Chad & Jeremy

Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde were friends and classmates at the prestigious Central School for Speech and Drama in London. They originally came together musically as part of a short-lived band called The Jerks before striking out on their own.

Composer and producer John Barry discovered the duo and they scored their first hit in 1963 with Yesterday’s Gone.

They followed up with Willow Weep For Me, Before and After, Distant Shores and A Summer Song (which became their biggest hit in the USA).

As the sixties progressed, Chad and Jeremy tried to do likewise, moving to LA and recording such albums as Of Cabbages and Kings, one of the first ‘concept’ albums, and The Ark.

While The Ark contained nothing quite as elaborate as The Progress Suite that had taken up one whole side of Of Cabbages and Kings, it was another psychedelic mishmash of styles – Indian one minute, music hall the next – of a kind so many popular performers had been indulging in at the time in hopes of making the next Sgt. Pepper.

The difference was that most of Chad & Jeremy’s peers had got it out of their systems the year before.

But C&J were upper-class types who took naturally to the pretensions of the form – ie: they thought they were making ‘Art’. Their listeners thought differently: The Ark missed the charts and Chad & Jeremy broke up.

Jeremy returned to England and turned to acting, appearing in several stage and film productions, including the 2000 release The Musketeer.

Chad served as musical director for the Smothers Brothers’ TV show, did some commercials and eventually moved to Ketchum, Idaho, to teach and write children’s books.

Chad & Jeremy reunited briefly in 1982, and again in 2003.

Chad Stuart died on 20 December 2020, aged 79.

Chad Stuart
Vocals, guitar, banjo, keyboards
Jeremy Clyde
Vocals, guitar

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