Melody maker Band Breakdown

Slade

DAVE HILL - or "H" as he is known to the rest of the group - is the extrovert of Slade. On stage he's the one who moves around the stage all the time, and off stage he's the daftest. He was the one to start the skinhead image; now his hair is the longest of the lot, and his clothes are the most removed from skinhead styles..

After an unsuccessful term in the recorder class at school Dave bought his first guitar at 15. "There was music In my family, but it went back as far as my grandfather wbo was a Doctor in music. At one time I wanted to learn the piano,and another time I fancied learning sax.

"I had a Spanish guitar for years and learned to play all the right notes and fancy chords and no pop stuff. Then I swapped this for a cheap electric guitar, and formed a group with some other kids on the estate called the Sundowners. I left them to Join another group called the Vendors, and then joined the In Between,which had Don as the drummer. At first we were playing blues and using a harmonica,We had a fat singer with a great voice, but was too lazy to turn for rehearsals, so we sacked him and Nod came in. Then we auditioned some bass player and Jim joined."

Slade's first single as Ambrose Slade, was a single on Columbia entitled " You Better Run." This came in 1968, and followed a stint playing at Tiles club in London. There they were spotted by an American producer, who made recordings with them but nothing came out of the deal. "Then we went off to the Bahamas for what seemed like years and came back to make some records for Fontana. They wanted us to make a live album, and we made it with Chas Chandler for the first time and called it 'Beginnings.' It's never been put out. We did the early singles with Chas, but none of them were very big hits"

The skinhead bit came after Dave chopped his hair in the Bahamas. "We really decided to do it because we wanted to look different from all the other groups with long hair. It gave us some publicity which we needed.

"The boots and braces were incredible in the stage show beause we have always been looners on stage. We thought people might look at skinheads in a new light because of us, but a lot of people went round saylng we were a load of ruffians. We sometimes played to crowds skinheads, but we didn't play reggae so we weren't the heroes they were looking for.We got some bad publicity for it all, but it's a question of all publicity was good publicity."

On looking back Dave thinks the skinhead phase did the group a lot of good, but like the other three he is indebted to manager Chandler. He is just what our group needed because he bullied us to do things and he was right behind us all the time. He is a fifth member of the group."