The Slade Story by George Tremlett
The cover is a good indicator, much of the content being a collection of music press interviews with some rushed research. Tremlett claims to have 'kept files on the group... since 1969' but his three year project is full of inaccuracies. It was, however, the first popular attempt at a biography on Slade, certainly the first in a book format to my knowledge, and is therefore worthy as a career landmark.
REMEMBER - THIS page of THIS site is actually a book full of misinformation. The actual history surrounds this post. Ahh, what the heck, enjoy, read the book!
April 1975
REMEMBER - THIS page of THIS site is actually a book full of misinformation. The actual history surrounds this post. Ahh, what the heck, enjoy, read the book!
April 1975
In 1961 he moved to London and became a freelance· writer, working part-time for The New Musical Express. He has since been London correspondent for TV and pop music magazines in Japan, Holland, Sweden, the United States, Belgium, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Finland. In this he is partnered by his wife, Jane. They also contribute to most major British teenage magazines.
Outside pop music journalism, George Tremlett pursues a political career as a member of the Greater London Council. For the past twelve years he has also been a councillor in Richmond-upon- Thames.
Also by George Tremlett
THE DAVID BOWIE STORY
THE OSMOND STORY
THE GARY GLITTER STORY
THE DAVID ESSEX STORY
THE ROLLING STONES STORY
THE MARC BOLAN STORY
THE WHO
George Tremlett
Futura Publications Limited
A Futura Book
First published in Great Britain in 1975
by Futura Publications Limited
by Futura Publications Limited
Copyright © George Tremlett 1975
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by ,way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being' imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN 0 8600 7193 6
Printed in Great Britain by
Cox & Wyman Ltd,
London, Reading and Fakenham
Acknowledgements
This book is based on my own interviews and those of my wife Jane with Noddy Holder, Dave Hill, Jim Lea and Don Powell over a period of three years, but where I have supplemented this with quotes from other sources I have in every case duly acknowledged this in the text.
CHAPTER ONE
In a few years' time we may all be saying that Slade are the most important rock group to have emerged since The Beatles. I use the cautious word 'may' because so much of their promise is as yet unfulfilled because their career is developing slowly and because there have been so many other likely contenders for international super-stardom in recent years who have burned themselves out before completing the course. Even though' Slade have had twelve hit singles in Britain in three years (seven of them reaching the Number One position), the group have still to make the transition from being a working band in the United States to one of the major album-sellers, for, as every ambitious pub band knows, that's where the money is; in today's high cost music business a group just has to make that break-through.
But if anyone can do it, I really do believe that Slade can.
They are already one of the top performing bands in Britain, with a remarkably loyal audience. They have a large following throughout Europe and Australasia, and their first four tours of the United States have brought them up from the smaller ballrooms in which they first appeared there to the medium-size venues, giving them that wide base upon which a well-managed group can build. And in Chas Chandler, Slade do have superlative management; he was after all a musician himself in the Sixties as bass player with The Animals, who were the third British band to break through in the States, and when they split up he discovered and then launched Jimi Hendrix. But more important than that, Slade have the most precious gift of all, original talent. The song writing of Noddy Holder and Jim Lea has those rare qualities of simplicity and melody.
Just. like Lennon and McCartney, they 'are producing songs that will long out-live today's trends in rock music - songs that can easily be adapted to orchestra, string quartet or dance band because they do have those two basic qualities. And then, of course, like so many groups that have emerged in the Seventies, Slade are already much more skilled as musicians than were so many of the first British rock generation, who sometimes found themselves with nit records before they could even play their instruments.
Yet still I am cautious in predicting their future - because so much depends on the success they eventually achieve in America. That is where more than half the world's records are bought every year, followed by Germany and Japan with Britain down in fourth place. The simple reality is that groups now have to succeed in the States; the costs of maintaining a position of superstardom - touring, recording, stage equipment and the whole business of imagery - are now so vast that they more than swallow the income that any group can earn just from success in Britain.
Slade could do it - they have the originality, the stamina, the management and that other intangible quality, credibility.
For it really is true today as ever it was in the days of The Beatles that no band really happens and sustains its success without wholly being what it appears to be - and Slade really are what they seem to be, a working class rock band, with roots set as firmly in the industrial Midlands as John, Paul, George and Ringo had theirs in the equally grimy suburbs of Merseyside.
This is important if one is to understand the way Slade's career is slowly building, the way in which their audience has remained so faithful, for, as detailed in my other biographies in this series, pop music is as thoroughly working class in its origins in this country as dog racing, soccer, fish and chips and Mitchells and Butler's Mild. It is so much a truism that one can easily overlook it - and at first the success of such sparkling sons of smart suburbia as Mick Jagger or the wave of heavy bands of the late Sixties tends to belie it. But then you ask yourself what have they contributed to rock music beyond an ability to improve on other people's ideas, and the answer you get is very little.
members with a steady flow of information on the group. In my view, the significance of this in Slade's career build-up cannot be under-estimated, for whereas many managers in recent years have been hiving off the fan clubs to outside commercial operations in return for a fee, in this case, Chas Chandler shrewdly keeps personal control of this vital means of assessing Slade's popularity, so that in effect his finger is constantly on the pulse of Slade's audience.
So many other managers have neglected their group's fan clubs - I even know of one very well known fan club that charges members an annual fee of seventy-five pence, sends them printed material and a badge that has cost in total eight pence, retaining a profit on each member of sixty-seven pence. This is an astonishingly shortsighted policy, one which may eventually destroy not just the club but the artiste - for an audience can be fickle, and disillusion spreads like measles.
On the other hand, the converse can be true; happiness is also infectious. And I believe that this is what is being achieved for Slade by the way Chas Chandler insists that their club is run.
For a start, all its 20,000 members know in advance when the next single or LP is to be released - and that as an immediate sale is enough to get a single moving in the shops. More than that, if only a tenth of the members write into the radio stations and ask for the record to be played Slade have a good lobby working for them!
'Just in postage alone, we spend twenty one pence a year per member - and then there's the printing costs on top of that,' the club's secretary told me. 'So you can see the fans are being treated very fairly. No-one is trying to make a profit out of them, and if it wasn't for the T-shirts, posters and other things that we sell the club would be running at a loss.'
In addition to this, Slade put so much effort and finance into their stage tours and keep the ticket prices reasonably low that very little profit is made from the fans who are anxious to see them live. Indeed, as recently as the spring of 1974 when Slade made a major nation-wide tour of Britain, visiting most of the larger provincial venues and packing everyone, they made hardly any profit at all.
You may think this sounds like madness, But remember Gary Glitter has a very similar policy; as he said when interviewed for my biography of him in this series, it's the royalties from the record sales that provide the profit margin!
And this, I believe, is how Slade and manager Chas Chandler are working. It is the essence of good management, for just like Gary Glitter they are appealing to young teenagers with limited pocket money, people who respond quickly when they recognize genuine affection in an artiste - which Slade have. In each live show, they establish a relationship with their fans, making it plain that they are enjoying themselves, with Noddy's ribald humour breaking through, with the audience being invited to sing along on some numbers (which they always do) and gifts being constantly showered on the stage. 'It's amazing the stuff we get,' says Noddy Holder. 'They give us gold watches, rings, sweaters, socks - and I never know how they can afford it.' And like Don, Dave and Jim, he wears and uses every gift, making them part of his everyday life - which the fans know.
legend has it that most of their time there was spent paying off a hotel bill after the management had impounded their instruments!
By the time their next Fontana single was released on October 24th, the 'Ambrose' had disappeared - and so had most of their hair!
Slade were now Britain's first skinhead group - 'allegedly discovered in a Wolverhampton club complete with boots, jeans and braces, looking remarkably surly at photographers, and prepared for instant 'bovver'. Even funnier, in retrospect, was the fact that somehow in the Bahamas they had lost several years of their life - indeed, according to the next batch of press releases one member of the group was either four or five years younger than he had been the previous May.
And when it was pointed out to them that they had never seemed particularly skinhead in hairy days gone by, Dave Hill ingeniously explained that it had been so hot in the Bahamas that they had all decided to shorten their hair. Was it just an attempt to rip off the skinheads? Of course not, said Slade, with commendably straight faces.
living room, thumping away at my old Spanish guitar and then Jim came up later with a verse melody.. ."
(S-TSS-B at the bottom of page 21?)
(S-TSS-B at the bottom of page 21?)
And from that one evening was born the song writing partnership of Noddy Holder and Jim Lea; that night's work produced Slade's next single and their first Number one hit, 'Cos I Luv You', using for the first time the fractured spellings that were to become another of their hallmarks. Since that evening, all Slade's singles have been composed by Holder and Lea and the royalties have all stayed within the group. But you would never have known it, for Chas Chandler, ever savings-conscious, warned them of many other hit groups in the past who had come out of the business with barely a few pounds to their name - and on his advice they continued to live quietly, staying at the cheaper hotels, ploughing such money as they did earn back into the group on better equipment and stage clothes.
Noddy was born was, he says, 'a slum, with rows of houses back to back, just like the opening shots of "Coronation Street" ... I can remember it very clearly, although I was only five years old when the Council decided to demolish the area, and re-housed us on a new estate. I can't go back there now and see the house where I was born, because they pulled down all the streets like that and put up blocks of flats, but I can picture it now - the water coming down the walls because it was so damp, and having to share a loo in the yard at the back with three other families, the houses rose in terraces up a hillside, just row after row, with backyards in between, and not a tree in sight, and smoke hanging down over the roof tops.'
The area where his family was re-housed was an estate close to the famous 'spaghetti junction' - a block of flats opposite a pub. It was a happy but uneventful childhood, highlighted by things like getting his first bike and then later his first guitar. Money was not plentiful, but his parents did what they could, taking him away on holiday, saving up for those special Christmas and birthday gifts.
'When I was about ten, Dad took us away to Margate, and that was fantastic,' Noddy once told me. 'When you live in the Midlands, to be able to go to the seaside is a tremendous thrill, and we were lucky - it was a good summer, very sunny, and we were able ~o go down on the beach every day, splashing about in the sea and looking far crabs ... one night as a special treat my father took us to a summer show at the local theatre; I can't remember who we saw - it may have been Cliff Richard, Tommy Steele or Marty Wilde, because it was around that time - and I can remember just sitting there in the theatre, looking up there at the stage, with all the lights shining on the stage, so excited by it all, and never thinking for a moment that I might be up there myself one day ... well, the idea may have crossed my mind as a sort of dream - but I never really thought that it could happen to me, not then I didn't.'
That year, he passed his eleven-plus examination, going on to what is now the G.C.E. (General Certificate of Education) stream at the T. P. Riley comprehensive school in Bloxwich, between Walsall and Birmingham. 'For the first three years or so I worked pretty hard,' he says, adding that he was particularly interested in geography, geology and biology and was thinking quite seriously at that stage of going on either to a university or to a training college so that he could begin a career as a schoolteacher. But then music intervened.
secret ingredient, stamina.
“The groups that stick together are the ones that make it, like The Who.” he told me, leaving it unsaid that this was what had kept Slade going. He said something similar to Melody Maker: 'We never thought of packing up. We had to stick at it because we knew the bad times would turn into good times sooner or later. It would never have worked if we had brought anybody else in. The fact that four of us have stuck together has brought us through. Look at The Who. They've stuck together, through the good and the bad, but if one of them had to leave they would flop out. Groups that stick together are the ones that make it.'
The stories that survive about Slade in those early days are very few; when I have tried to persuade Holder, Hill or Lea to produce a few anecdotes I have usually been met with a blank stare (Powell is usually a little more forthcoming) - possibly, I suspect, because the group has been going rather longer than is generally believed. Their road manager Graham Swinnerton (known within the group as 'Swin'), who has been with them since the very beginning, recalled their first northern appearance as the 'N Betweens in an interview with the New Musical Express: 'It was a working men's club in Nottingham, and they only managed to get through a few choruses of "My Girl', before they got booed off because of the volume and the manager came on and announced:
"Committee insisted on 'aving Wolverhampton group, and now we've 'ad 'em so we can send 'em back 'ome!"
Noddy Holder has also recalled, this time in an interview with Petticoat, that the group were booked as support band to Cream when they were just starting (which would have been either late 1966 or early 1967): 'We were just four young kids with a local following in the Black Country. We played dates in the area as the support band to new names like the Cream. I remember one gig at the. City Hall where we played with a local group called Listen who had as their lead vocalist a certain Robert Plant. At that time I used to help out Robert and the band by getting my old man to lend them his window cleaning van when their transport broke down. Anyway we were all on the same bill as the Cream that night, who apart from Clapton were unknown. Robert used to like to move about the stage a lot even in those days before he joined Led Zeppelin. Unfortunately Ginger Baker had a huge drum kit which was spread all over the stage - drums everywhere - I remember Robert very timidly going up to Ginger and asking him if he would mind moving some of his kit off the stage ... '
CHAPTER FOUR
Just before Noddy Holder joined the 'N Betweens, Dave Hill and Don Powell had decided to reorganize the group and had advertised in the local Wolverhampton evening paper for a bass guitarist. Jim Lea had spotted their advertisement, and turned up to the audition in a local hall to find what seemed like a hundred other teenagers, all waiting to show what they could do. 'That was understandable because the 'N Betweens were regarded as the top group in the area - they were my idols at the time,' says Jim, who felt a little nervous and unsure of himself as he looked around the room and saw that nearly everyone else had their own amplification equipment with them.
the grand piano he has brought for his home in Wolverhampton. Ever since he first turned to bass guitar and pop music at the age of thirteen, even though his parents often expressed considerable doubt in those days - it would be an exaggeration to call this a sense of destiny - but equally Jim Lea knew just where he wanted to go and what he wanted to achieve. And having had that original training ill violin has proved a considerable asset - most notably on Slade's second hit record 'Cos I Luv You', which he wrote with Holder, which featured violin as a basic group instrument, and which he still says he believes to be one of their better numbers.
Being able .to write music and having this basic classical training can also be a drawback, he says; it can make it more, difficult for a would-be songwriter to develop his own style. 'I used to write quite complicated stuff for the group with harmonies and arrangements, until Nod and I put our heads together,' he told Keith Altham in the New Musical Express. 'After listening and playing classical music I've come to the conclusion that really "simplicity" is what it's all about. The essence of really communicable music is in its simplicity things that get into you; head right away. You ask most people what they like about classical music and they'll immediately relate to the more popular pieces. Listen to Tchaikovsky's B Flat Concerto and you realize how simple the really good music is. The appeal in things like Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade" was its amazing simplicity. The really heavy composers like Brahms and Beethoven knew all about the effectiveness and importance of keeping it simple ... Beethoven was a pop writer - he wrote for the masses ... my musical training has been useful in that it gives me the ability to retain tunes almost at once - just after one hearing, when maybe the others might forget it. But the most valuable things I pick up by ear. It was really The Beatles who turned me off just studying and playing music by numbers, onto working things out for myself.. '
Both in his approach to work and in his everyday attitudes, Jim Lea seems more settled than the other members of the group and it was really no surprise when h~ became the first to buy a home of his own and then, immediately afterwards, the first to marry. His wife, formerly Louise Ganner, had worked as a soft furnishing seamstress before their wedding on March 19th, 1973, and their home is a five-bedroomed mock Tudor house on the outskirts of Wolverhampton, named 'Redroofs'.
Louise is the only girlfriend that Jim Lea has ever had. 'Until I was thirteen, all my time was spent learning violin,' he explains. 'I took that very seriously because I was very keen at that time to become a good violinist... then after that, when I formed Nick and the Axemen, pop music took up all my time so that I never really had time to think much about girls. I always thought girls were a waste of time, and as far as I was concerned I'd never had reason to change my mind ... my family weren't expecting me to become a violinist. They thought I'd probably go into advertising as a commercial artist, because Art was my best subject at school.
'One day at school I went into another classroom to get a pot of white paint, and Louise was already in there - and when we were alone she asked me if I'd go out with her on a date. I did, and that was, how we started - I've never had another girlfriend. I've never chatted a girl up in my life, and wouldn't know where to start. I've always been much too shy.'
Their home now is a large suburban house, built somewhere around the end of the First World War, maybe a year or two later. 'When I first went to look at it, I got lost because the upstairs is very complicated 'With different corridors, and I couldn't remember which room I had seen and which I hadn't,' said Lea.
There's a tall hedge to guard his privacy, and a large garden.
bass players and Jim joined.'
And so, he realized what he wanted to do, and, once Dave discovered what pop music could do for him - and the sense of fulfilment it gave him - he never wanted to do anything else. He did not return to that office job, and never looked for another. 'I don't think I've got any friends outside the music business,' he says now. 'That's funny, really ... at school, I was always very ambitious. I wanted to get on. I wanted to be successful, but the biggest problem of all was knowing how to get started ... I always used to do everything wrong when I was at school, and that sort of became part of me. I wanted to be different to the other kids. I wanted to be successful was ambitious, and I didn't want to follow other people ... now I'm very anxious that I shouldn't lose touch with my roots. I come from a working class background, having been brought up in a council house. With all the travelling, excitement and adventure in our lives now, it would be very easy to get blasé about all that ... but none of us have. Mind you, I'm making no secret of the fact that I want to be as successful and as famous as I can, but I never want to lose that contact with my family and my roots ... I think you have to try to find a good balance for yourself, and then that way you have a happy life.'
Like so many of the more successful artistes in the music business, he has an understanding with the group's fans; something that goes deeper than just a response between musician and audience. And though, inevitably, there are now some restrictions on his freedom - because it is almost impossible for any member of Slade to walk down a street without being mobbed - Dave Hill appears to have no regrets. He enjoys his fame to worry too much about its implications.
told me. 'Now that we've done that we are working harder than ever before ... and America is a challenge to us because they've never seen another group quite like us. Our records are starting to sell there, and I'm convinced that if we work at it we'll break through there just as we have here ... already, we can pull in audiences of up to 5,000 whereas we were only drawing about a thousand when we first started in the States ... because we work so hard, I think we're entitled to everything we've got. I'd say the same to anyone. If there is something you want to do, then go ahead and try - and if you work hard you'll be successful. And that's one of the best feelings there is. The feeling that you have done it all on your own.'
CHAPTER SIX
Don Powell has always seemed to me to be the least complicated member of Slade but that is not an unusual characteristic of drummers. In later years they often tend to become musically frustrated because there is just no way that you can compose songs sitting at a drum kit. And there does come a time in most musicians' lives when they feel that they would like to start writing material of their own. For Powell, the moment has already arrived. 'I'm thinking of learning to play the guitar,' he told me quite recently.
The first instrument he tried to play was the bugle, which he was offered on joining the Boy Scouts at the age of eleven. 'I wanted to learn the drums as soon as I saw the drum-kit they had in the Scout hut, but I was told I would have to learn the bugle first,' he told me. 'I did try, standing there at the back of the hut, puffing out my cheeks, but the bugle just didn't make a sound ... perhaps I didn't blow it right, I don't know - but in the end they let me play drums after all.'
working than many musicians seem to; you never hear Don Powell complaining about the pace at which Slade have to work, the travelling they have to do, the hours they spend rehearsing or recording. 'Since I've been with Slade, I've travelled most of the world,' he told me. 'We've" seen most parts of the States, and because we're not all that big over there yet we've been able to actually see the places we've visited properly without being confined to our hotel rooms - the thing that shook me about New York was a little detail, seeing the taxis with glass that was so thick that it was bullet-proof - you pay the driver through a slot so that he is never exposed to the passenger ... that really made me think about New York ...
'I don't think we've changed at all. We have a great relationship within the group, and when we go back home we may not see each other for a few days - and then one of us will phone the other up and we'll meet up for a drink just like any other group of mates... but the problems come because we're able to travel so much more than other people. It's only people who have known us for a very long time who can accept that... with people that we don't know very deeply it creates a gulf. If I say that the previous night I was on Sunset Strip, they just can't adjust to that - because Sunset Strip is somewhere they would only see on TV ... but that's just the way we live now. It has happened so gradually that all the travelling and visiting different countries is just part of our life, and it's not fantastic to us - though it is to other people, and that's why I think my relationship with other people is changing, though I don't really want it to.'
'I don't think we've changed at all. We have a great relationship within the group, and when we go back home we may not see each other for a few days - and then one of us will phone the other up and we'll meet up for a drink just like any other group of mates... but the problems come because we're able to travel so much more than other people. It's only people who have known us for a very long time who can accept that... with people that we don't know very deeply it creates a gulf. If I say that the previous night I was on Sunset Strip, they just can't adjust to that - because Sunset Strip is somewhere they would only see on TV ... but that's just the way we live now. It has happened so gradually that all the travelling and visiting different countries is just part of our life, and it's not fantastic to us - though it is to other people, and that's why I think my relationship with other people is changing, though I don't really want it to.'
CHAPTER SEVEN
Before Chas Chandler came into their lives, Noddy Holder, Jim Lea, Dave Hill and Don Powell had already spent three years together; had already released one record as the 'N Betweens, 'You Better Run', and had recorded with Jack Baverstock at Fontana as Ambrose Slade.
to use.
And apart from the use of violin, the sound on that single became identified with Slade over the next two years - it was not until the end of 1973 and early in 1974 that their melodies became more dominant.
Over those two years, Slade's singles were superficially very much alike, often noticeably built around Jim Lea's bass riffs - or hooks' as Noddy Holder calls them. Like Marc Bolan with his run of hit singles over the same period, they found a formula and stuck to it - and kept on sticking to it even after Bolan had moved on into more self-indulgent forms of music.
By the end of 1973, they had had seven Number one hit singles in just on two years - and in the twenty year history of the British pop music business, only Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones have had as many number one hits as that.
Musically, Lea and Holder have very different personal tastes and backgrounds as we have seen in the separate chapters
showing how each member came into the group; Lea prefers the more melodic music of Nilsson, Buddy Holly, Paul McCartney, Carole King, Neil Young, Burt Bacharach and the lighter works of such classical composers as Tchaikovsky, Chopin and Brahms - whereas Noddy Holder likes soul music and basic rock 'n' roll ranging over Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, The Four Tops and other Tamla Motown groups through to Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and, of course, The Beatles and Simon
and GarfunkeI. There seems little doubt, however, that the breadth of music that they encompass between them is reflected in the style Holder and Lea have developed between them; most songwriters are derivative before developing a style of their own.
At first, it was easy to be deceived by the apparent repetitiveness of Slade's singles; they seemed so alike in formula - even down to the trick of mis-spelling each title and then reversing letters in words for typographic effect. But personally, I believe their style was taking shape faster than the critics realized - and by the time they released the 'Old New Borrowed and Blue' album in February 1974, it had become very accomplished.
Noddy Holder admitted to me on one occasion that some of their song titles had embarrassed them. It was just as they were releasing 'Cum On Feel The Noize'. 'I feel silly mentioning the title,' he said. 'I've always felt that our titles are a bit silly. We all felt' that when we recorded "Mama Weer All Crazee Now", and then after a few weeks we get used to that title and don't mind it quite so much.
With most of the songs Slade have recorded, the basic ideas have still originated with Jim Lea.
one album overseas '''Cos I Luv You" which we didn't issue in Britain because it was all singles that had already been hits here for us, and we thought it was more than likely that most of our fans would already have those numbers in their record collections.'
As they talk about their work, it all sounds so simple because Slade do have this no-nonsense approach; the same attitude to working in the music business that their manager Chas Chandler has always had, though Jim Lea admits that he always gets that feeling of tingling excitement every time, he knows he has the idea for another song.
'It's a tremendous thrill to know that you've done it again,' he says. 'After "Cos I Luv You", the next one, "Look Wot You Dun", came as we were travelling in the car and by then I had all sorts of ideas, just bits of melodies, turning over in my head. Then when we wrote the third one, "Take Me Bak Home", I just thought, "Strewth - we've got another song!" I just thought of those few words, sang over that hook to the others - and we knew we'd done it again.
'Now, they always start the same way. One of us gets just a few words like that which form the hook, and we just say, "Listen to this" - and then away we go.'
And having established this as a pattern, Jim Lea feels that he would now like to develop his ideas even further. Already school orchestras are starting to order Slade's sheet music. The melodies are so simple that they adapt easily even to a brass band. The German orchestra leader, James Last, has already recorded several of their numbers with a full studio orchestra. And it is partly this that is fascinating Lea. 'I'm starting to get very into musical arrangements,' he said. 'I can read and write music, and play piano and violin as well as bass, and I've been thinking just lately that I'd like to write an orchestral piece myself, writing parts for all the different sections of the orchestra. Several people have suggested that I should do something like that, and I'm beginning to feel that I could do it....'
CHAPTER NINE
Between the time of their first hit single, 'Get Down and Get With It', and the release of their first group-written hit, 'Cos I Luv You', Slade changed - visibly as well as musically. By then Chas Chandler had already been managing the group for two years, and he says now that he will never be able to understand why it took as long as it did for the group to make their breakthrough.
off. Over 25,000 Melbournites stood for six hours in pouring rain and waited for Slade. And when they appeared the crowd went berserk. Wherever Slade have appeared in Australia - Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth - hail, rain or shine they have Slayed Australian audiences. It took a power strike in Canberra to stop a performance.' Jim Lea commented: 'We went there not knowing what it would be like, in much the same way as we arrived in America. And when we got there we discovered that "Slade Alive" was the biggest selling Australian album since "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". And while we were there our record company released "Slayed" which was awarded a Gold Disc a week after release ... during our stage act we had to do the old favourites because they are behind us on releases, but it was nice to do the old ones again. We had a few sound problems but we got across OK.'
(S-TSS-E at the bottom of page 89?)
He had woken up in the hospital's intensive care unit after being unconscious for six days to find that he was lying in bed with five broken ribs, two broken ankles, a gash in his head. 'One of my wrists had snapped, and that was in plaster, strapped to my body ... and there were tubes up my nose and in my arms ... and my whole body was black and blue. It was four o'clock in the morning when I woke up again for the first time,' he said.
'I couldn't remember anything about the accident, but I heard afterwards that by a strange coincidence the guy who found the car after the accident had recognized me. He knew Jim Lea, so he phoned Jim up and said: "Can you give me Don Powell's phone number?" - and he slammed down the phone. Then he rang my parents, and my brother Derek and my brother-in-law Gerald went round to the hospital where they were told that they didn't expect me to last the night out . . . " they had to drill into my head to let the pressure out ... my Mum was in bed for weeks with tranquillizers.'
He said he could not remember anything about the evening he had spent with Angela. ~My father told me what had happened ... I could remember nothing about it. There I was, lying in bed, not knowing why I was in hospital, though I went to the toilet one day and saw the scar on my head, but I still didn't know why I was there ... I still have problems now with my memory.'
I reminded him that we had had that long conversation in the Holiday Inn at Swiss Cottage the day before the Earls Court concert, and his face lit up. 'Yes ... that's right ... I think I can remember that. Your wife was with you, wasn't she?' he said.
'I couldn't remember anything about Earls Court at all until I saw the film that had been made of the concert ... American TV wanted a couple of numbers from the film, and there were two shots that were the first I could remember... but my memory is a problem now. Before I go to bed at night I have to write things down just in case I forget something that I'm thinking about ... I know when I woke up after being unconscious, one of the nurses came over to the bed and I asked her what had happened, and she said I had been in a car accident, and I thought it must have been an accident with the rest of the group. Then they came to see me in hospital, and I couldn't work that out.
18,000 - and when something like that happens you feel that all your previous tours have been worth it. On the last tour, we did two weeks with Brownsville Station - and that was a really happy tour for us because we felt we were making progress all the time, though I'm afraid I never feel very relaxed in the States. In one hotel we stayed in, there was a notice in every room saying: "MAKE SURE YOUR ROOM IS LOCKED BEFORE YOU GO TO BED. IF SOMEONE KNOCKS MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHO IT IS BEFORE YOU OPEN THE DOOR." Seeing notices like that brings you up with a jolt because it makes you realize that America is every bit as violent as everyone says it is, and that something could happen to you, just staying in your hotel room.
'In New York, they actually advise you not to leave the hotel and go down town on your own. While we were staying there, we went out into Central Park to pose for some publicity photos, and some Negroes came running past us, shouting and screaming, and we gathered that a fight had broken out just behind us.
'One night, I was lying in bed in my hotel and there was a knock at the door. I asked who it was, and a man's voice answered, saying he was a detective. I opened the door and asked to see his credentials - and he just pointed at his gun! Apparently, there were two girls missing from home and he was just going from room to room in the hotel because he'd heard they might be there.
'Coming from England, where you never see a policeman carrying guns, that's something you find very hard to accept. I've noticed that with other American policemen; they make a point of showing you their guns just so that you know they're armed.'
Among the cities where they received a particularly good response were Dallas (where they visited the street where President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963), New Jersey, Memphis (where they travelled out in a hired car to see Elvis Presley's mansion), Seattle and Louisville - but the part of the States where they all say that they felt most at home was on the West Coast. 'The East and West Coasts are like two different countries,' Dave Hill told me. 'In New York on the East they're always hustling, bustling, driving fast down the streets, or hurrying down the sidewalks - but on the West Coast, around San Francisco and Los Angeles, people are slower, much more friendly, more easy-going.' The one place that Noddy Holder had long been hoping to visit was Los Angeles 'because I'd always had this ambition to go there ever since I was a kid, and used to watch "77 Sunset Strip" and "Hawaii 50" on TV. I'd always thought Hollywood and Los Angeles were fantastic dream places, but when we got there and went to see the Strip I found it was dirty and rather crummy, a bit like Soho - and that was rather a let-down.'
Their American audience is mostly a young one, and Dave Hill explained to the New Musical Express: 'Basically the kids like us because we're with them. Kids feel they already know you from little things they read in the papers. It's been proven that there are people like us everywhere: France, Belgium, Germany, Sweden. If those countries can get our humour, then America can, too ... we can do a lot for the morale of music here (in the States). It needs a kick, something fresh and new.' In a later interview with the same paper, Hill said: 'When we first came we were playing to twenty-eight-year-olds, which is ridiculous, a right drag ... on downers, all zonked out, beards and hair down their shoulders. We tried to get them going but it was a dead loss. But as the tours have gone on it's sifting down all the time and getting younger and younger... we hated it the first time. It was difficult to relate to but we're OK now because we can relate and relax ... it's a lot of hard work touring America but it can also be a lot of fun.'
But, even though Slade switched American labels in 1973 from Polydor to Warner Brothers expecting this would bring them the extra promotion Chas Chandler felt the group needed in the States, they are still a long way off playing Madison Square Gardens in New York, which is their ambition just as it has been so many other British groups. And when asked, Chas Chandler explains: 'We like to, do it slowly, and build properly,' And that is what Slade feel they are doing.
'You see, we're something quite new for American audiences,' Jim Lea told me. 'We're not another Beatles, another Rolling Stones or another Who - we're the first Slade. Our style is different to all those other groups, and that means it's going to take time for audiences over there to adapt to us. But we'll get there in the end. You just wait and see.'
CHAPTER TWELVE
however different each melody may be. And this is their strength.
THE SLADE CHRONOLOGY
This chronological record of Slade's career is culled from the files I have kept on the group since 1969:
U.K.40p - AUSTRALIA $1.50 - NEW ZEALAND $1.50 - CANADA $1.50
I've replicated the text as is but it is important to recognise the ambiguity in this record of events. The plus side is that it was written when many of the events were less than a decade in the past but on the downside, it is an obvious PR campaign to control and portray the band in a distinct way. The facts are rose-tinted and clearly not allowed to get in the way of a good story. "Let's make sure the guys are all lovable cheeky working class lads." The glaring exception being Dave Hill's remark about John Howells, "We had a fat singer with a great voice, but he was too lazy to turn up for rehearsals." Really Dave.... I'm very surprised that got through?
My thanks to Mark Johnson 'MKJJ' at The Archive for supplying a legible copy of the paperback. My own copy was loved far too much by a passionate teenager who then left it in an attic somewhere in time?
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