My friend Robert Nevin has been on a Slade kick the past couple of weeks, not that I blame him because not unlike a band Slade deeply influenced, Oasis, when you wanna stomp to melodic hard rock, they are the one of the better places to start. Robert would blanch at the Oasis comparison, but they have at least one thing completely in common: both the 70s Slade and the 90s Oasis are manifestations of the football hooliganism added to hard rock.
Slade took pub rock and married it to the aesthetics of glam rock, Oasis took pub rock and married it to the aesthetics of Madchester. With Slade they were working class trolls in lipstick and bovver boots; it was like Oi gone gay. Very strange. And the songs, written by Noddy Holder and Jim Lea were better than normal hard bubble yum. Noddy was John Lennon, raised on a council estate (ie: the projects) and working class. Jim Lea is Paul McCartney, his parents owned a pub and Lea played violin in the Staffordshire Youth Orchestra. Translation: he was the Middle class Thatcher was trying so hard to appeal to.
The impression, and since Lea was the bassist it might be wrong, is that Jim wrote the melodies and Noddy the beats and riffs. One serenaded while the other stomped And between the two of them they had 17 consecutive hit singles in the UK, while failing to do any real damange in the States till Quiet Riot covered them. But Slade were the sort of boys Elton John parodied on “Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting”: stuck inside their class structured UK not unlike the punks, who would arrive on the scene just as Slade were living.
They broke up, I mean really broke up (the current Slade have neither Noddy nor Jim, though they do have another original member drummer Dave Hill) in 1992 and their legacy? The sheer consistent brillance of the Holder-Lea songbook has withstood 40 years to be revealed as a lot more than just bubblegum: in 1972 they released Slayed, an album so huge it carried em for two years in a time where getting carried for two years meant something. The songs at the heart of the album “Gudbuy T’Jane”, “Gudbuy Gudbuy” and their greatest moment of all “Mama Weer All Crazee Now” are timeless and also nostalgia buffs at work. I am surprised Titus Andronicus haven’t covered all three songs. It has the thump of a football stadium delivered all out by boys who look like boys dressed in high heels. They were, if you will, the New York Dolls meets Sweet and uglier than both: both a prioduct of advertising and the real deal.
The songs remain really powerful, in the UK they never really went out of style, though Slade stopped having hits, punk didn’t kill them. Slade were too of the people to be resented by punk and their look wasn’t flamboyant it was crazee. They were showstoppers who didn’t actually appear to be real rock stars though they played em in their terrific 1975 movie “Slade On Fire”.
Slade’s biggest hit is a perennial smash and one of the sweetest natured odes to the season ever, “Merry Xmas Everybody”. A little quieter than the “Skweeze me, Pleeze me”, it is a far relation to “Merry Xmas (War Is Over If You Want It)” because when Noddy is singing instead of screaming he sounds like Lennon.
Slade were like the working class manifestation of all those 70s glam bands, T Rex, Suzi Quattro, Gary Glitter: they would evolve sideays into the New Romantics, straight ahead into post punk and 90s rock and roll UK style and to this day in their native land remain completely beloved. Beloved by me as well. Thanks for reminding me Bobby, we are still crazee now.
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