Biog
Dave Howman’s rise to obscurity has indeed been a rapid one.
Growing up in the 60’s the optimism and creativity of the times has left an indelible imprint and a strong "I can do anything" attitude that colours his work even to this day."
Dave left school without any qualifications just a huge love of music and a great belief that it would fill his life.
Teaching himself any instrument that came his way, guitar, bass, drums, piano, trumpet, harmonica "you name it, gimme a few minutes and I’ll get a tune out of it" he joined many local bands one of whom he formed with his long term friend and partner (musical not sexual) Andre Jacquemin.
Andre got a job in a London studio where he learned the mystic art of sound engineering and production while Dave lived the dream of being on the road with a pro band recording, writing and doing TV and radio shows, at home and abroad with the cream of British pop at the time, The Sweet, Mud, Thin Lizzie, Suzy Quattro, Gary Glitter etc. During this time Dave was writing "like a man possessed" songs for the band, with drummer Gavin Dare, jingles with Andre and having great success in Europe with Co writers Roberto Danova and Gavin Dare, six No 1’s and many top tens, with artists like Joe Dolan, Kelly Marie, Jesse Green the Drifters and Showaddywaddy.
Due to record company incompetence and internal politics the band split up which meant that Dave could spend more time with Andre and fulfil their plan for world domination which they had been hatching for some time.
Having already had success with a few radio Jingles the most notorious of which was "Barratts Liqourmart yeah," (any Londoner over 35 will name this as the most annoying radio jingle of all time) and Michael Palin’s offer of £1,000 to finance a studio of their own, (they were always cheap) Dave and Andre immediately sprang into action and went down the pub.
The Python connection worked very well for the boys, they composed among others, "The Brian song," from the life of Brian, "Every sperm is sacred" from the meaning of life, for which they earned their first BAFTA nomination, the score for "One foot in the grave," first series, the score for "Wind in the willows" starring most of the Pythons and more recently the title music for Michael Palins travel shows "Himalaya" (the second BAFTA nomination) and "New Europe". Andre also produced and engineered all the Python albums apart from the first one, which was done independently, he also worked with Terry Gilliam on Time Bandits and was involved in the Python live shows and concert for George.
Dave has always trod a different path to Andre, always being much more keen on the music side of the business as opposed to the production side. In the mid 80’s for instance Dave formed "The Boyfriends," a pure pop four-piece band that had the Melody Maker (at that time the leading music paper) calling them the band of the year! Unfortunately that same year, on the way to a gig, Dave had a huge car crash that left him unable to talk as well as most bones being broken or bent. More than five years later the comeback began with the already mentioned "One foot" score and the totally new challenge of scoring a cartoon series in the style of the Looney Tunes classics like Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny, a massive task for any composer. The result was "Rubbish king of the Jumble" a wonderful, chaotic British made cartoon series that still stands tall in the genre.
Around that same time Dave started doing “one man band” live shows using the backing tracks he had made as therapy, having lost most of his coordination in the crash, playing keyboard, drums, and bass brought most of it back. Getting in Ray Jaeggi and later Tony Ardin from Bad Manners on sax widened the repertoire and The Ruthless Brothers were formed. Specialising in Rock and Ska they are musically stunning!
On the recent animation side, Dave and Andre wrote the score and songs for Boo! and BB3B, both successful kids cartoons, and have just finished work on the NumTums, Which is on TV right now, again for the BBC.
September 2013 saw Dave achieve a teenage ambition by playing with the legend that is Zoot Money. Zoot and his Big Roll Band were hugely influential on the club scene in 60’s London. His band included Andy Summers who went on to form The Police with Sting and the other bloke. The September gig was with the RD Crusaders and alongside Dave and Zoot were Songwriter/guitarist Russ Ballard, Greg Lake, from Emerson Lake and Palmer, Nikki Lambourne, probably the best female singer working today, and Richard Desmond, owner of The Express and Chanel 5 on drums. The RD Crusaders have raised millions for charity and pictures were all over the place including OK Magazine.
British films have always played a big part in Dave’s life since the Python days.
Recent films include:
Mumbo Jumbo, starring Brian Blessed and Richard O’brian.
Chemical Wedding, where Bruce Dickenson helped out with the score in full Iron Maiden mode.
My Angel, which won 6 awards at the Monaco film festival.
The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus and The Zero Theorem both for Terry Gilliam.
And speaking of the Pythons, their live show at the O2 was a huge success and contained loads of music from Dave, with Andre of course, and in a weird way everything seems to have come full circle.
The Live gigs are going fantastically well, both here and abroad, and have led to Dave forming a new band called “1967” featuring songs from the summer of love from The Doors, Love, Jimi Hendrix Cream etc plus a few originals. Dave is now officially Dave (two bands) Howman, so you better get ready, we may be coming to your town!
