Mike Smith, the lead singer of the Dave Clark Five, has died from pneumonia at the age of 64.

Smith passed away at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire yesterday (February 28th) after being admitted with a chest infection.

The infection was a complication from a spinal cord injury sustained at his home in Spain in 2003 which had left him paralysed below the rib cage.

According to his agent, Margo Lewis, Smith had moved from being treated at the hospital to a specially prepared home with his wife last December.

“I am comforted by the fact that he had the chance to spend his final months and days at home with his loving wife Charlie," Lewis said.

As the singer and keyboardist in the Dave Clark Five, Smith helped to spearhead an invasion of British music into America in the 1960s along with other bands including The Beatles.

During the 60s, the Dave Clark Five scored a number of US hits with such songs ‘Because’, ‘Glad All Over’, and ‘I Like it Like That’.

Clark’s death comes just two weeks before the band is to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at a ceremony in New York.

(by Jason Gregory)