DAVE HILL CHATS TO LORRAINE KELLY

Dave Hill:
Let's put you on a clear path here. Things got indulgent, that's what happened. When our manager saw us, he said we were the breath of fresh air on the scene. What was happening was people were wearing duller clothes or denims and there was a hippy thing, they were looking at the floor. They were all post-hippies, you see, hadn't quite recovered from the drugs. And there was this thing about nobody dancing anymore, people staring at the band or sitting on the floor getting smashed. It was a sea, an atmosphere of pot. We didn't fit that, we kind of were around it. We went through the flower power bit, and we wore the flowers, but we went through that. And there was an aftermath and nothing new was coming along, except for a lot of silly things like funny records. So you could go on Top of the Pops with Max Bygraves maybe or something silly. But nothing new was happening, nobody kicked arse, nobody took a chance.
What happened was we took the long guitar solos and threw them out the window. So everybody standing up there going, 'Yeah, man, I'm really cool, I'm really spaced, you know' - all that went. You see, The Beatles and The Stones had constructive ideas on their records and that's why they stand up now, but you listen to some of the hippy records, and it's out the ruddy window with them. I mean, we weren't there to work it out. The audience took what we'd got to offer, and what we'd got to offer become huge.

I think the visual appeal of the band was as important, if not more important in some cases, in selling the music. Because it's one thing to have good songs, another thing to have a damn good salesman. And I always felt that our music could stand up, but we always had something going for us which took us out of the ordinary. And it wasn't something we were all sitting at home planning, cos the guitarist in the band might flippin' hate what I'm wearing. On Top of the Pops, for instance - the story that Noddy always tells everybody - I used to go in the toilet and change, and I'd come out and if they all fell on the floor laughing at me, we've got a winner. Cos I used to say: 'You write 'em and I'll sell 'em.'

The silver coat used to work great on a black and white TV. Cos people didn't need colour to see it, it would reflect. And it did work. I thought colour might screw it up for me, cos when the colour telly come in I wondered about the colours that we were wearing: 'this bloody colour TV', you know. And I was thinking about the colours, but silver's like a universal colour, somehow. It's a bit like black or white. There are some colours that do not work - a blue, maybe, something dull - but silver, a bit like white, will hit you. Black will hit you if you see it well-lit, it has its mood, but it's very sort of ... there. So I picked on the silver. And gold, I wore.
The outfits stemmed from a progression of things. What I wore on Top of the Pops on my first hit record, which was 'Get Down And Get With It', was a pink woman's coat. There was a fashion for dungarees - well, I had diamonds on my dungarees, under the pink coat, into the boots. Mott The Hoople used to wear their trousers in their boots with lace-up fronts, and I picked a bit of their brains but what I did was I brightened it up to make it me. And then I got the unusual hair-style. But I didn't wear glitter then. And the long coat was something interesting. So we went on Top of the Pops and we made an impression.
Then from that the kind of satin thing was around as well, blocks of different colours - still a good idea now actually. Flares were there. And then from the pink thing I saw a long black coat in Kensington Market, leather with a zip-up front. And I looked at it and I thought: black's no good, but what would that be like in silver. Cos I was messing around at home, spraying things with silver cans. So I sprayed one with metal spray in my dad's front room and he was freaking out because of the stink, and it really reflected. And I used to like putting moons on it - like, a bit cosmic. And people just said, 'Bloody hell.' On your black-and-white television.
In the old days with the fashion, I couldn't get anything bright unless it was a woman's thing. I'd go in and buy a blouse and make it look like a shirt: it may look hilarious in front of you, but on stage it could look bloody great. What I was capable of doing was taking an idea and making it more extreme. It's the best fun I've ever had in my life.

BAK ' OME