So Here It Is

Dave Hill

Slade star recalls the rough and the smooth. It’s still not Christmas without Slade, and this year Dave Hill’s autobiography reappears: updated, rambling on, often uproarious given his perennial optimism and good humour. Yet his life has known as many snakes as ladders – as Slade peaked, his mum was in a psychiatric hospital, his dad was blinded by a work accident and his half-sister had died.

Superyob is still living in the Wolverhampton area, 45 years married, granddad to six. Family, for all the Dickensian tragedy, means the world to him. He channelled his eccentricity into the band, reasoning that if they wrote ‘em, he’d sell ‘em, not thinking of royalties.

The once all-conquering Slade’s commercial decline wasn’t kind, and neither was fate when Hill suffered a stroke on stage in 2010. Still, despite his own encounters with depression, he plays and grins on, a pop Pollyanna, sweet-natured, lovable and in love with life, preferring to get with it than get down.

Chris Roberts