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 his "one man band" live shows, using the backing tracks he had made as a form of therapy, his coordination was shot due to the crash and playing drums bass and guitar brought most of it back. Getting in Ray Jaeggi on sax widened their repertoire and "The Ruthless Brothers" went on to become the top local act, often playing four or five nights a week, three hour sets, no breaks!
In 2007 Dave got a call from itinerant bass player Les Fleischman, to whom he hadn’t spoken since 1969, asking if he, Dave, would like to help form a band with his mate Solly Ezra, the result was an amalgamation of the "Ruthless Brothers" and a huge expansion of members into what is now a ten piece rock and soul band called "The Bizzarros," who will be coming to a theatre or club near you very soon.
Meanwhile back in the studio, Dave and Andre composed the score for "Mumbo Jumbo", a fantasy adventure film starring Richard O’brian and Brian Blessed, they also composed the music to two highly acclaimed BBC kids animations, "Boo!" and "BB3B" among others, and have just finished the score to "Chemical Wedding" a spoof horror film starring Simon Callow and John Shrapnel which was written by Bruce Dickenson who also helped out with the score in full Iron Maiden mode.
2009 was a bumper year with the release of Terry Gilliam’s wonderful new masterpiece The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, for which Andre did the sound design and Dave had several pieces of music. Monty Python were all over the media celebrating their 40th anniversary which culminated with a massive six part documentary for which Dave wrote the music and with Andre and the rest of the remaining Pythons strode down the red carpet for it’s New York premier. 2010 kicks off with extensive touring for both the Bizzarros and the Ruthless Bros and with the release of two new films “My Angel” and “Journey to the Moon” on both of which Dave and Andre were the composers, looks set to be another cracker!
Dave married Sue in 1977 and they live near Bishops Stortford, Herts. They have a daughter, Lucy Antionette, who works as a life coach, which has nothing at all to do with Wells Fargo
