You can usually judge the greatness of a band by their fans. And there’s no disputing that like them or loathe them, ’90s megastars Oasis are heavily influenced by the band who could be seen as their 1970s equivalent – Slade.
But it’s not a musician, but a comedian – Phill Jupitus – who sums up the Walsall quartet’s career when he states: “If you only think about Slade every December, you really need to read Daryl Easlea’s book.”
‘Merry Christmas Everyone is of course the tip of a considerable iceberg of hits – after scoring two number 1 singles in 1973 with ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’ and the similarly misspelt ‘Skweeze Me Pleeze Me’, singer Noddy Holder wrote the joyous, all-in-it-together lyrics to ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ in his mum’s Walsall kitchen after a night out at the pub by adding to a melody that bassist and co-writer Jim Lea had scribed after his mother-in-law teased him to come up with a festive hit. The now-classic placed Slade in the nation’s collective musical consciousness forever. But Slade were always about more than just one song.
‘Whatever Happened To Slade? When The Whole World Went Crazee’ is the first serious biography of the group in over three decades. Its author was previously editor of Record Collector, which gives you an idea of the forensic, or geek-level detail it contains. The new book details the story of the band alongside the personal histories of the four band members – Holder, Lea, Dave Hill and Don Powell – who together with their manager, Chas Chandler, turned Slade into a genuine phenomenon.
Charting their emergence from the 1960s beat boom, their initial successes, their glam heyday and their attempts to crack the US, it also covers their cult 1975 film Slade In Flame in depth, their re-emergence as hard rocking heavyweights, their final dissolution, and their careers post-Slade.
Easlea says: “Slade were the first band I found myself and the first pop poster I had on my bedroom wall. There was something so exciting, so vibrant, so dangerous about those singles, they just leapt out of the radiogram at you in a way few others did. It is a story of surprise and wonder, of the underdog at an extremely evocative time.”
The book’s ‘afterword’ is by one Jim Moir aka Vic Reeves, who along with Bob Mortimer lovingly lampooned the quartet and their (possibly fictional) love of Cup-a Soup, but it’s another musician who provides the forward, Bob Geldof, who says: “They should be revered. Here’s a book that does that.”
‘Whatever Happened To Slade? When The Whole World Went Crazee’ is available now via Omnibus Press.
This article originally appeared in the Shields Gazette.