Christmas hit that owes its success to John Lennon | UK | News
The year that Slade took the country by storm was perhaps one of the most turbulent years in British history. As London was rocked by IRA bomb attacks, millions of people went on strike to protest government pay cuts. The oil crisis led to speed limits on motorways being reduced from 50 mph, and by the end of 1973 coal shortages led to power outages and the implementation of the Three Day Week.
But Slade’s voice was coming from every battery-powered radio and every teenager’s bedroom. Cum on Feel the Noize and Sqweeze Me Pleeze Me topped the charts, as did the best-selling Christmas songs Merry Xmas Everyone. The upbeat glam rock sound, with oddly misspelled song titles, was quite a contrast to the chaos unfolding across the country, but flamboyant guitarist Dave Hill believes that’s exactly why they captured the public’s imagination.
“1973 was a very good year,” he reflects. “The country was demoralized with strikes, lack of money and 3-day weeks. But during all this, there was joy in the music we were making. We raised a nation. I think people thought, ‘To hell with all this, we had a difficult year, we had a lot of problems, look at this’. We brought fun and color.”
Incredibly, today, 52 years later, the band is still touring to packed audiences of thousands of excited fans. Dave, who has been with the band since the beginning, has no doubts as to why they still blend in with the crowd after all these years. “There’s something reassuring about Slade’s music,” he says. “Everyone wants that feeling of going back to their happiest times. That doesn’t mean they aren’t happy now, but they will never be the same as when you were young and had the world in front of you.”
In 1973, Slade consisted of lead guitarist Dave, frontman Noddy Holder, drummer Don Powell and bassist Jim Lea. But it was Dave, with his trademark massive platform boots and a big smile on his brightly painted face, who captured the camera’s attention during their frequent appearances on Top of the Pops.
“I would tell Nod and Jim, ‘You write it and I’ll sell it.'” he remembers with a smile. “And I’d show up in gorgeous crazy costumes; I was having the time of my life.”
Unfortunately, all good things eventually come to an end and 62 years after their formation in Wolverhampton in 1963, the band are about to embark on their final tour. Shows begin in Hastings and Margate next month, with further dates to follow across the country.
“I’m not going to stop doing concerts or festivals, I’m just stopping touring,” Dave explains. “The joy hasn’t gone away. But I’m approaching 80, and although realistically I don’t feel old at all, being on stage is quite physical, so I don’t want to do back-to-back shows anymore.”
No matter how nostalgic the concerts were, the final tour was unfortunately not enough to bring the four original bandmates together again. Dave is still good friends with Noddy, who was the first person to leave Slade in 1992, but he no longer has contact with Don and Jim.
“There’s no chance of the four of us getting together and performing again,” he says honestly. “It wasn’t possible years ago, and it’s definitely not possible now. I don’t want to go into the reasons why people aren’t with me. There are so many reasons. Everybody’s changed, everybody’s doing something different.”
“I can’t see Jim and Don. Jim lives pretty close to me and makes his own music. Don married a Danish girl and has a few bands and he does his own thing. But Nod and I have always been extremely close; we’ve been friends for life. I realized that when he retired from music. But I was only 40 and had to move on. I was still young and had three kids.”
Dave chats from the music room via zoom, as an impressive number of guitars are displayed on the walls behind him – 15 at last count, including the original electric guitar that created the unmistakable Slade sound.
“It was 1967 and our manager told me to get a better guitar. He said I wasn’t going to get anywhere with the guitar I had,” Dave recalls. “I took the train to London and saw this guitar in the window of a shop on Shaftesbury Avenue. I told them I was going to go home and ask my dad for money. They put it away for me and my dad parked his car outside the shop the next day and bought it for me. And that guitar sound is Slade’s. I have a very strong, loud style in Slade songs; it has a lot to do with the boldness of the music.”
Dave still lives in Wolverhampton with his wife of over 50 years, Jan, whom he met before the band rose to fame. The couple have three children and six grandchildren who appreciate Slade’s music. “My nine-year-old grandson says to Alexa: ‘Play Grandpa’s Christmas song,’ Dave laughs. “And Alexa says, ‘Excuse me? What do you want to say?'”
While the band has amassed 21 Top 20 records, including My Friend Stan, Mama Weer All Crazee Now and Far Far Away, Merry Xmas Everyone remains the most played song of all their songs. But Dave says it was only thanks to John Lennon that it was recorded in the first place. In the summer of 1973, Slade found himself in New York on a few days’ leave.
“The record company wanted us to release a Christmas song. Noddy and Jim had written it but I hadn’t even heard it at this stage,” he says. “Our manager said he would meet with John Lennon, who was in the studio. John said, ‘I can give you studio time, I’ll leave my album for now and I can come back.’ We went to the studio, learned the song and recorded it within a week.”
Released in December of the same year, it became their sixth number one, remaining at the top until January and remaining in the Top 50 for nine weeks. The song charted every year in the early 1980s and every year since 1998 and 2006. “I was really struck by the impact of this record,” says Dave. “We once played at the Reading Festival in the middle of summer. We didn’t plan on singing, but 40,000 people started screaming!”
Life wasn’t always easy for Dave. He suffered bouts of depression and had to take time off work for three months in 2010 after suffering a stroke on stage in front of 8,000 people in Germany.
But at 79, he’s still as enthusiastic and happy as the young guitarist roaming the Top of the Pops stage, and he’s still breaking new ground; next year he releases his debut solo album, poignantly produced by Noddy Holder’s son Django. In the meantime, he’ll give himself a little moment of reflection when he takes to the stage alongside his new Slade bandmates John Berry, Russell Keefe and Alex Bines during his farewell tour next month.
“I’ll go up on stage and think to myself: ‘Here’s a kid who’s doing really bad at school and is kind of a loner; here’s a kid who doesn’t have a girlfriend. I had teeth and big ears, and I was conscious of that, and I was wondering what I was going to do with my life,'” he says. “But here I am, 79 years old, continuing to perform. In those fun moments on stage, I feel so much younger in my mind. Very few people in their lives stand in front of 80,000 people and don’t know that the majority of that audience is moved by your music. People come up to me and say, ‘Thank you for making my youth wonderful.’ That’s a legacy.”
Slade’s final tour begins in Hastings on 28 November. For tickets and dates visit davehillslade.com/tour-dates
