Tom Dunne: More people should really come and feel the noise of Slade
Slade held incredible chart records, only being surpassed by The Beatles.
“Whatever happened to Slade?” asked the graffiti on a wall in London in 1977.
In a world then in thrall to punk rock, it was a good question. Only three years previously they’d been the biggest UK singles act of the ’70s. Only The Beatles had had a better run of chart success. Yes, indeed, what had happened to Slade?
The stats bear repeating. From 1971 to 1974 they had 12 top-five singles: six at number one, three at number two, and two at number three. No contemporary act came close, not Bowie, T Rex, Gary Glitter or Wizard.
In a radio world obsessed with charts – all “new entries” and “biggest climbers” – three went straight in at number one. The last song to do this was The Beatles’ ‘Get Back’ in 1969. ‘Now Cum on Feel the Noise’, ‘Squeeze Me, Please Me’ and ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ crashed into the number one slot like stolen cars.
It was ‘My Friend Stan’ that got me into them. I heard it one night sitting on the steps of my parents’ house. It was summer holidays and it played out just before 11pm when there was still light in the evening sky.
It was a song that confused Slade fans. It wasn’t a football chant with a misspelt title. It was more like some of their later songs like ‘Far Far Away’, or ‘How Does it Feel’, a track described by Noel Gallagher as, “one of the best songs written, in the history of pop, ever”.
Slade were a Black Country band, that mysterious part of the UK midlands comprising Dudley and Tipton, and sometimes Wolverhampton. It’s called the Black Country due to the thousands of ironworking foundries, forges, and shallow coal seams it is home too.
Black Country people were seen as tough. They “had a bit of mineral” about them. Slade was no different. A hard-working, touring band from the mid-Sixties onwards, forging a name beside Status Quo and a young Reginald Dwight, other acts destined not to sniff success until that decade was out.
They were formidable live: guitarist Dave Hill, the ultimate flamboyant showman in a mirrored top hat, drummer Don Powell the gum-chewing Rock of Gibraltar, Jim Lea the bass and fiddle-playing musical prodigy, and Holder, the magnetic man of the people leader.
Manager Chas Chandler was to prove as vital in their success as The Stones’ manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. had been with theirs. Oldham, observing Mick and Keith writing postcards, berated them saying “If you’ve time to write postcards you’ve time to try and write songs”. He was right.
Chandler noted that although Holder and Powell had written songs together, and Lea and Hill had written songs together, Holder and Lea had not. This struck him as odd. Lea was very gifted musically, and Holder was the singer, after all.
‘Coz, I Luv You’ was reputedly written in 30 minutes. “Well done,” said Chandler, of this first Holder/Lea composition, “You’ve just written your first number one.” It was the beginning of the only songwriting partnership in the 1970s that could hold a candle to Lennon/ McCartney.
So, what had gone so incredibly wrong by 1977, when amazingly, your best chance to see Slade seemed to be as guests on mid-afternoon children’s TV? Daryl Easlea’s superb, and lovingly written, new book, Whatever Happened to Slade, has all the answers, and then some.
Loving Slade, I did not find it an easy read. The fall is a harsh one, and at this remove, you wonder could it have been avoided? Trying to break America played a huge part. It took them out of the UK at a crucial time, and tales of tours with Aerosmith and ZZ Top really make you question the suitability and wisdom of it all.
Bands today, with social media and targeted marketing, would have the skills to wait out dips in popularity. Slade would have the option to release new albums, tour, appear at Glastonbury and market Dave Hill action figures ‘til the cows came home.
But it was not to be. Perhaps the annual income of a Christmas hit in the pockets of Lea and Holder removes all necessity to go back, but it doesn’t remove our wanting to see them.
But be clear, between the end of the Sixties and the emergence of Bowie and the punk-fuelled creativity of the late 1970s, Slade were a joyous, misspelt riot of truly amazing songs.
