Born on April 4: Dave Hill (Slade), Feeling the "Noize" since 1970

Born in 1946 in Devon (UK) and now, as ever, the guitar slinger of Slade.

When Dave Hill was a teenager, there were no game consoles. Young guys dreamed of playing guitar. Hill received his first six-string at the age of 14 and quickly formed a band with a few classmates. Finding a name was easy, they were The Young Ones.

School was “a drag”. So he ditched grammar and history books at the age of 15, ready to do what it takes to make it in music, supported by his parents. In 1969, the first version of Slade appeared with Noddy Holder on vocals, Jim Lea on bass and Don Powell on drums. The four quickly dropped the word Ambrosia they had initially attached to the name Slade.

Although their first album "Play It Loud" (1970) already put their blues, rock-tinged choruses in orbit, it aroused only modest interest. Two years later, the live recording "Slade Alive!" (1972) propelled them into the firmament for a few years of madness. Competing with the tenors of glam rock, Slade managed their image with simplistic but terribly catchy choruses such as "Coz I Luv You" (1971), "Look Wot You Dun" and "Mama Weer All Crazee Now" (1972). Not to mention "Merry Xmas Everybody", one of the most incendiary Christmas songs ever written!

A trademark of the band, the approximate spelling of the titles also reminds us, implicitly, that Dave never passed his school exams! On the other hand, he put plenty of energy into torturing his guitar and choosing extravagant clothes, high heels and heavy makeup.

Dave Hill: from yob to super-yob

Hill has also always cultivated his persona of an uneducated and slightly boorish kid, a "yob" in English slang. In the group's heyday, he was obviously fond of sports cars adorned with an unmistakable license plate: YOB 1. He even nicknamed his favorite guitar, from the English brand John Birch, "SuperYOB" in case we didn't get the message.

Noddy Holder and Jim Lea composed all of Slade's repertoire, but Dave doesn't care. He is often quoted on the subject of his former companions: "You write the songs, and I will sell them".

When the band imploded in 1992, he continued the adventure with drummer Don Powell, first under the name Slade II. For the past five years, he has remained the only original member of a hybrid combo that continues to be called Slade but which essentially plays the nostalgia card. Without it being entirely a joke, Dave often says that he doesn't know how to do anything else anyway. 

Logically, he also took up the pen in 2017 to write "Here It Is", an autobiography with a preface by Noddy Holder and an afterword by Liam Gallagher (Oasis).

(Stéphane Soupart - Photo: © Etienne Tordoir)

Photo: Dave Hill with Slade at the Feniks Festival in Roosdaal (Belgium) on August 16, 1981.