"You're a good live act, and that's it...that crap you served up tonight that wasn't music...
You're just second rate comics working on a third rate audience......"
"With a fourth rate agent copping ten percent...."
Ron Harding & Stoker exchange pleasantries 1975
Slade are one of the most successful rock acts of all time. Of that there can be no argument. Noddy Holder, Dave Hill, Jim Lea and Don Powell rose from their Black Country beginnings in England's industrial heartland to light up the world with their anthemic rock n' roll and made us all feel the 'noize' .
Slade were the original working class band, during their long journey to the top they honed their live act by playing hundreds of gigs, playing anywhere and everywhere that would have them, from youth and working mens clubs, the local baths, festivals and even deep into the wilds of Scotland and their isles. Slade slogged their respective guts out, there was no instant overnight success, recognition and celebrity because you appeared on a TV 'talent' show. Slade did it the hard way in a world devoid of the modern technology we all take for granted today. They paid their dues, learned their trade and bludgeoned their way into the national psyche', a place still occupied by those that were there and the generations since that know them from their annual Christmas hit 'Merry Xmas Everybody'.
Slade collectively made some astonishingly bad career decisions along the way, selling their souls in the 'glam' era to the teeny girl magazines, appearing on countless kiddies TV shows broadcast at a time of day when those watching didn't know or care who they were, and the people who they wanted to know of their new single were at work....with that there now is a general public perception that Slade were a bunch of jolly japesters, tinsel clad gurning buffoons with little or no merit as a band.
The notion is absurd, Slade were one of, if not THE finest live acts this country has ever produced, as recording artists they have sold some 63 million records worldwide. The writing partnership of Noddy Holder and Jim Lea produced more hit records during a five year period in which they dominated the UK charts than anyone has the right to...they owned the charts in an era when to make it into the upper reaches of the best selling records in the country bands had to sell records in their hundreds of thousands. Slade did it in the millions, racking up six massive number one records in a three year period, three of which, 'Cum On Feel The Noize', 'Skweeze Me Pleeze me' and the evergreen 'Merry Xmas Everybody' all crashed into the charts at the number one position.
Despite their home and European success Slade struggled to make any headway in the United States, a constant source of annoyance and irritation to them, it was to be a decade later, in the eighties when finally they broke through there following exposure gained when US band Quiet Riot had an absolutely abnormous pan global hit with a cover of Slade's 1973 hit 'Cum On Feel The Noize' which, not looking a gift horse in the mouth, they followed up with a cover of Slade's 1972 number 1 chart topper 'Mama Weer All Crazee Now'
It was a deserved reward for their perserverence if nothing else, especially when after being so big in the mid 70's they had endured the 'dark days' when their popularity faded and they were reduced to playing third division venues to pay the bills. they still carried on despite a close call when Hill had decided to call it a day and hang up his guitar for good. Following their now legendary festival stealing appearance at Reading in 1980 Slade suddenly found themselves a new audience, their crunching growling guitars amplified to oblibvion (never mind eleven) and the sheer brute force of their 'sound' suddenly found them the darlings of the burgeoning New Wave Of British Heavy Metal brigade, It seemed a good idea at the time but the very audience that embraced them as a formiddable live act guaranteed to give you a good night out did not transfer well to vinyl, Slade were never a HM band, one of the absolute essentials was of course to have a shit hot lead guitar player, two if you could get away with it. Dave Hill's limitations as a lead guitarist left the headbangers frustrated and after a false dawn or two the HM crowd stopped buying their records, which became worse with each release as the bands creativity and enthusiasm was well and truly spent.
This site is here to serve anyone who can be arsed to look in and browse around, but it is really for the very few, a small percentage of Slade fans that are still knocking around, turning up at all the usual places that fans congregate to spin their yarns and indulge themselves in memories of times past. I want this site to be truly representative of what a fabulous band Slade were, so you won't find any reference to the absolute garbage that Dave Hill has turned the name 'Slade' into. Slade finished touring after a 1984 aborted tour to the United States, and despite still releasing recorded material, they never managed to capitalise again on their name, and after the release of 'Universe' in 1991, Slade thankfully called it a day. Slade were the soundtrack to a large part of my childhood, and Slade In England has only ever existed to make sure that anyone that comes here, or to the Facebook groups, knows that Slade were the BEST...long may they be remembered and revered!
Slade In England is currently undergoing a complete re-vamping in order to modernise the layout and content of the site. There are at present many dead links but click around and come back periodically as it is a work in progress and once the navigation structure is in place inserting the content should not take too long......
David Graham