For 30 years, those who saw in the new year with BBC Two would be taken to midnight by the boogie-woogie piano skills and easygoing charm of Jools Holland, the musical guests supported by his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra. While the brass section gave the hootenanny its hoot, it was the tall, silver-haired Gilson Lavis on drums who had one of the most important roles on a busy evening. Only when the floor manager gave him the wink would the next song start. Holland called him “the engine room and nuclear reactor” of the operation.
They first met in 1976, when Lavis replied to an advert placed in Melody Maker by a south London band. Squeeze had been formed by Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford in 1974, with Holland joining on keyboards. Three years later, Lavis told an interviewer that he had gone to see them play in a pub when their drummer came off worse after a fight in the toilets. Lavis filled in for the rest of the evening and was given the job permanently. “It cost me a lot of money to set up that fight,” he joked.
John Cale, from the Velvet Underground, produced their debut album, and things took off with their second, Cool for Cats. The title single and Up the Junction both reached No 2 in the charts and they had further hits with Pulling Mussels (From the Shell) and Tempted. “When Gilson joined us, he lifted our game,” Holland said. “He was a bit older and had power and confidence. He also had a van, which helped. But above all he had both technique and feel, which is rare.” He said Lavis was one of the few drummers who ever looked at the lyrics sheet, wanting his rhythm to fit the words. They would play together for almost 50 years, until Lavis retired from music in 2024.
David Leslie Gilson Lavis was born in Bedford in 1951, the son of the manager of a building firm. He became a drummer at school to impress girls and because everyone else was a guitarist. For a school band audition, he ripped the jingles out of a tambourine and beat the rhythm of Wipe Out by the Surfaris with his mother’s knitting needles. He then begged his parents to buy him a proper drum set, which he beat furiously. “It cost us several neighbours,” he said. “Luckily I took to drumming like a sailor to rum.”
He ran away aged 15 to join a Scottish rock band, where he began to drink heavily. When one of the band put darts between their fingers and slashed someone’s face, he realised the Glasgow music scene was not for him.
Moving to London after a spell in Germany, Lavis became a house musician at the Talk of the Town nightclub and was signed by the promoter Mervyn Conn as a backing drummer for visiting acts, working with Jerry Lee Lewis, Dolly Parton and Chuck Berry. But the gigs dried up as his drinking took off, and Lavis got a job stacking bricks. The labour began to destroy his hands, which he described as curling round both bricks and pint glasses. His application to join Squeeze was a last throw of the dice.
“When he started he was a wild man,” Holland said, recalling an incident when someone at a gig spat at Lavis and was promptly flattened by him. While others left parties through the front door, he was known to throw himself through the windows.
“Being a drunk was part of the act,” Lavis said in 2017. “I spent most of my waking day wanting to die. The illness drives you insane.” He was sacked by the band in 1982, gave up booze and became a taxi driver, but in 1986 joined a one-off Squeeze reunion in a pub in Deptford that led to more records and a tour. While in America, the pressure of his first marriage ending led him to have his first drink for seven years and, as old problems resurfaced, he was sacked again. This, combined with breaking his arm in a car accident, convinced him to seek help to quit alcohol for good.
Holland stuck by his friend. In 1985, he asked Lavis to join him while making a documentary, Walking to New Orleans, which is being shown on BBC Four on Sunday , and two years later he invited him to play a series of two-man concerts he jokingly called Jools Holland’s Big Band. This evolved into a 20-piece orchestra and global fame. He also appeared each week on Later... with Jools Holland.
Now sober, Lavis moved to Lincolnshire, where he restored a derelict cottage, married Nicky, Holland’s PA, and they had a son, also Gilson, who teaches children with learning difficulties. As a reformed alcoholic, Gilson Sr saw it as his duty to help others through the AA fellowship. “Wherever we played around the world, he would hold meetings with people who had hard stories,” Holland said.
It was not just on the drumkit that he showed a talent with brushes. In 2007, Lavis took up painting, and his trademark black-and-white portrayals of musicians he had worked with, such as the Rolling Stones, Amy Winehouse and Elvis Costello, were often exhibited. Near the end of his life, the former wild man admitted: “I find a peace and serenity in art that I have never known before.”
Gilson Lavis, drummer, was born on 27 June 1951 and died on 5 November 2025, aged 74
Photograph by Andy Sheppard/Redferns via Getty Images