Long-Distance Musical Marriage Makes Coach House Debut

Never trust an actor.

Those could be the words of your parents, a Hollywood mogul or a talent agent, but they come from the mouth of one Chad Stuart, nee David Stuart Chadwick, one-half of the 1960s British Invasion folk-rock duo Chad and Jeremy. Stuart is speaking specifically about his musical collaborator of the last 50 years, Jeremy Clyde.

“My advice to anyone at all who is friends with an actor who plays the guitar or the piano is ‘Don’t do it!’ You can’t rely on them,” said Stuart. “If somebody waves a script at them, they’re off like the Roadrunner. But I’ve put up with it.”

“Put up with it,” Stuart has, as he and Clyde celebrated the 50 years of musical collaborations in 2010. In his typically dry, humorous way, Stuart admits it hasn’t been a solid 50 years.

“It’s a bit of a cheat, really. If we’d been playing together 50 years we wouldn’t be speaking, would we?” Stuart asks. “Even Mick and Keith took a decade off and hated each other.”

Speaking about the decades-long musical partnership, Stuart talks about it in much the way of a wise, long-lived spouse. “He lives in England, and I live in Sun Valley, Idaho, and we see each other twice a year. … The upside is you don’t get tired of him,” admits Stuart.

The partnership started in England at the dawn of the 1960s when Stuart and Clyde were guitar-playing drama students. “Jeremy was cool,”  Stuart says of Clyde. “He was happening. I swapped him lessons in guitar chords for how to be cool.”

The drama students had a rock 'n' roll band that broke up but then went their separate ways. Clyde pursued acting; Stuart followed a career in music. “Then there was an actors strike, so Jeremy couldn’t earn a living,” said Stuart. “He came back to London, and we started wandering with our guitars to pretty much any places there was food, really. It didn’t hurt to moonlight with your guitar because it helped to pay the bills in a small way.”

It wasn’t long before an English record company executive heard the duo and signed them to tiny Ember Records. The group recorded such songs as “Yesterday’s Gone” and “A Summer Song” before their career was sunk in England.

A British tabloid printed a photo of a young Clyde at a royal coronation. Clyde’s grandfather was the duke of Wellington. As Stuart said, rock stars weren’t allowed to be part of the aristocracy. “There’s class warfare in England, and there always has been,” says Stuart. “The only ones who broke that down were the Beatles and the Stones. They broke down barriers … but the barriers are still there.”

“[Clyde] once invited me down for the weekend to stay in his grandfather’s country house. I coined the phrase ‘ordeal by meal.’ Your average person would have a meal. Not those folks. Every place setting has three, or four, or five wine glasses, rows of silverware and servants hovering in the background. It was terrifying. Jeremy leaned over to me and said, ‘Don’t worry, just follow my lead,’ ” Stuart remembered with a laugh.

The group might have been sunk in their homeland, but not America, where a Brit with a guitar was a national fascination at the dawn of the British Invasion. “Anyone who was British and didn’t cut their hair as much as Americans used to probably deserves to be lumped in with all of that, especially if you arrived at the same time,” joked Stuart.

“That’s really how it started. We came into America ‘under the radar,’ ” said Stuart. “We hadn’t played our dues like the Beatles and the Stones. We just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and we were off and running before we’d even figured out how to run.

Chad and Jeremy’s most lasting musical legacy might actually be their string of television guest appearances during the 1960s.

“When they found out we were fresh out of drama school, they put us in these shows—Dick Van Dyke, Patty Duke, Batman, they even put us in a western called Laredo,” said Stuart. “That made us temporarily famous, or at least kept our name alive because they keep airing them. But it makes people not take you as seriously. You’ve either got cred or you haven’t.”

The duo didn’t finish the 1960s together, after a string of albums and singles. It wasn’t until the 1980s that the group reunited for any sustained musical output. “Wasn’t it Bob Dylan who said, ‘If you want to be famous, go missing’?” muses Stuart. “Jeremy has a split personality. Once he left music in the mid-'60s, he did quite well as an actor. But he also likes to sing, and play and write music, so he’s one of those split personalities. He’s in London, so we have to wait to get enough dates in a row. It’s tricky, but we make it work.”

Stuart feels the duo has one more live album and one more studio album left in them. “That might be it for us,” he admits. “We’re no spring chickens, as they say. I’m going to be 70 this year, and Jeremy is going to 70 in March.”

Chad and Jeremy will be taking their infrequent musical marriage to in San Juan Capistrano this week. “We haven’t yet played the Coach House, oddly enough,” said Stuart. “Somebody said to me, ‘You haven’t played the Coach House? What’s wrong with you?’ My excuse is that Jeremy isn’t living here. If he was, we would’ve by now. I just hope it isn’t too last-minute. I hope some folks come out there.”

In his fifth decade as a musician and about to start his seventh decade of life, Stuart doesn’t lack for humor, perspective, or a humorous perspective. “Sometimes when I haven’t got anything better to do—which isn’t often—I wonder, ‘What would have happened if I hadn’t taken the first train out of town?’ ” admitted Stuart. “But that’s a stupid thing to think about because it didn’t happen … and it’s not going to happen.”

Tickets for the Jan. 19 show are $20, and can be purchased online at thecoachhouse.com. The show starts at 6 p.m.