David Westlake

David Westlake (born February 12, 1965) is an English singer/songwriter.

He led indie band The Servants from 1985 to 1991.

Westlake formed indie band the Servants in 1985 in Hayes, Middlesex, England.

The Servants appeared on 1986’s NME-associated C86 compilation, and the band was from 1986 to 1991 the original home of Luke Haines.

Haines describes David Westlake’s first solo album, 1987’s Westlake (Creation Records), as “a minor classic”.

Retitled D87, the album was reissued in expanded form in 2023.

The belated release followed the inclusion of 1990’s Disinterest in Mojo magazine’s 2011 list of the greatest British indie records of all time.

In 2002, Westlake released self-pressed album Play Dusty for Me (Mahlerphone) in a limited issue that quickly sold out.

As chronicled in an interview in US music magazine The Big Takeover (issue 53, 2004), Belle and Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch was a huge Westlake fan and tried to locate him in the early 1990s in hope of forming a band with him, before launching Belle and Sebastian in his school class instead.

David Westlake is a solicitor and academic.

Play Dusty for Me was reissued in limited form in 2010 and 2015.

Tiny Global Productions released Westlake’s album My Beautiful England in 2022.

The Servants’ Small Time album was well received on its 2012 Cherry Red Records release, more than twenty years after its 1991-recording.

Westlake and Haines played live together for the first time in twenty-three years at the Lexington, London N1 on 4 May 2014.

Westlake and band played at an NME C86 show on 14 June 2014 at Venue 229, London W1; the show marked Cherry Red Records’ expanded reissue of C86.