R.I.P. Gilson Lavis, former drummer of Squeeze

Gilson Lavis was 74.

By Matt Schimkowitz | November 6, 2025 | 5:09pm

(Photo by Richard Ecclestone/Redferns)

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R.I.P. Gilson Lavis, former drummer of Squeeze

Gilson Lavis, former Squeeze drummer, has died. His former Squeeze and Jools Holland’s Rhythm And Blues Orchestra bandmate Jools Holland confirmed the news on his website. No cause of death was given. Lavis was 74.

“I’m very sad to report that Gilson Lavis my dear friend and long-standing drummer passed away at his home in Lincolnshire last night,” Holland wrote. “On behalf of my Orchestra, Squeeze, the many musicians who have worked with and befriended Gilson over the years and all the people he has supported through the AA fellowship, I send our love and sympathy to Nikki and Gilson, his dear wife and son.”

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Lavis was born David Leslie Gilson in Bedford, Bedfordshire, England. He had a self-described “speckled career,” starting as a cabaret drummer and singer before being hired as a touring musician by Dolly Parton, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Chuck Berry. Working as a bricklayer in the mid-70s, he responded to an ad in Melody Maker, thinking, “There’s gotta be a better way of earning a living than this.” The ad led him to Squeeze, which would be his main gig, off and on, from 1976 through 1991, playing on their most famous albums, including Argybargy and East Side Story. However, the attention given to the band’s primary songwriters, Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook, mixed with Lavis’ ongoing struggles with alcoholism, began to take its toll. Due to negative reviews of 1982’s Sweets From A Stranger, Difford and Tilbrook broke the band up.

“Later, the atmosphere in the band wasn’t that healthy. There was a wedge starting to form, a bit of us-and-them, with Chris and Glenn on one side of the fence and the rest of the chaps on the other,” Lavis told Mojo Magazine in 1996. “In their defence, I suppose to keep a sense of equilibrium when you’re being inundated with compliments like you’re the new Lennon & McCartney, and the pressure of writing a new album every year, was quite hard.”

In 1985, Lavis got sober and, after a charity concert with his old bandmates, rejoined the group. However, personal problems made it another short-lived tenure. “I’d just separated from my wife and was in a bit of a state. I’d been sober for seven years, and I decided that having a drink would be a good idea. So on this tour, I was a bit of a mess and very depressed. When we got back, there was a band meeting, and I was told I wasn’t needed anymore.”

Lavis went from Squeeze to playing with his former Squeeze-mate Jools Holland in Jools Holland’s Rhythm And Blues Orchestra. With Holland, he participated in numerous TV projects, performing on the theme to the British game show Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush and co-writing the theme to Holland’s long-running series, Later… With Jools Holland. In 2008, he joined Holland for a cameo in the Richard Linklater film Me And Orson Welles.

He was also a renowned portrait artist. His black-and-white pieces are primarily of cultural figures such as Keith Richards, Nelson Mandela, and Amy Winehouse, as well as fictional characters Jason Voorhees, Captain America, and Snake Plissken.

Lavis is survived by his wife and son.