented young men. Their magnificent harmonies and charm not only enthralled the teenyboppers, but could disarm the older generations as well, capturing even the teenybopper’s parents and college-aged brother. More than that, they were natural actors, and regularly appeared on TV in the homes of millions of Americans in the 1960s. Their records sold millions of copies worldwide, and today that music lives on, finding fans in every generation since.

But long before there was Chad & Jeremy, the duo, there were Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde, the people.

Chad was born David Stuart Chadwick, in Windermere, in the North West of England, on December 10th, 1941 to Frank and Alice Chadwick. His father worked in the lumber industry as a foreman and his mother was a nurse. Chad’s earliest childhood years were idyllic, but eventually Frank was transferred to a town called Hartlepool in the North East of England, which Chad recalled as a "not very pleasant place in which to grow up.” His musical talents were recognized early on, however, and at the age of ten he left for Durham Cathedral school on scholarship. There, he was a chorister. Under this instruction, Chad honed his voice and masterful ear for harmony and arrangement that would become the bedrock to the Chad & Jeremy sound. After graduating, he attended art school for a year before switching to drama. He won a scholarship to the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, and in September of 1960 met his future musical partner, Jeremy.
    
Michael Jeremy Thomas Clyde was born to an entirely different set of circumstances. His father's family made a name for themselves in the shipping industry, and his mother was the daughter of the Duke of Wellington. He was born on March 22, 1941, in Dorney, Buckinghamshire, 20 miles west of London. Jeremy attended Eton, England's most prestigious private school, where, foreshadowing his future fame, he was both soloist in the choir and active in drama and film. Jeremy, too, showed great promise early on and earned an Amateur Oscar for a film he wrote and directed during his Eton days. He also spent a year in Grenoble, France, which he remembers as "sort of a degree in partying!” It was memorable and formative in its own way!

Jeremy then set his sights on a professional acting career, and the Central School of Speech and Drama.  It was early in his second year there when the serendipitous meeting between Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde took place. Jeremy was known not only as a rising acting talent, but also a musical talent, and so he took immediate interest when a friend told him about a first year student who was "a genius, because he could play the Shadow's 'Apache’ all the way through!" ‘Apache’ had been released less than a week earlier, and yet in just those few days Chad had learned and mastered the song by ear from hearing it on the radio! 

They struck up a friendship fast, the basis of which was Chad's teaching Jeremy how to play the guitar. Jeremy remembers, "When I met Chad, I could play six chords, and gradually, he got me playing 12, then 18, then 24." By 1962, as well as playing together as a folk duo, they had formed a band called the Jerks. The Jerks were a scruffy, long-haired, rock and roll group, a few years before such things were fashionable. Lead singer Stephen Holder, stage-named "Stephen Geraud," was not the greatest vocalist of all time, but he was able to use his connections to get the band a new amp, and that made him alright by the standards of any twenty-year-old starving-drama-student cum budding rock star. Along with Jeremy and the recently rechristened (though he wouldn't change it legally until 1964) "Chad Stuart" were Liam Hill, a local real estate agent, on drums, and on bass, Ray Stiles, whose father owned a music store - a handy place to rehearse and borrow equipment.

The biggest gig they ever seem to have gotten, outside of school dances, was for the Coming-Out Ball (the 1960s British upper-class equivalent of a "sweet sixteen" party) for Duke of Wellington's niece, who just happened to be Jeremy's cousin.

While a student at the Central School of Speech and Drama, Chad was elected secretary of the student’s union. As secretary, Chad  was responsible for making new students welcome and in this way met his future wife, Jill. Jill Gibson was a lovely young brunette and Chad became smitten. Jill later became his wife and went on to a career in her own right in the United States as one of Eileen Ford's top models. From this point on, Chad had two important partnerships in his life - his romantic one with Jill, and his musical one with Jeremy. Although, either way you slice it, it's still C&J, isn't it?

Jeremy graduated a year ahead of Chad and, still set on a career in acting, departed for the Dundee Repertory Theatre in the Northernmost part of Scotland. This spelled the end of the Jerks. Chad, facing the boredom of a year in drama school without his best mate, made a momentous decision: it was time to leave school and get into the record business. He first got a job as a copyist, while studying arranging with Gordon Franks, one of England's foremost composer-arrangers. Around this time he began a song-writing collaboration with Russell Alquist, who was married to actress Juliet Mills (older sister of actress Hayley Mills).

Before too long, Jeremy returned from Scotland, ready to conquer the world of theatre. But a protracted strike by the actor's union, Equity, prevented him from getting any sort of acting job! There was one obvious way for Jeremy to earn some cash - form a duo with your best friend. One of the first places they ever played was a coffeehouse called Tina's, for the grand payment of $15 a week and free meals. Before long they were attracting a fair amount of attention.

Composer and record producer John Barry saw the duo and decided to sign them.  Chad explained it thus,

"Jeremy's mother knew a literary agent who knew a manager - Tony Lewis- who dragged John Barry into Tina's one night.”

Barry had by then left his position at EMI, and was a freelance producer and composer, then in the midst of his series of classic 007 scores. Impressed with what he saw, and determined to make a name for the talented twosome, Barry made a deal with Ember Records, one of the few small independent labels in England at that time, to produce the duo.

This was a fateful decision which virtually guaranteed hit-making problems in Britain for Chad & Jeremy. Ember was a tiny label, with no real distribution or promotional resources. Moreover, it was the summer of 1963, and too early to anticipate the emergence of British acts in America. The dynamic duo would have to fight hard to have hit records in the UK.