"HEY! D'you know what I'd really like to do?"
said my promoter mate in his denims and buckskins in early 1970. "I'd
really like to put on some crummy group, you know, someone like Slade, that
skinhead band, just for a larf and see how many people come."
But that was a long time ago. In
1969/70 the skinheads (or, as you may have known them, skins) ruled the roost
(or, if you prefer, the kop; or, if you prefer, the street where you live). But
Chas Chandler, ex-bass player with the looning but ace group from-Tyneside, the
Animals, and who had since guided the fortunes of Jimi Hendrix, had a helluva
lot of faith in the above promoter's joke, A GROUP BY THE NAME OF SLADE, Noddy
Holder, Dave Hill, Jim Lea and Don Powell, all solid lads from Wolverhampton.
And someone else had faith in
this bunch of skinheads. Despite the jibing’s of his professional colleagues,
Chris Charlesworth, an outspoken no-holds-barred lad from the North, and News
Editor with Melody Maker, had spotted this collection of Midlands’s razor-cropped
baize playing their hearts out in Samantha’s, a swish discotheque in New
Burlington Street in London's Mayfair district.
Something struck him. He saw
they'd got a reputation as a good club band. But he knew there was more to it
than that. So, as writers on weekly music papers have to -do each year, old
Charlie chose Slade as his "Band most likely to succeed" at the end
of 1970.
And from the beginning of 1971
his trust in Slade began to bear fruit. Sweating their way through every club
in the country, the group were getting their audiences' feet stomping as much
as Charlie's brain cells had stomped the first time he'd seen them play live.
They were Playing It Loud - like the title of their first album for the Polydor
label "Play It Loud". The gurlz were starting to grab the boize. But
that's another story and we'll come to that soon enough.
THE DAY THAT SLADE STOLE
No, not the turf of
Wembley-although Slade and their fans would probably have been just as happy if
it were, but Wembley's Empire Pool, one of this country's biggest indoor
venues. On January 27th of that year the New Musical Express had printed the
results of its 1972 readers' poll. In the British Section Slade had come out as
both British Top Band and British Top Live Band and in the world section they'd
made it to the third slot as live band. And as happens every year the New
Musical Express had put on a concert at Wembley with Slade this time topping
the bill. But such was the demand for tickets to see the Slade stompers that a
second concert had had to be held in the afternoon. On this double-barrelled
day Slade played to no less than 20,000 adoring fans.
During the second gig, in the
evening, with the huge video projected screen showing Noddy, Dave, Jim and
Don's every twist, turn and leap, all hell broke loose. It was like the last
days of Pompeii, but you in the audience were rushing in ecstasy, not in fear,
to the volcano erupting in front of you.
Traditionally this is the
performance when the New Musical Express Awards are handed out. Curiously
enough, Rod Stewart, lurking around back stage decked out in nifty red clobber,
suddenly disappeared without collecting his award for Top British Singer. At
the last moment Paul McCartney and his entourage 'phoned through to say that
Paul wouldn't be able to make it to pick up HIS award for Top British Bass
Guitarist. Worried that they were going to be up-staged by this bunch of
Midlands’s yobs? Worried that the weighted bras and knickers would stop being
thrown when they came on stage?
BUT as I’ve said before, YOU KNOW
THAT IT HASN'T ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THIS. In the Melody Maker poll in the middle
of 1972 Slade got nary a single mention. They may have played Rasputins in New
Bond Street, they may have played Samanthas, and they may have played every
sweaty hole in the wall in the last five years. But even on December 11th 1971,
after making the charts that summer with "Get Down And Get With It"
and getting a glittering silver disc for their No. 1 "Coz I Luv You"
they were still getting minute 'ads in the weekly music papers and the biggest
venues they could get were colleges of technology at ticket prices which would
now seem laughable.
The promoters and bookers-the men
who got good bands the good gigs-were still wary of unleashing these four
ex-skinheads on their public. Despite the fact that they were now one of the
flashiest-dressed, most colourful outfits around. Huge stacked heeled shoes and
boots. Dave with his hair long and styled in a way that the grooviest birds
were wearing six months later. The skinhead image had gone completely. YOU
weren't wary of them but the elders and powers-that-be thought you should be.
It took another six months and
another two huge hits under their belts before Slade could be truly accepted by
the above-mentioned gents and by the pop press.
At the end of May 1972, they took
their biggest gamble yet. For four days Lincoln witnessed the Great Western
Express Festival. All the festivalgoers' favourite acts played: The Faces, Joe
Cocker, Lindisfarne, and Rory Gallagher. How could Slade possibly fit in with
these so, so different acts?
But they were sure of themselves.
They knew they'd never yet come across an audience they couldn't get through
to. And they astounded those who hoped they would die the death by turning out
to be the surprise hit of the Festival. It was then that Noddy first replaced
his checked cap with a black top hat, and with his plaid trousers and thick,
brash, platform soled shoes, he came across like something out of "A
Clockwork Orange"- THE controversial art film of the year. Jim and Dave
hurled themselves at each other from either side of the stage and, as ever,
Noddy had the nerve to wrap his gasworks lungs around "Darling Be Home
Soon"--the anthem of 'John Sebastian, hippiedom's great god.
For 55 minutes Slade played with
every single fibre and nerve in their bodies. But they did something very, very
different during their performance. Although it took them two or three numbers
to get the sound together, when they lunged into "Get Down And Get With
It", they had all the spotlights trained on the audience and, to quote
Noddy, "To see 50,000 people with their hands in the air, and to hear the
sound coming back from those people ... there's no real feeling in the world
like that.
"It was great for us,
especially from people who were hostile to us at the beginning because we
weren't the sort of group they expected to see at a festival."
And even before the reviews came
out the next week, Noddy, Dave, Jim and Don had won a huge, lovely place in the
minds of all those people who'd thought Slade were only fit for Top of the
Pops.
From that date the prestige of
their venues has just gone up and up.
On the 24th June. 1972, Slade
were able to rock it to you at the California, Dunstable.
Yonks before Slade were up there
on stage the dance floor was sagging-it had so many people on it. There was a
blur of silver and yellow as they ran on and Dave Hill's lead guitar
immediately had an electrical glitter about it, matching the glitter on his
hair and forehead. Girls fainted and to misquote one of the numbers from
‘Slayed?’ "The Whole Place Went Crazee". They stormed through their
hits, filled out the set with material from the first two albums and created
such an effect that a whole hour after their last note the ballroom floor was
still littered with girls waiting for autographs. And even Dave Hill was moved
to say: "I feel for the kids, they were like sardines out there
tonight".
The 29th July had the Rainbow
Theatre, London, with one of its wildest sell out concerts ever and it was
around this time that Noddy started linking the unique brand of Slade rock and
roll with football, interrupting the act half way through and getting the whole
audience singing along with "You'll Never Walk Alone".
They were asked to come back
specially from America to open London's first Sundown concert hall and by this
time Dave Hill had not only fully joined the glitter brigade but was outdoing
everyone else in that field and you the audiences, whether boys or girls, were
following his lead.
In November of last year they
played two successive nights again at the Rainbow and by then the audience
reaction was 1,000 per cent stronger-if that could be possible-than that first
Rainbow date.
But perhaps the biggest surprise
of all was when Slade-the one time Midlands bovver boys who put the fear of God
into the men dealing with them-were asked to play at the London Palladium, home
of such stalwarts as Cliff Richard, Engelbert Humperdink and Tom Jones, as part
of the celebrations for the Fanfare Into Europe when Britain joined the Common
Market.
By now Dave was dressed from head
to toe in silver. And I mean head to toe. From thigh-length silver boots to
glitter which seemed to pour from his head.
Noddy's top hat was covered in
mirrors and you could almost see the driving rhythm that Jim and Don were
pushing out through which bras and knickers were being hurled in their
multitudes.
And the gentlemen of the law, who
at one time would have feared and loathed this group, were singing along, too.
The Palladium has never been the
same since.
A BRIEF HISTORY
Oi. There's four of you, you've
got an average age of 17. And you are asked to go along to the Bahamas for a
holiday. The Bahamas-millionaire's paradise and you're not from the most elite
parts of the Black Country. So what do you do? You jump at the chance. Mind you
there is a slight snag. Four blokes of that age are quite likely to have a
rudimentary knowledge of playing musical instruments. And you do. Four young
blokes with a rudimentary knowledge of musical instruments might just be a
group. And you are. Your group has also got a name-Ambrose Slade. You've been
around on the London scene for a time and made an album called "Beginnings"
on Fontana, which sank like a lead balloon.
So when you're fighting like hell
to make it on the music scene and you get offered a contract to open a club in
the Bahamas then you jump on the first passing raft, stick a message in a milk
bottle saying where you're off to and pretty soon you're getting as brown as
oak panelling in the day-time and having a helluva time playing your backsides
off at night. You stay for four months, though originally you were going for
six weeks.
But being that age, with just the
four of you stuck together in a place you'd never even dreamt of a year ago,
you have only got yourselves to rely on. So you have your good times, you have
your bad times, you have your hassles and your bloody awful rows. But it's all part
of your sorting out, both as people and as musicians.
Just like it did to another bunch
of lads who were in a group a short way up the M6 from your hometown when they
went to Hamburg a few years back.
It's bloody hot in the Bahamas so
one of you, Dave Hill, crops his hair. And the others follow suit. And so now
you're looking like what in this country are called skinheads. But that's no
big hang-up because most of your mates back home look like that anyway.
Anyway, you're coming back from
the Bahamas and you've lost the Ambrose tag somewhere along the line. And when
you get back to London you are SLADE, known and photographed everywhere as
"The first real skinhead group". By this time you've even got the
right clobber - Dr. Martin boots, shortened Levis with braces and Ben Sherman
shirts.
But by now you've got the Midas
touch of Chas Chandler behind you, who'd heard the tapes of that now-deleted
album and been along to see you at Rasputins in New Bond Street. As Noddy says:
"We were having a ball with
the audience, it was such a small club, our first taste of the London scene.
When Chas got there, he came in during the middle of a set, and saw all this
happening. He was knocked out, because he hadn't seen an audience involvement
thing in London for years."
An so the skinhead image was
carried to extremes - an obvious publicity stunt.
The Who were mods, played to moos
and went to the ultimate mod extremes. If that could work for the Who, then why
couldn't Slade be skinheads and play to skinheads? So two singles were
released: ''Wild Winds Are Blowing" and "Shapes Of Things To
Come". Both, again, on the Fontana label. The only problem was that whilst
the Who were playing mod music to mods, Slade, no matter how vicious they
appeared in their publicity handouts, were just not playing the sort of music
that skinheads were going for at the time. The skins wanted reggae and soul
music not as one skinhead once said to me: "Bleedin' 'arf-way 'ippy
music".
But Noddy, Dave, Jim and Don, who
would have carried on playing without it anyway, had Chas as the group's morale
and financial backbone. Hell, they couldn't go any lower. They'd become a joke
in some quarters, and were thought a threat in others. And there wasn't
anything else that they liked or wanted to do.
And, after a while, with the
skinhead image flushed down the bog-except for Noddy who still likes to wear
his trousers a bit too short-they realised they were getting a fair old
following. Audiences were still that little bit wary at first, but gradually
they were getting a reputation as "a good club band".
And in the summer of 1971, the
inevitable happened. 'Music Week' carries the charts used by the B.B.C., and,
although you may never have seen a copy, it carries a lot of weight in the
actual record business itself. In its issue dated June 26th of that year, there
appeared, in the 45 slot, a record called ... Yes, you know, don't you.
"Get Down And Get With It" had made the charts.
But it wasn't instant success.
The progress of Slade's first hit up the charts was painfully slow. How Noddy,
Dave, Jim and Don must have been
disappointed when they grabbed the next week's issue. It had only gone up two
places - to number 43. And it took another eight weeks to reach number 16, its
highest position. No chart-stormer, but it had given the lads a first sniff of
success.
So they kept their heads and
carried on playing, just as before.
And Chas had a little word with them. "Get Down And
Get With It" was an old Little Richard favourite, but he explained to them
that they shouldn't rely on other people's writing to get them hits. Also, no
doubt, knowing Chas's financial shrewdness, it was probably fairly strongly
drummed into them how much more money they would make if they were writing
their own numbers. So, having been given a kick up the proverbial whatsit.
Noddy and Jim went off and wrote "Coz I Luv You" with Noddy writing
its B side. "Coz I Luv You" entered the charts at number 26 and
within two weeks was at number 1, where it stayed for four weeks. Not only
their first number one but also their first silver disc. The record made
prominent use of Jim's classical-violin training and Dave explained how this
fitted in:
"We always wanted a good
violin number for the stage. When we originally wrote it, we had it as a
violin instrumental without any words. Then we decided there was a
fairly catchy riff in it so Nod and Jim decided to write some words. We didn't
specifically do it for a single because every number we do we try to give some
commercial appeal."
Since "Coz I Luv You",
every single released by Slade has been self-penned. The ingenious misspelling
of all subsequent singles titles-all of which have made the top four-have
caused many a schoolmarm to pull her hair in anguish at the spelling errors of
her pupils. So you can see that, whilst the skinhead image nearly destroyed
Slade, another thicko aspect that they had adopted, has greatly aided
their career.
There are a whole lot of people
delighted with the way Slade are now banging out the hits, but this flow of
smash singles has, as I've already mentioned, resulted in their working harder
and harder.
But this in turn seems to have
given them a creative edge to their writing. gaining them more fans at! the
time, until "that little bit of magic happened at the beginning of March,
1973, when "Cum On Feel The Noise" strode straight into the number 1
position a week after its release. A Beatle-type feat after only a year of
singles writing.
Noddy's got a right to say that
"If we keep on improving at the rate we are doing I don't see why we
shouldn't last for as long as whatever lasting power is ....
"To us, we've improved
incredibly and we're learning much more about how to make records. The stage
show is much better than it's ever been. We've got a lot more confidence and we
feel better when we walk on stage.
"When we had our first
number 1 with "Coz I Luv You" we never had any confidence in our song
writing and it could have been a fluke. But we've written every one since
everything and ourselves on the new album so we know now they are not flukes
and we have something to offer. We've only had a year of song writing
experience behind us, and a year is nothing."
Hey, but what about albums?
"Play It loud", the group's first for Polydor, did nothing to the
charts-but we'll talk about that later.
At the time of writing
"Slade Alive" has been in the Top 50 albums for well over a year, and
had sold over 100,000 copies by the end of last October.
Recorded in front of a live
audience at Piccadilly's Command Studios over eighteen months ago, and released
at the end of March, 1972, it has only three Slade originals on it, but it
really is like having a concert in your front room.
For the third Polydor album
"Slayed?" there must have been more than a few sleepless nights. Out
of ten tracks, there are no fewer than eight Slade-written numbers, and within
two weeks of being on sale; Slade has disposed of 1,00,000 copies. It had taken
twenty nine weeks for "Slade Alive" to reach that figure.
Singles band only? Fiddle de deel
THE WORKING CLASS HEROES
YOUR superstars have started to
move into the stockbroker belts.
Just like Noddy, Dave, Jim and
Don, most of them still like football, booze and birds. But they've gone and
done the one thing that Slade have deliberately avoided. Posh pads in Ascot and
Windsor, a Iitter of foreign sports cars, holidays in the swishiest places.
That's alright. Nothing wrong with it at all when you've got the loot and you
reckon you've worked for it.
It's just that Britain's top
group like to remain closer to their fans. They want you, the people who put
them there, to feel as much a part of Slade as they are.
Noddy once voiced his opinions on
the superstar syndrome. "If you've come to the stage where you can afford
to become. a recluse in Surrey and lose contact you've probably got sick of the
scene anyway, We're not sick of the scene yet. We love every minute of it.
There's no reason for us to lose contact yet.
"Maybe a time will come in
the future when you get pissed off with the hangers on you get. When you stay
at home you get people calling all the time asking for pictures and autographs.
It doesn't particularly bother us, it's our parents that have to put up with
it."
And so Noddy still lives at home
in his parents' council house in Walsall, Staffordshire, a short bus ride from
Wolverhampton.
Neville - that's what Mum Leah
and Dad Jack Holder know him as - has so far lashed out only on a colour telly
- for the two people who brought him into the world in 1950, although I'm sure
they've been slipped a few expensive trinkets from his foreign tours as well.
He himself is happy enough driving around in a Hillman Avenger.
In fact it seems almost
unbelievable that Dave and Don also still live at home with their parents in
Wolverhampton, and Jim has only recently moved out and bought himself a
house-in the same part of the world. Apart from Noddy they're all on the
telephone, but these lads haven't gone and bought closed-circuit televisions to
protect themselves from you. Their phone numbers are still in the local
directories - they don't mind you ringing them up!
Whenever possible the group would
rather go home for the night after a gig than stay in a hotel. But, of course,
they can't always do this, and when they have to come down South, whether to
record or to play live, Slade have got a virtually permanent residence at a
London hotel, though it's Certainly not at the Hilton or the Inn On The Park.
Chas Chandler, whose days as a
musician himself must have shown him how money can be frittered away, has let
his know how rub off on his four young protégées. So the group stay in a fairly
cheap but comfortable little place off the Edgware Road up from Marble Arch.
Certainly Chas has advised
Messrs. Slade about fools and their money being easily parted, but their early
battles on the way to super-stardom before they even met him taught them a lot.
The discreet little London hotel goes down fine after a few years doubling up
in bed and breakfast rooms. So when Dave was interviewed after 'Coz I Luv
You" became their first really big hit he wasn't going to mince his words
or suddenly get high and mighty. '
"We couldn't come down to
London and pose about in the clubs like some of the people we've seen down here.
Some of that posing really makes me sick. We don't want to alter at all."
Earlier he'd admitted. "We
still argue about whose round it is in a pub." And even now, they still
do.
There's many a star who
celebrates his first number one record with a flash new car which he then goes
and piles up after a bit more celebrating. Slade celebrated "Coz I Luv
You" reaching the top by going out and buying a whole load of new
equipment, realising that the really top-notch groups need top-notch gear to
keep them up there.
A few months previously, after
"Get Down And Get With It" had bitten into the Top Twenty, an album
had to be recorded. London studio costs can be enormous, and besides they were
still just a club band, so why not make the album sound like a club date? So,
for three successive days some of their vastly-growing band of followers
trekked into the recording studios Slade were using. "People from all over
the country come to the sessions," said Dave. "A coach party came
from Derby, and there were fans from Cardiff and Wolverhampton."
"Slade Alive" was the
result, but you already know what happened to that.
Even now, despite their
extravagant stage clothing, there have been few wild spending sprees on the
luxuries, which the group are well able to afford. Jim Lea's bought his house,
and Dave Hill is the proud possessor of Jensen car.
But that Jensen!
Well, as Nod once remarked about
Dave, "He's son of mad in a way. Whatever anybody says about him he don't
care. He just goes along in his own sweet way". So if you ever see a
Jensen with the registration number YOB 1, you can bet you'll see Dave Hill,
extrovert lead guitarist, inside. That registration plate must be just one of
Dave's ways of cocking his nose at all those early mockers.
Mind you, as I said, Noddy, Dave,
Jim and Don like a bit of booze, and you may have read the odd interview when
one of them has been reported missing - a casualty of a shocking hangover.
The days of Guinness and brown
ale are well past now, and any lucky young lady spending an evening with one of
them is more likely to find her escort pouring Scotch and Coke down his throat.
And if you ever get a real close-up of Don Powell's drum kit on stage, when
he's bashing out that solid beat so essential to Slade's sound, then you're
also very likely to see a tregnum bottle of Long John Whisky next to his drum
seat a bit of light refreshment for when he's feeling a trifle dry.
If you haven't seen one already,
try to seek out a pop magazine photo of Don and Noddy getting their award for
being Radio Luxembourg's 1972 "Group of the Year"- yes, they copped
that one too. They're drinking something that looks like champers, but I wonder
if they wouldn't have rather had a glass of something from up John '0 Groat's
way.
You know, you really are just as
much a part of Slade as Noddy, Dave, Jim and Don.
You all have your ups and downs,
and the aforementioned chart-stormers were down, way down for a long time.
Noddy really feels that they were the most hated group during their skinhead
era.
But even when they were just
breaking into the Hall of Fame last summer a couple of silly things happened.
In the middle of June the group
had just played "Take Me Bak 'Ome" on 'Top Of The Pops'. Afterwards,
as usual, they went to the B.B.C. Club for a quick noggin. Now Mr. X, a
well-known group musician and superb songwriter whose name must be suppressed to
protect the guilty, was also in the Club. So Jim went up to X to compliment him
on a performance he had seen in Southampton. Our mysterious musician friend
then turned round and said, "Oh, yeah, they were the crap days. By the way
I don't like your shirt." As if to make sure Jim had fully understood, Mr.
X then poured a beer over him. To which Jim replied by doing the same back.
Our famous Friend, who has rather
a reputation for occasionally acting in a peculiar manner, then preceded to
take the huff at everything that the rest of Slade, who were trying to ease the
situation, said. And when they decided to leave and Dave said "Tara mate",
Mr. X said goodbye by getting hold of Dave's hair and swinging on it.
Enter Chas Chandler, who was
grabbed by the shirt by the strangely behaving lad. Chas retaliated by grabbing
him back and giving him a good talking to.
At which point Chas was temporarily
banned from the BBC Club!
About a month before this Slade
had gigged at Glasgow's Greens Playhouse. After they had finished two policemen
strode into the dressing room and formally charged Nod with using obscene language during the act.
Now, our Noddy does have a
tendency to use some rather naughty language and phrases between numbers. If
you have seen Slade, as I'm sure you must, you may well have been asked:
"Are you all pissed?"
When Noddy is about to start
"Darling Be Home Soon", he has very probably grunted: "We want
all the fella’s and all the young ladies to get very close during this number.
We want you all to have a good feel of each other."
But you know it's all part of the
act and Noddy's only lending voice to your thoughts anyway.
Unfortunately Glasgow Police
Force didn't see it like that.
On a slightly lighter, but much
more painful note, the group's filial tour of last year had a slight mishap. Or
rather Dave had a mishap.
Whilst zooming around Liverpool
Stadium's stage in his six inch heeled boots, escaping the clamouring and
clambering fans (it might all have been YOUR fault, you know!!). Dave stumbled
and broke his ankle. But like the true troubadour he is, he carried on and
finished the set. His sorry comment after leaving Wolverhampton Hospital the
next day with his leg plastered from ankle to knee, and with strict
instructions not to drink?
"It's a bit much when you
can't have a drink and still get plastered."
I suppose the time's rapidly
coming when the four Black Country lads will have their accountant forcing them
to move into gothic mansions, they'll be made to purchase the most expensive
cars on the market ("Complete with centrally heated chauffeur, sir.")
and, without their asking, the pink pages of the Financial Times will begin to
appear on their door-steps. "You must do this or the tax-man will take
everything you've got."
But when that time comes, you'll
still find them down the nearest Bricklayers' Arms, getting boozed up before
nipping down the local discotheque on the pick-up.
Yeah, it hasn't gone to their
heads yet, so it doesn't look as if it ever will. It's taken Noddy, Dave, Jim
and Don too long to get up there.
They're superstars themselves
now, but they're the only ones who are true working-class heroes at the same
time.
WHY has Slade's popularity risen
and risen, making them the top group in the country?
Every TuesdaY at one o'clock in
the afternoon on Radio One Johnnie Walker gives a rundown of the Top Thirty for
the next seven days. Working from number thirty he finally reaches number one, which he then plays.
At the end of February the
impossible seemed to have happened. "Cum On Feel The Noize" had been
released the previous week and Johnnie had already got to number two without
mentioning it. Then, suddenly, all hell broke loose. "Cum On Feel The
Noize" had entered the charts at number one, and Noddy's voice was ripping
the insides out of my tranny,
And at the end of the record
Johnnie Walker was declaring Slade as the new Beatles.
Now a lot of people have compared
Noddy, Dave, Jim and Don. with John, Paul, George and Ringo. But if you
question them further, it almost always comes down to the similarity between
Noddy's voice and that of John Lennon.
There are similarities in their
voices.
When Lennon sang "Twist And
Shout" in 1963 he seems now to have been using the same cast-iron lungs
that Nod's using ten years on.
There are similarities in the
riots that both groups created. Only in the case of the Beatles it was
jelly-babies and not bras and knickers that were thrown on stage. Such is the
permissive society - if it still exists. Lennon also used to curse and
shout at his audiences, and grimace as silly as Noddy does now. But there for me the comparison
ends.
THE BOIZ' NOIZ:
THE SOUND SAYS IT ALL ....
Last May, Noddy said: "If
you want to sit down and delve into the music, it's no use coming to see
us." You hear a Slade record and the sound says it all - Noddy has nothing
to add.
Noddy's snarling between numbers
is part of Slade.
Dave's glitter, garments and gavotting
is part of Slade.
Jim's bass patterns and his
charging across stage is part of Slade.
And Don, with his gum and Long
John Scotch, battering out the backbeat is part of Slade.
But, most important, all of you,
whether at home watching the telly or being held down in your seat at a concert
by an usher, you're all part of Slade.
Slade sing directly to you on
lines like "Cum on feel the noize, Gurls grab the boize" and you're
replying when you tell Noddy or Dave or Jim or Don, or all four of them, that
They'll Never Walk Alone.
You already know all the singles
back to front and having somehow managed to beg, steal or borrow
"Slayed?", you know that Slade are telling their life-stories on many
tracks:
"Don't stop now. Come on.
Another drop now. Come on.
I want a lot now. Come on.
(I said) Mama Weer All Crazee Now,"
Noddy's singing about his
boozing. "Slade Alive" gives you another part of the group's lives.
You get the music, but your mates are talking to you, and you alone, in your
own room. That's another reason why Slade have let you become a member of
Slade. Ever heard such a personal live album before?
In case you haven't, then
"Play It Loud", and you'll hear a totally different Slade, on tracks
like "Dapple Rose", written by Jim and Don. In fact, that's a good
one to check out. The early Holder voice, yet to gain its full power, with
lilting slightly hard-edged harmonies on the chorus line. And if I'm not careful
I'll he mentioning the Beatles again.
But, hell, what does it matter?
Slade are there. The other night I was listening to a new group's album with
some hard faced rock critics. "Hey, that bass line’s been pinched straight
from Slade!" said one and we all nodded in unison.
Yes, Slade are there ... and so
are YOU.
PHOTOGRAPHS THROUGHOUT EXCLUSIVE
TO 'SLADE ALIVE!' AND TAKEN BY DAVID ELLIS AND DAVID REDFERN AT 1973 LIVE APPEARANCES
BY SLADE IN BRITAIN, ON THE CONTINENT AND ON BBC's ‘TOP OF THE POPS'.
TEXT BY CHRIS SALEWICZ .
PUBLISHED BY HANOVER PUBLICATIONS
LTD.,
61 BERNERS STREET.
LONDON W1P 3AE. AND
PRINTED BY SEVERN
VALLEY PRESS LTD.
CAERPHILLY. GLAMORGAN
@ 1973 Hanover Publications Ltd.
The Download Link is here: Download.
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