How Chas and Dave ended up on an Eminem track

Gertcha lugs round this

Some sniffy reactions to Chas and Dave's appearance on the Today programme this morning, but I don't care (I don't care, I don't care if he comes round here …) The doyens of pub rock can do little wrong in my opinion. And if you don't trust that, maybe you'll trust the opinion of Eminem. He sampled their work for his first hit ‘My Name Is …'

How Chas and Dave ended up on an Eminem track

Or rather he sampled Labi Siffre's work, in the form of the track I Got The ... from Siffre's 1975 album Remember My Name. But who are two of the session musicians on that track? None other than Chas Hodges and Dave Peacock, in the days before they teamed up and consigned their surnames to obscurity. Chas played guitar, Dave bass.

Chas confirmed the story when I checked it during research for my book The Importance of Being Trivial. The first he heard of his connection with rap royalty, he told me, was from his son. ‘He came into the room and said, “I can't believe it - my dad's on a worldwide hit!"' What about royalties? ‘We ain't had any yet,' said Chas, ‘but someone's chasing it up. We've signed something, anyway.'

You can hear the track in question here (the relevant section starts at 2'08"). And once you have, you'll never listen to Rabbit in the same way again ...

 

Share |

Write a comment

  • Required fields are marked with *.

If you have trouble reading the code, click on the code itself to generate a new random code.
 

Content

Greyhound

A greyhound can accelerate from 0 to 45 mph in 1 second. This makes it the second-fastest accelerating animal on the planet, after the cheetah. A really striking way of learning about bio-mechanics - the greyhound can accelerate that quickly because it's so light, yet has such powerful legs. When the BBC's Top Gear raced one against a Mazda MX5 the greyhound accelerated more quickly - the Mazda has so much more weight to shift.