About Me
Was born Stephen Simpson Hillage in Walthamstow, London on 2 August 1951. While still at school, he joined his first band, a prog/psyche band called Uriel, with Dave Stewart, Mont Campbell and Clive Brooks. The band split up in 1968 with the other members going on to form Egg, but they briefly re-united to record an album under the name Arzachel in 1969.In 1971, Hillage formed a new band, Khan, who released the album Space Shanty in 1972 before splitting. He went on to join Kevin Ayers' live line-up, and in 1973 he became guitarist with the eccentric space rock outfit Gong, in time for their unbeleivabley great "Radio Gnome Trilogy".After the brief stint in Gong, Hillage went solo in 1975, his work partly continuing the Gong mythology. He made a name for himself as a guitarist and prog-rock / fusion composer and performer in the post Hendrix / pre-punk scene of the 1970s. His L album was recorded using musicians from Todd Rundgren's Utopia, while Green was produced by Pink Floyd's Nick Mason.These 1970s works (tacitly in collaboration with his longtime girlfriend Miquette Giraudy) blended complex studio production techniques with dreamscape anthems and hooky, progressive passages of new world lydian electric fusion. As time went on, his albums became less Yessy and more Pink Floydish.Hillage spent time in the Ladbroke Grove area of London, home of the UK Underground and worked with Nik Turner, the founder and member of Hawkwind (one of the original Underground Community Bands).During the 1980s, Hillage worked as a record producer, working for artists such as Simple Minds and Robyn Hitchcock. He returned to producing in the 90s, working on The Charlatans self-titled disc in 1995.After hearing the likes of The Orb playing his 1979 ambient record Rainbow Dome Musick, Hillage teamed up with Giraudy again in the early 1990s to form their own ambient dance act: System 7. They soon became part of the underground dance scene in London. Hillage also produced in the 1990s a raï musical show called '1, 2, 3 Soleils', featuring Algerian singers Faudel, Rachid Taha and Khaled.Since the mid-1990s, Hillage has been an important contributor to Rachid Taha's music, as guitarist and producer.
