WHAT THE PAPERS SAID...
From the days of hot metal and printers ink to the modern day electronic media there have been kazillions of words written about Slade. Beginning with small notices printed in Wolverhampton's Express & Star newspaper the four members of Slade have been no strangers to the whim of the music press as their career was charted in print by serious music journal and teeny magazine alike.
They became huge in the early seventies and rightly written about. There was a clear music journo snobbery where Slade were concerned, perhaps they have themselves to blame for allowing themselves to appear in just about every teenage girly mag there was at the height of their career.
How could they be taken seriously by the music press while they morphed into cartoon characters and parodied themselves weekly in Jackie, Mirabelle and the like. While their contemporaries were being lauded as serious musicians, Slade were lampooning themselves at every opportunity, so much so that the public perception of them to this day remains as tinsel clad clowns. Proper rock stars used the press sparingly and effectively, Slade at the same time were everywhere, grinning and gurning their way through the first half of the decade.
They made their feature film 'Flame' during 1974 and 1975 and after the initial press interest around the film had died down Slade seemed to be the forgotten men of rock, it didn't help that they went away to America for a couple of years in an effort to finally break the market there. In those years it was so very hard to find any mention of Slade anywhere save the fan club newsletters.
Upon their return there was a brief flurry of interest from the music press, but by now the 'new wave' of journo were dismissing Slade as irrelevant and once again they slipped from favour and vanished into the dark years.
There are many better Slade sites than SIE with regard to press cuttings and articles, all I will do here is add those that are more in depth from across the years, from record reviews, live gig reports to some of the more obscure reports from around the world. I am not too sure yet how I will construct a navigation system for these articles and snippets so it may not be as slick as it should be until i figure out how it can be best presented......watch this space.