Dave Cousins obituary: Strawbs frontman and radio executive

Times

3 days ago

Dave Cousins hated the song that gave his band the Strawbs their biggest-selling hit. The song was Part of the Union, a jaunty, humorous singalong extolling the solidarity of workers against the bosses that made No 2 in the UK singles chart in February 1973, kept from the top spot only by Sweet and their stomping glam-rocker Block Buster!.
At a time of widespread strikes and industrial unrest, Part of the Union struck a chord and when the band sang it on Top of the Pops with the bass drum emblazoned with a slogan that read 'The Associated Union of Strawbs Workers' it seemed like a jolly wheeze.
Industrial action by the miners' union would soon see the lights go out and Britain put on a three-day working week and Part of the Union was chanted as an unofficial anthem by strikers up and down the land. Yet according to Cousins, the song effectively 'destroyed the band'. The issue was not the song's advocacy of militant trade unionism, with which he did not have a problem, but a purely aesthetic one.
Along with the likes of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, the Strawbs had established themselves as pioneers of a new style of British folk-rock and their currency was albums of serious songs rather than disposable three-minute pop singles. In Cousins's view, Part of the Union was at odds with the group's sensibilities. 'Although it was a monster hit and went to No 2 in the charts, it had nothing whatsoever to do with what the band was all about,' he complained many years later. 'It split us in two and became a novelty song. It was the most stupid thing we ever did.'
When the band splintered, Cousins recruited a new line-up and incorporated more ambitious, synth-led elements of prog-rock into the Strawbs' sound. A series of impressive albums followed but further commercial success proved elusive and by the end of the decade Cousins had dissolved the band and opted for a new career, spending the next two decades as a highly successful radio station executive.
Into the new millennium, songwriting and performing became his main focus once more, and he went on to record further albums both solo and with a new line-up of the Strawbs until ill health forced his retirement. His final performance with the band came in 2023 at the Cropredy festival, an annual celebration organised and headlined by the band's fellow folk-rock pioneers Fairport Convention.
His three marriages to Christine, Sarah and Geraldine ended in divorce and he is survived by five children, Joelle, Justin, Joseph, Jesse and Joey. He spent his final years living on the Kent coast, in part for easy access to his second home in France.
He was born David Joseph Hindson in 1940 in Camberwell, south London, the only son of Violet (née Luck) and Joseph Hindson. His father was killed in action during the Second World War when he was seven months old. When he was six his mother married Jack Cousins and he adopted the surname of his stepfather.
Educated at Thames Valley Grammar in Twickenham he met the future Strawbs member Tony Hooper on his first day at the school. The pair went on to form a skiffle group with two friends called the Gin Bottle Four which folded when he enrolled at the University of Leicester where he took a degree in mathematics and statistics and founded a campus folk club.
The death of his stepfather in 1962 meant he took on the responsibility of supporting his family and after graduating he worked variously as a delivery man for a furniture store, in a meat factory and for an advertising agency before setting up his own booking company.
Yet he had not given up music, and adding banjo and dulcimer to his guitar-playing he teamed up again in 1963 with Hooper to form the Strawberry Hill Boys. Playing a fusion of folk and bluegrass, the group appeared on a 1963 BBC radio show with the Beatles and supported the Rolling Stones at an early club gig. Cousins also ran his own folk club at the White Bear in Hounslow, which offered a platform for him to develop and road-test his own songwriting.
By 1967 the Strawberry Hill Boys had become the Strawbs, their old name rendered inappropriate by the addition of Sandy Denny to the group. The songs she recorded with them were unreleased at the time and she left soon after to join Fairport Convention. The Strawbs, meanwhile, had signed a deal with the American label A&M, releasing a self-titled debut album full of Cousins's compositions in 1969.
Following the recording of their second album, Dragonfly, in 1970, Rick Wakeman joined on keyboard, cutting his teeth on a brace of Strawbs' albums before leaving to join Yes during the recording of From the Witchwood in 1971.
During the late 1960s, as the Strawbs were getting established, Cousins supplemented his meagre earnings from gigging by producing a weekly programme for Radio Denmark showcasing the best of British pop music. The experience held him in good stead when he quit the band in 1980 and immediately became programme controller at Radio Tees. He moved on to DevonAir Radio as station controller and then as managing director oversaw a merger with Capital Radio where he became a senior executive.
He also helped to launch XFM and in 1999 started Radio Victory, selling the station six weeks later for £3.1 million. He'd had enough of the boardroom and it was time to return to making music again.
Dave Cousins, singer and songwriter, was born on January 7, 1940. He died after a long illness on July 13, 2025, aged 85