Tell me a bit about yourself, your name and where you’re from?

 My name’s Mick Hill, born in Sheffield, 1961 – the year the first launderette opened in London. (laughs). I grew up on the Wybourn estate and the Hyde Park flats, the high rise flats in Sheffield. I was at school at St. Johns and then I went up to Hurfield Secondary, Hurfield campus which was where I started to be interested in art.

 

So I grew up in Sheffield and after leaving school, I got O Level art at school so I decided to go into art and design at college, Granville College, I got all the exams I needed to do, I went for an induction. I started there and as the weeks progressed it started to get more and more expensive cause I had to supply my own materials; books, pencils, paints, camera, film, folder, everything. Then it was getting so expensive and it got to a point where I couldn’t afford it and my social life was going downhill so I decided to go down to British Steel Cooperation knock on the door and ask for a job, doing like, I think it was like £400/£500 a week which I took and then I scrapped the art and design.

 

What was it that you were doing at college though?

 At college I was doing fabrics, design for like window designs, doing photography, black and white photography in particular, that’s what I started doing. We had to do lots of drawings, I got a portfolio together and then it just fell apart really.

 

 

So you left art school to go do the steel works cause that was the industry that was around at the time…

 Well it was easy to get a job. There were no interviews or waiting for another interview or a second interview, you went down to the steel works, to the careers office in the steel works, you knocked on the door, ‘hello have you got any jobs?’ ‘Yes come down in 2 months’ time, we’re recruiting for apprentice steel workers’ and then that was it I went down, started as an apprentice steel worker and was there 7 or 8 years.

 

 

And that ended obviously because of the closures…

 Yeah I finished there because of the Steel closures and the pit closures. It was a full redundancy. The retraining after that, art and design or anything like that, they didn’t offer any courses like that it was all catering and brick laying and that sort of thing, plumbing.

 

So it wasn’t like there was an opportunity there at that time in Sheffield to go down a creative career even if you wanted to.

 I think the courses, if they were gonna go into art and design they’d have been too expensive, because British Steel paid your full wage to go on a 3-year course and the catering courses were cheap, you still had to buy your own stuff but it would have been too expensive to go down the arts.

 

So you grew up in Sheffield and there was a lot going on at the time with music and fashion and how those two related. What was it like in the teenage years?

 As a teenager, you could either be into pop music, all the stuff in the charts but me and my mates it was mainly the New Wave era and the Punk era. The Punk era came first at the end of the 70s and then the New Wave era came early 80s. In between that there was, me and my mates decided to go on the Rock scene, Heavy Rock; Judas Priest, Saxon – a lot of these bands were from Sheffield anyway.

 

Saxon and Def Leppard used to come in the pub with us and have a drink and so that’s what started it really. I kept away from the Punk things, I were into the music, the music was good but the actual dressing up with drawing pins through your ears and stuff and gobbing on stage and stuff, not my scene really. And then there was the New Wave, the New Wave Romantics, that came a bit later and then the New Wave era and I sort of liked that a bit, that were a bit more casual dressing. But the stuff that I were into me and my mates was Status Quo, it was all denim, denim throughout denim jeans, denim shirt, denim top with all your favourite brands embroidered or if you were lucky to have your band name on your t-shirt.

 

What did you have embroidered?

 I’d embroidered 2112 which was a Rush album, my Judas Priest, I got the V sign, the American what they call it, peace sign and I did the embroidery myself. I used to buy the actual patches, used to sew them on yourself and I did all the sewing. Yeah so it was like your medals, showing off, like, look at this Status Quooo (laughs).

 

Where was everything happening, where would you go to see bands or hang out?

 In town centre, in the old, what they call the Mucky Duck or the Black Swan they used to have live bands on there, it was basically in the town centre, West Street, there were lots of nightclubs, there were one or two heavy rock clubs that we used to go to.

 

In the old days limited licensing laws so you got kicked out pubs on a Saturday and Sunday about 2pm so you used to go Peace Gardens in Sheffield and sit on the grass, buy some cider and you’d be sat next to Phil Oakey from Human League and Def Leppard used to come in and we’d have a couple of drinks, some people would bring a guitar, and then at 6/7pm the pubs would open again and we’d go back in the pub. It used to get a bit messy cause we used to have like a lot of skinheads, New Wave coming down and trying to cause fights and stuff.

 

Also what was happening in them days on a Saturday in particular there used to be a lot of football violence in town from Bramall Lane and from Hillsborough and there used to a be a lot, a lot of fighting in town but we used to keep away from that. And then you’ve got the Hippies, who were into the Prog Rock, Rush, Yes, all that sort of stuff, bit more laid back and they sort of, they were a crowd of their own, you know what I mean. They used to smoke weed and stuff and patchouli oil and stuff like that.

 

But yeah it were good, it were a good time, it was different types of music coming together and then the Punk came through, the Rock started to fade away and the Punk took over cause Punk was like a mixture of New Wave, 70s, 60s music, it was like more aggressive, that sort of took over but the Rock and the Prog Rock sort of went to one side and faded away a bit so it’s all coming back.

 

 

So were you a Mod or Rocker?

 A Rocker, yeah. A Rocker, with the long hair and denim and head banging like this, non-stop. You’d wake up on a Sunday morning couldn’t move your neck.

 

At that time, what was going on with fashion. Was there like a memorable piece that you had or something that you really wanted? What was in fashion?

 It was just basically what I said, it was just denim. If you could get some nice denim, like Levi’s were quite expensive, if you had a Wrangler jacket that was a poor man’s Levi. It were just denim and there were some nice Afghans, but if I put an Afghan on that would mean I was going towards the Hippie type but I quite liked the style of Afghans and cheesecloth shirts and stuff. But that was it, the big flares, tank tops, big collars. If you were into Bay City Rollers which were the Pop stuff, I had some tartan sewn, me mum sewn some tartan on my jeans and I took it off, not into Bay City Rollers. But that was it, that’s what it was like just 70s, starry shirts.

 

 

 What about the hotspots in Sheffield and a little more about how different groups were dressing differently? So you wore a lot of denim …

 There was the other discotheques where the white flared trouser brigade and the big shirts, starry jumpers used to hang out, so that was that the Pop stuff, the discotheques. Then there was all the black music that was coming through like Stylistics, Drifters and that was all that discotheque. Then there was us that were into just Rock, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and like I said the Punk started coming in and that was around the late 70s, so you got places like the Leadmill was the Punk place to go where all the Punks went, the New Wave, the City Hall had all the Rock bands on, so it was all kicking off within 2sq miles. In the Peace Gardens, everybody used to you know, Rockers over there, Skinheads over there..

 

What about the Wapentake?

 The Wapentake was a Rock bar it was underneath the hotel, Grosvenor House and the manager of the Grosvenor House run the Rock bar underneath and that was called the Wapentake.

 

That’s not there anymore is it?

 It’s not there anymore no, no its been knocked down, but that used to be the busiest Rock bar and then when you used to get kicked out of the Wapentake then you could go to one or two night clubs that were doing Rock music like the Penthouse, Rebels, there was one called Stars which was underneath the ice skating rink in Sheffield and that used to do a Rock night on a Wednesday, just one night. But basically you just stayed around town.

 

So that was growing up in Sheffield, what made you move out here to the Peak District?

 Peak District? Well I didn’t know what the Peak District was, I lived in the high rise flats before I moved up to the Wybourn but on the high rise flats all I could see were panoramic views of Sheffield from Wincobank across to the M1 motorway and where Meadowhall is now all the way across to Shirebrook, Walkley but just above that the green fields. Well I didn’t know they were fields, but there was just this green line that I used to get mesmerised about this green line, I thought ‘What’s that green line?’.

 

 I’d never seen a field, never seen a cow or a sheep, you know what I mean so anyway we used to go to school and we used to get opportunities to go on walks into the countryside every weekend. Used to get on the bus at Pond Street with a teacher and there used to be about 10 of us and we’d get off top of Ecclesall road and walk to up Lodge moor and up to Redmires and Stanage and used to take us down to Fox House. They used to take us all over the place and we used to love it as kids, we used to love it.

 

It was just getting out the city cause folks didn’t drive, just lived, we didn’t move out of the city when we were growing up, the only green bit we saw was in the Peace Gardens, a bit of grass, but yeah it was nice to get out.

 

 

And that was when you were still in school?

 Yep still in school, that was before I went to secondary school, so I went to secondary school, I used to go out on a Sunday, me and my mate on a Sunday, we used to get on the bus every Sunday when it was nice, up to Ecclesall Road and then walk up to Endcliffe Park and there’s a road that takes you all the way up to Forge Dam. In those days it was quiet, Ecclesall Road was dead cause there was no shops open it was Sunday, nobody opened on a Sunday and it was just nice to get out of town.

 

Thing about Sheffield, you can walk 20/30 minutes and you’re in the green belt of Sheffield cause it’s so close and the Peak District is straight outside Sheffield and then you’re in the Peak District, it’s lovely, great stuff. Then we used to come walk back into town, used to that every Sunday.

 

So you do a lot of landscape type drawings sketches and paintings and that’s mostly inspired by what you see out here. How did that start, before there was like smartphones, what was that like because you do a lot of walking..

 Just take pictures on a camera, an 8mm film, take pictures and have them developed at Boots and then get really excited and open your pictures, look at all the duff ones. We didn’t used to take a lot of pictures though when we went up there, it used to be just memory, it was only when I started taking pictures I started copying them and drawing from them and painting from them, there was no mobile phones so you had to take pictures or sit out and actually sit on a box with your paints in all weathers and paint like that.

 

 

So your influence comes from your surroundings and what you like to see. You like being outside, it’s a hobby, it’s not something that you’d make as a career or anything.

 Not really I just do it for my own enjoyment but if anybody wants to buy a painting I’ll put a frame on it and sell it. I think, look in the countryside I think it’s just from living in the city, its calming and when you’re painting it, you feel calm painting it. Like anything you do, painting or whatever or whatever hobby, it gets you away from the city or your job and stuff and because we live in Castleton now it’s quite touristy people like to take things back with them. I did a painting a few years ago now and somebody from Russia bought it and its hanging in somebody’s kitchen in Russia. It was a picture of a church I did but I don’t have a copy of it. But yeah so it’s just that, I like painting old barns, derelict barns, just the countryside, they’re landscapes I mean I’m not fantastic at it, but I like all the colours.

 

Do you think the geography of where you lived, where you were brought up do you think, say if you did want to pursue something as a career creatively do you think you would have had the opportunity, not the resources, not to do with money but being so far away from say London where jobs are do you think that would be a factor as to why you wouldn’t pursue a career in something creative?

 Nah I could do it out here where I lived if I wanted to, but it depends what people want out of your painting, I paint for pleasure if it became something that I had to do as an income it wouldn’t be pleasure anymore it would be like mass production and they’d have to be really good paintings, I mean the paintings im doing are just they’re alright, they’re cheap and cheerful but it’s like anything else you’ve just got to practice. I’m quite happy to just do what I’m doing, if someone wants to buy it for a tenner, I’ll sell it.