Catch Us If You Can

"Catch Us If You Can" is a 1965 song from The Dave Clark Five (DC5), written by group's drummer Dave Clark and guitarist Lenny Davidson. The song was one of DC5's top hits, reaching number 5 on the UK Singles Chart in the late summer of 1965 and number 4 on the U.S. pop singles chart,^[1] later that fall.

Starting with guitar and finger snapping accompaniment, the hook was instantaneous:

Here they come again, mmmm-mm-mm

Catch us if you can, mmmm-mm-mm

Time to get a move on, mmmm-mm-mm

We will yell with all of our might!

[drums kick in]

Catch us if you can ...

As such, it served as the title song to John Boorman's well-regarded DC5 vehicle and pop scene film Catch Us If You Can (retitled Having a Wild Weekend in the U.S.) of the same year. The title phrase was seemingly a take-off on the 1959 crime film Catch Me If You Can and similar phrases, with "me" turned to the group's "us".

In years since, "Catch Us If You Can" is played near the start of Shrewsbury Town F.C. matches as the footballers run onto the pitch. This has been happening on and off since the 1974-1975 season and "Catch" is thus seen by home fans as Shrewsbury's de facto theme tune. Such was its significance to Shrewsbury Town that a local band, Hello Cleveland, and Shrewsbury fans released a cover version of the song, with a percentage of the proceeds going to children's charity Hope House.^[2] The song was made available for purchase on Amazon and on the club's official shop webpage.

In the U.S., "Catch" remains one of the DC5's most played tunes on oldies radio stations. In Australia, the Candid Camera-style television show Catch Us If You Can was named after the song.

Author Emlyn Williams used this song's lyric as an epigraph in Beyond Belief, his book about the serial killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. "Catch Us If You Can" was a hit song on British radio during part of the time the Moors murders were being committed.

The song was also used in a Walkers advert in 1995 around May (when the song was thirty years old) for their now discontinued (but new at the time) crinkle-cut range (featuring three flavours: Cream Cheese & Chive, Cheese & Ham and Roast Beef & Mustard); the song seemed appropriate as it was saying "catch us crinkle cut crisps if you can". (The off-screen voice-over, as for all Walkers crisps commercials then, was Hugh Laurie.)

The song was also featured in the opening sequence of the ESPN broadcast of the 1989 Winston 500 NASCAR race held at Talladega Superspeedway.^[3]

"Catch Us If You Can" was also used for video clips of baseball highlights on The George Michael Sports Machine.

References