Slade

Although Slade never secured a firm foothold among listeners worldwide, where they were frequently dismissed as sounding excessively British, the quartet ignited widespread fervor across Britain in the early 1970s through their rousing style of glam rock. Between 1971 and 1974 they amassed eleven Top Five singles, five of which reached the summit of the charts. The lineup consisted of vocalist and guitarist Noddy Holder, born Neville Holder on June 15, 1946, in Walsall, West Midlands, England; guitarist Dave Hill, born April 4, 1946, in Fleet Castle, Devon, England; bassist Jimmy Lea, born June 14, 1949, in Wolverhampton, West Midlands, England; and drummer Don Powell, born September 10, 1946, in Bilston, West Midlands, England. Originally assembled in spring 1966 as the In-Be-Tweens, the musicians performed regularly with a blend of soul and rock material, yet apart from one little-known single, “You Better Run,” written by future Runaways svengali Kim Fowley, they produced no further recordings at the time.

By the close of the decade the band had adopted the name Ambrose Slade and secured a contract with the Fontana label. Shortly afterward the four musicians aligned with former Animals bassist turned manager Chas Chandler, who had discovered Jimi Hendrix a few years earlier. Chandler urged them to shorten their name to Slade and adopt a skinhead image featuring Dr. Martin boots and shaved heads as a promotional device. After the release of two early albums that contained few original compositions, 1969’s Beginnings and 1970’s Play It Loud, the group began composing their own material, grew their hair, and embraced the emerging glam aesthetic shared by fellow British acts David Bowie and T. Rex. The shift yielded immediate results in 1971 with the number 16 U.K. single “Get Down and Get With It,” which inaugurated a run of memorable hits that established Slade as one of Britain’s premier party bands.

Another signature tactic involved deliberately misspelled song titles, illustrated by such releases as “Coz I Luv You,” “Look Wot You Dun,” “Take Me Bak ’Ome,” “Mama Weer All Crazee Now,” “Gudbuy t’Jane,” “Cum on Feel the Noize,” “Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me,” and “Merry Xmas Everybody,” the last of which reappeared on the charts each holiday season for years. Repeated efforts to break into the American market proved unsuccessful, even though the track listings of their British and U.S. albums often diverged, and such records as Slade Alive! and Slayed? remain widely regarded among the finest documents of the glam era.

The band continued to register additional domestic hits with properly spelled titles including “My Friend Stan,” “Everyday,” “Bangin’ Man,” “Far Far Away,” “How Does It Feel,” and “In for a Penny.” Yet as glam rock receded and punk surfaced in the mid-1970s, the stream of successes subsided. Undeterred by shifting tastes, Slade persisted with tours and new releases; the title of their 1977 album Whatever Happened to Slade? demonstrated that their sense of humor endured despite diminished chart fortunes. A loyal audience remained, and their acclaimed performance at the 1980 Reading Festival revived interest at home, producing the first substantial hits in six years with 1981’s “We’ll Bring the House Down” and “Lock Up Your Daughters.”

Around the same period Slade gained renewed attention in the United States when the American pop-metal band Quiet Riot scored a major success with a cover of “Cum on Feel the Noize” in 1983, which in turn propelled Slade’s 1984 album Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply—issued a year earlier in Britain as The Amazing Kamikaze Syndrome—onto the charts. Further American exposure arrived via MTV and radio play for “Run Runaway” and “My Oh My.” Holder and Lea also ventured into production, overseeing Girlschool’s 1983 album Play Dirty. Subsequent releases such as Rogues Gallery and another Quiet Riot cover of “Mama Weer All Crazee Now” failed to sustain either the American foothold or the revived British interest, and Slade gradually receded from view without another resurgence. In the 1990s a reduced lineup operating as Slade II emerged without Holder or Lea, while Holder established himself as a familiar British television personality and host of a 1970s rock radio program. The 1997 compilation Feel the Noize: The Very Best of Slade, later reissued simply as Greatest Hits, became a popular retrospective in England.