It’s odd to think there were merely 11 and a quarter years between the release of Beginnings, the debut LP from the classic fourpiece that became Slade, and the band’s show-stealing 1980 Reading Festival performance, credited with relaunching their career when they most needed it, paving the way for the final assault of a glittering live and recording career, reminding the wider music world they were truly a force to be reckoned with.

Almost four times that amount of time has passed since, yet love remains for this iconic Black Country outfit, new generations now properly discovering Slade for themselves, while others who for some reason or other misread them at the time (perhaps it was those spellings) are finally realising their talent.

I say that as I gaze at the latest product celebrating these particular snapshots in history, BMG’s repackaging of the Ambrose Slade record and the label’s reissue of recordings from a direction-changing live performance from Dave, Don, Jim and Nod on Sunday, 31^st August 1980, when the phrase ‘phoenix from the ashes’ didn’t even cum near to nailing it.

Let’s start at the Beginnings, a band not long since rebranded after taking shape as The ‘N Betweens looking to find their feet with what proved something of a mixed bag of an album, one most of us reading this were not old enough to have appreciated back then (writes a fella who’d only just had his second New Year’s Day when they started recording that debut long player) but now like to pretend we saw the merits of from the start.

As it was, the band’s instrumental call to arms on opening track ‘Genesis’, the LP’s sole single – which the majority of us got to know in its second coming (with words) as ‘Know You Are’ – sees us invested from the start. Those aircraft-like sound effects and that driving bass – eight years later arguably half-inched by Greg Lake for ELP’s take on ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’ – setting us up nicely for what we’re about to receive. 

I used the term ‘mixed bag’, and that’s certainly the case, these 12 tracks – recorded at Stanhope Place, London W2, close to Hyde Park, with engineer Roger Wake, the band having reluctantly took its moniker from separate names A&R boss Jack Baverstock’s secretary gave her handbag and powder compact, apparently – seemingly providing more a shop window display of what they were capable of rather than a statement album.

One of the striking points for me now, 54 years down the line, is Noddy’s more nasal delivery, this treasured frontman possibly stricken by a cold during the recording process. But if it was good enough for John Lennon on The Beatles’ debut LP six years earlier… More relevant is that our Neville seems to bathe in ’60s elements at times, still finding his place, while the climax of ‘Everybody’s Next One’ (the first of two Steppenwolf covers – in fact, it was the B-side of their stab at ‘Born to be Wild’, released on the same day a year earlier) sounds more Who-like for these ears, an influence I never previously considered but one that also makes sense.

As for ‘Knocking Nails into my House’ (originally by The Idle Race), that has more of a Marriott and Lane feel, alongside a little of the ingenuity of future chart rival Roy Wood (perhaps unsurprising seeing as it was penned by sometime bandmate and fellow Brummie, Jeff Lynne). Yep, half Small Faces, half The Move, I’d say – not a bad place to be… but it’s not quite Slade, still grappling away in a bid to unearth their true calling and identity. What’s more, maybe it’s that building theme, but I get a bit of Bernard Cribbins in Nod’s oration. Not quite but almost, ‘Right,’ said Fred, ‘Have to take the wall down. That there wall is gonna have to go.’

Word has it that the ‘N Betweens implosion came as half of the band wanted to cling on to a more bluesy direction, while the others – Dave and Don – saw future salvation in embracing the beat era, selling that vision to new boys Nod and Jim. But ‘Roach Daddy’ – like ‘Genesis’ and ‘Mad Dog Cole’, seeing all four band members given a credit – suggests they couldn’t unlearn what they’d plugged away at on that circuit. Besides, The Beatles were arguably heading that same way.

‘Ain’t Got No Heart’, borrowed from Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, is another product of its time, and that’s fine by me, more Ambrose Psych than the band we’d get to properly discover. I see sequinned shirts and ridiculous moustaches, but Nod’s vocal delivery is almost punky.

‘Pity the Mother’, the only number with that soon to be classic Holder/Lea credit, takes that previous theme and stance a little further. There’s more than a little Led Zep there, I feel, that marriage of delicate blues licks and ‘eavy metal. And you could just about sit down and scratch your beard to it rather than stomp your feet and clap your hands. But it’s Jim’s violin that provides an unexpected twist. Within two years the nation would be knocked out by a similar approach on ‘Coz I Luv You’, but this must have had an impact on an earlier audience. And long before Dave Arbus did his thing on ‘Baba O’Riley’ for what was initially intended as The Who’s Lifehouse project.

Talking of the ‘Oo, it’s interesting to note that Beginnings landed 10 days before Tommy, and in the same month The Beatles were fannying around with Get Back (albeit with that never seeing the light of day for another year, as Let It Be).

Side two’s instrumental opener ‘Mad Dog Cole’ is more of a blues stomper, including searing guitar lines and scat vocal noodling. It’s as if the band are giving us a little freeform jazzy r & b while their working men’s club audience settle down after the meat raffle, the venue’s MC and club sec out back in a ciggie smoke-filled room, working out how much they can get away with paying their upstart visitors.

We’re then properly away again with one of my favourite moments, ‘Fly Me High’, the Moody Blues number. I interviewed Justin Hayward, its author, five years ago and couldn’t quite get my head round the fact that he was unaware at the time of that cover, which landed three years after it was a single, the first Justin recorded with the band after replacing Denny Laine.

As for Marvin Gaye’s ‘If This World Were Mine’, that’s a surprise package in light of what Slade became. Nod’s nasal vocal aside, I see it as more of a late Jam or early Style Council B-side. And while – surprisingly considering the power of his voice – it seems our Neville over-stretches in places, we at least get traces of that soul influence they took on board from the start.

‘Martha My Dear’ was a brave move, but again Jim’s violin adds Slade’s stamp to proceedings, stopping it becoming just another Beatles cover. Incidentally, is that the first time the band made that observation, ‘Look wot you dun’? Don’s drum pattern is interesting too, as if he’s still working his way through the style book, taking mental notes.

Then we have Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to be Wild’, the only song that appears on both records, a track that was perhaps already slaying audiences, as heard at Piccadilly’s Command Studios in October ’71 and tearing up venues for many more moons to come. And it’s no less dynamic here.

Finally, we’re away with another cover, Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes’ ‘Journey to the Centre of Your Mind’, the band well and truly back in the land of late ‘60s psychedelic rock on a song that would sit comfortably on a Monkees LP, as if it were an offcut from Head, released six months earlier.

While the 2006 Salvo CD reissue (coupled with Play It Loud) concluded on ‘Wild Winds Are Blowing’ – the first release of their skinhead era – BMG opt for its Powell/Holder/Lea-penned B-side, ‘One Way Hotel’, perhaps Slade’s first proper story song. Why they chose that, I’m unsure, but I’m not complaining, and maybe it’s just a nod (so to speak) to what came next, that song revisited for the next LP, Baverstock’s secretary’s handbag binned by then, Chas Chandler’s involvement taking the band upwards and onwards, the first LP as Slade landing a year and a half later, the group ever closer to what they became.

As it was, Beginnings not so much bombed as got lost, failing to dent either the UK or US (where it was rebranded Ballsy and given a revised track-listing and far worse cover art) charts. In fact, it says something that while I know full well that the wonderful ‘Pouk Hill’ – written about the photoshoot for the front sleeve of the debut LP – fits perfectly on that next record, it’s that fine ditty I hear when I see Beginnings, its lyrical theme suggesting they learned a hell of a lot from the experience of this ’69 Fontana debut, taking those lessons on board, the golden years not so far, far away.

I’m not sure if, as Peter Jones reckons on the original sleeve notes, ‘I voluntarily and totally flipped’ on first hearing Beginnings, but I agree to an extent with Record Mirror’s review of the ‘Genesis’ single, describing the accompanying LP as a ‘fine debut’ from a band of ‘very substantial talent’. And as Dave Ling puts it on his sleeve notes this time, ‘For Slade, the Gud times were just around the corner.’

It seems odd to jump from there to late August 1980, but while, my oh my, times ‘adn’t ‘alf changed by then, there is at least one key factor linking Beginnings and Alive! At Reading – Slade’s determination to prove themselves and bounce back, be that emerging out of the shadows as the ’60s gave rise to the ‘70s, or out of the doldrums – or at least the wilderness – after those halcyon chartbusting years on their UK return after an ultimately fruitless US assault.

It’s not quite as simple as that, but you catch my drift. Anyone who caught the band in the intervening years knew how powerful they remained. If anything, they even upped their game. And Reading wasn’t the first time they proved the detractors wrong. Take for example, Lincoln Festival in late May ’72. There too, some of those who attended knew only too well what a phenomenal live band Slade were, rather than just gifted crafters of great singles.

I might as well get the criticism out of the way regarding this second BMG repackage, mentioning the use of live shots from a later Monsters of Rock set at Knebworth and a 1973 Danish shot on the rear. And this isn’t the complete live set, which also included ‘Dizzy Mama’, ‘My Baby Left Me’, ‘Everyday’ and ‘Gudbuy t Jane’. But the spirit’s definitely there, and kudos needs be paid to the BBC’s Friday Rock Show bods who recorded it for Tommy Vance’s show in the first place.

As late, late replacements for Ozzy Osbourne at Richfield Avenue, delivering a sensational performance to around 80,000 punters, few knew they were going to be performing until shortly before their Sunday set, but they provided the highlight of the festival and that audience response ultimately led to Slade enjoying a renaissance. They certainly come out with guns blazing on ‘Take Me Bak ‘Ome’ – originally released three years to the month after Beginnings – and it’s as refreshingly vital eight and a half years after it became their second No.1. If anything, this four and three-quarter minute version carries a finale that’s almost Sex Pistols-like, Nod’s call and response panto ensures the heavy brigade were on their side too. You can almost hear the masses turn round and swarm back from the camping fields towards the main stage.

‘Is it loud enough for everybody?’ asks Noddy. ‘No!’ comes the resounding response. ‘No? Charlie! It ain’t loud enough! Get it up! Full poke! Think mi ears are going a bit!’ Whether sound man Charlie Newham needed to do anything of the sort is unlikely, but they soon had the crowd in their pocket.

And it wasn’t just nostalgia, fairly new songs like the incendiary ‘When I’m Dancin’, I Ain’t Fightin’’ and ‘Wheels Ain’t Coming Down’, from that May’s Six of the Best EP (although the latter appeared first on the previous October’s Return to Base), showing the great unwashed just what they might have been missing… a core of Slade diehards amongst them with every right to scream, ‘Didn’t I tell you?’    

The band’s eardrum-blasting six-minute-plus rock’n’roll medley follows, while Nod leads the crowd on a brief ‘chorus of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ before a stonking ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’ takes us back to late ’72, the chances of the crowd hearing what’s being said to them back at work that following week already nil.

‘Get Down and Get With It’ is next, Nod’s ‘Well, alright everybody…’ a further call to arms, feet, hands and boots, Dave, Don, Jim and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Preacher ‘(‘I’ve seen the light!’) at the very top of their game, the years having rocked and rolled away… to the surprise of absolutely none of those who had stuck by the band through the thin as much as the thick. A glorious noize.

And I feel rather emotional hearing Nod announce to those ‘rocking and rolling and ripping it up in Reading tonight’ that ‘we’ve got to go now’ before that final ‘alright!’ Some 43 years on, there’s still a sense that nobody quite wants to the party to end.  

Where could they go from there? Turns out that they could just about go anywhere. Almost back to No.1, in fact. In the meantime, for the encore Noddy led a crowd rendition of ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ on this last day of August (maybe not that surprising seeing as they recorded it seven years earlier amid a late summer NYC heatwave) before ‘Cum on Feel the Noize’ and ‘Born to Be Wild’ brought the house down. A thundering conclusion, and what a blast. If I were there, I reckon I’d have just turned round and left at that point, tears in my eyes.      

For several eyewitness accounts of Slade’s momentous Reading Festival 1980 appearance and plenty more memories regarding their amazing journey down the decades, check out Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade (Spenwood Books, via the publisher’s link), which also includes forewords by Suzi Quatro and Sweet’s Andy Scott. You can also track down a copy via Amazon, have a word with your local bookseller, or try before you buy at your local library.

BMG’s 2023 reissues of Beginnings by Ambrose Slade and Alive! At Reading by Slade are available now on limited edition vinyl (for the first time) and deluxe CD. Representing pivotal moments in Slade’s career, Beginnings is pressed on transparent yellow and orange splatter vinyl, with Alive! At Reading on orange and black splatter vinyl. The Beginnings CD is housed in a deluxe mediabook, while Alive! At Reading is available as a CD digipack. 

And to order other releases in BMG’s series of limited-edition Slade vinyl reissues and deluxe CDs, including Sladest, Slayed?, Old New Borrowed and Blue, Slade in Flame, Slade Alive!, Nobody’s Fools, and The Amazing Kamikaze Syndrome, visit https://slade.lnk.to/OfficialStore. Also available is the All the World is a Stage 5CD live boxset via https://slade.lnk.to/alltheworldPR