The bitter rows & tragedy that saw Slade go from biggest band in UK to cranking out Merry Xmas Everybody to tiny crowds
WHEN Slade recorded Merry Xmas Everybody they were described as the biggest British band since The Beatles as they toured the United States.
And while that, to quote the lads and their like for misspelled song titles, might sound all crazee now, the West Midlands glam rockers did come closest to equalling the Fab Four’s achievement of 22 Top Ten records in a single decade.
Their 17 Top 20 hits included six No1s — with Merry Xmas Everybody achieving double platinum status for its two million sales.
But today, ahead of the 50th anniversary of the beloved festive song becoming a Christmas chart topper in 1973, the Slade of 2023 are struggling to fill venues in Britain.
Tonight they will play at the 800-capacity Engine Rooms, in Southampton, and on Thursday the 1,400-seat Hall By The Sea in Margate, Kent.
We reported yesterday that some of the £38 tickets had been slashed to £5 to try to get punters in.
The problem is that a long-running feud means that glitter-loving guitarist Dave Hill, 77, is the only original member left from the four-piece classic line-up.
Drummer Don Powell, 77, no longer speaks to Dave after reportedly being sacked by email, key songwriter Jim Lea, 74, left the music business to become a psychologist and vocalist Noddy Holder, 77, turned down several big-money offers to come back, saying it would not be worth the grief.
Four guys having a laugh together
He told The Big Issue magazine: “When we had business meetings, within half an hour we argued about the same things we’d argued about the day we split.
“So the thought of being at least two years on the road, which is what it would take to make real big money, I thought, ‘Well, we’re never going to last that long’.
“We could have all travelled separately and stayed in separate hotels, as many bands do, but I didn’t want to live like that.
“I remember when we were four guys having a laugh together, going out drinking together. But obviously it was never going to be like that again.”
The problem is that there are two halves of Slade, and that makes it easier for one lot to hang up their platform boots than the other.
Noddy is worth around £20million, sharing a reported £250,000 a year in royalties from Merry Xmas Everybody with co-writer Jim.
Played in shops, restaurants and on the radio across the planet at this time of year, the track celebrating “everybody having fun” is a gold-plated pension plan for the pair.
But there is little seasonal cheer for Dave or Don, who didn’t receive a credit for writing the song or the band’s other major hits, including Cum On Feel The Noize, Mama Weer All Crazee Now and Coz I Luv You.
That means they are both still working well into old age, despite some serious health problems.
Dave, who described the band as living like millionaires in their 1970s heyday, had to rent out his gold and cream Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud for weddings to make ends meet.
In 2007 the jumpsuit-wearing guitarist was left with depression after a double hernia operation and three years later he suffered a stroke while on stage in Germany.
He has managed to battle his way back, re-learning how to play the guitar, but it has not been easy.
Don suffered brain damage in a devastating car crash in July 1973 which took the life of his then fiancée, 20-year-old Angela Morris.
It also led to memory loss and a fight with alcoholism.
Noddy has also defied the odds to still be here this Christmas.
Five years ago he was told he had just six months to live after being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer.
But he survived, thanks to a radical new drug, and earlier this year he performed on stage with blues outfit the Tom Seals Band.
Noddy said: “I thought, ‘I’m still around after five years, why don’t I go and do some shows?’”
The singer insists he is still on friendly terms with his former band members.
But for Dave, time does not appear to have healed old wounds.
This month the guitarist appeared to kill off any hope of a Slade reunion, saying: “That won’t happen, not even for a one-off gig.
“I cherish the memories of us years ago, but we’ve moved on in life and we’re all doing different things.”
Fans may find it tragic that even a brush with death can’t persuade the once tight-knit friends to share a stage once more.
They were four working-class lads from Walsall and Wolverhampton who overcame numerous knockbacks after first getting a band together in 1966.
Starting off as the ’N Betweens before changing their name to Ambrose Slade and then just Slade, they even shaved off their hair at one point to try to take advantage of the skinhead trend.
But then growing their hair really long, dressing in spangly outfits and leading the glam rock charge in 1971 finally saw them gain the success they craved by getting to No1 with Coz I Luv You.
Merry Christmas was a hippy, trippy thing
The band were influential enough for Noel Gallagher to once say: “No Slade = no Oasis. It’s as devastating and as simple as that.”
The lads in Slade were so close that when Don was left in a coma after the 1973 car crash they refused to perform without him, even though they had just had another chart topper with Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me.
By September that year they were touring the United States.
By then only Elton John was selling more records than Slade in the UK and no other British group since The Beatles had achieved No1s so readily over here.
Having decided that a Christmas song could be a good way to score another chart-topper, Noddy remembered an old unused psychedelic track and rewrote it.
He said: “The song that became Merry Christmas Everybody was written in 1967.
“It was a hippy-trippy thing.”
The original chorus was “So won’t you buy me a rocking chair to watch the world go by, buy me a looking glass to look me in the eye-eye-eye.”
They recorded the new track in New York at the end of a sweltering summer and released it in November 1973.
Slade were so huge that fans snapped up half a million copies in pre-sales and by Christmas Day another half a million had been sold.
It just edged out Wizzard’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday, beating that anthem to the top spot.
Noddy belting out “Look to the future now, it’s only just begun” demonstrated how hopeful the band were.
But Slade’s most-played track was to be a career peak.
The band failed to break the US, their 1975 movie Slade In Flame was a flop and the arrival of punk rock in the late 1970s meant they were no longer fashionable.
They enjoyed a comeback in 1980 after being invited to stand in for Ozzy Osbourne at Reading Festival at the last minute.
In 1983 they had a No2 single with My Oh My and a No7 with Run Runaway in January 1984.
But they couldn’t keep up the comeback and Noddy quit in 1986 before rejoining briefly in 1991.
After 25 years together, the singer felt they had got “stale” and he wanted to try acting instead.
He starred in three series of the ITV comedy drama The Grimleys, written by Line Of Duty’s Jed Mercurio, and became a local radio DJ.
Bassist Jim left at the same time as Noddy, going on to study psychology and run a property business.
Dave and Don — who had tried his hand at selling antiques — ploughed on as Slade, but then in February 2020 the drummer claimed he had been unceremoniously ditched by his old pal.
Don posted a message on his website stating: “Dave has sent Don a cold email to inform him that his services are no longer required, after working together and being friends since 1963.”
Dave denied that version of events, though in a recent interview he admitted: “I don’t see Jim or Don at all.”
Because Noddy remains on friendly terms with all three of them, Dave has not ruled out working with him again.
Dave said: “Me and Nod have always been in tune with each other and if he was interested in doing something I’d not be against it.”
XMAS 1973 TOP TEN
1 Merry Xmas Everybody – Slade
2 I Love You Love Me Love – Gary Glitter
3 My Coo-Ca-Choo – Alvin Stardust
4 You Won’t Find Another Fool Like Me – The New Seekers feat. Lyn Paul
5 Paper Roses – Marie Osmond
6 I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday – Wizzard
7 Lamplight – David Essex
8 Roll Away The Stone – Mott The Hoople
9 Street Life – Roxy Music
10 Why, Oh Why, Oh Why – Gilbert O’Sullivan
‘Loud and ugly’
By Garth Pearce who went to an early Slade gig
IT was the summer of ’69 and a new band in my native Black Country was emerging.
They had become a firm favourite at their regular venue, the Willenhall St Giles Youth Club, and I was implored to see them.
The band: Ambrose Slade.
I was on the local weekly newspaper, the Walsall Observer, so I went to give them the once over.
They were loud, ugly and disjointed.
Singer Noddy Holder spoke in a Black Country accent that was almost unintelligible.
Even for me.
My verdict: I’d sooner stare into a bowl of Ambrosia Creamed Rice than watch that lot again.
Two years later, I tuned in to Radio One and heard a song which sounded terrific.
It was called Coz I Luv You, and was delivered in such a guttural, aggressive style it was as if the singer’s life depended on it.
“And that,” announced the DJ, “is the latest from Slade – and looks destined for No1.”
Slade? Surely . . . it couldn’t be? Could it?
They were to have 17 consecutive Top 20 hits, including six No1s.
So by the time Merry Xmas Everybody was joyously belting out exactly 50 years ago – yes, it was another No1 – Slade were the biggest stars in Britain.
I met Noddy at a bar in London in the mid-1970s.
He looked me up and down and said: “Hello, mate . . . yow didn’t rate us all those years ago, did ya?”
There was no hiding place.
But it was the start of a good professional friendship.
My advice now?
There’s no need to struggle on.
Put your feet up, lads.
Have time off.
It’s Christmas, for goodness sake.
Then again, clearly I have no idea what I’m talking about . . .