I was barely six years old when ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ became Slade’s third single of 1973 to go straight in at the top of the UK charts. But I have vague memories from around then, and the Radio Times listings remind us that Johnnie Walker revealed that rundown on Tuesday, December 11th, just as he had on February 27th as Slade became the first band since The Beatles to enter at No.1, and again as they repeated the feat in the last chart of June with ‘Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me’.
What’s more, Slade also went straight in at the top of the album chart with the Sladest compilation LP that autumn, in a truly momentous year for a band at their commercial height, albeit one tinged with tragedy after Don Powell’s accident that summer.
Actually, The Beatles only managed that ‘straight in at No.1’ feat in the charts once, through ‘Get Back’ in late April 1969. And Slade’s singles’ treble remained unequalled until The Jam managed it in December ’82 with their final 45, ‘Beat Surrender’, following on from March 1980 double-A-side ‘Going Underground’/’Dreams of Children’ and February ‘82’s ‘Town Called Malice’/ ‘Precious’.
I can tell you Duran Duran were next in late March ’83 with ‘Is There Something I Should Know?’ But my interest in the charts was already dipping, and for all I know the likes of Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift could have eight singles enter the top 10 every week these days.
My brother, seven and a half years my senior, told an increasingly cartoonish tale down the pub in later years regarding him and his schoolmates – Mark barely a fortnight off his teens at the time – listening on the field at Tillingbourne Secondary Modern School as Johnnie counted down that chart, ‘Cum on Feel the Noize’ dramatically soaring straight to the summit (replacing Sweet’s ‘Blockbuster’, in fact). But it was half term that week, so it’s more likely that was for ‘Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me.’
Fast forward to the final month of that year, at which point my dad was working his longer shifts as a postman (remember those days when the post arrived the next day, whatever the backlog?), and what with all the germs doing the rounds, it always seemed a battle as to who would be under the weather first among us five children, some bug or other doing its thing. And on the weekend Slade were celebrating their third chart-topper of a truly momentous year I was off to hospital.
I remember having tubes in my nostrils and a nosebag across my trough, after massive nose bleeds led to cauterisation. That said, the three-and-a-half hours my mum and I endured at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Farnham Road, Guildford, seems fairly healthy by modern standards and our increasingly stretched, underfunded NHS. #ToriesOut
As it was, Mum and I had a two-and-a-half-hour wait for an outpatients’ appointment the following Tuesday 18th, my 10.45am appointment met just after Johnnie Walker confirmed a second week at the top for ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. But I was back at school the Thursday we broke up. I always seemed to miss those early school Christmas parties due to some illness or other (it was chickenpox the previous year), but recall going to a fancy dress do that day, kitted out as a post-box, the common consensus being that if my nose started bleeding again, it wouldn’t spoil the red paintwork. Different times, eh.
I like to pretend I recall Slade being on Top of the Pops that Thursday night, but mum’s diary reads, ‘Went round post office with Malcolm, and then he had awful nosebleed. Awful mess!’ Yep, doubly awful. So chances are that I was tucked in bed by the time Tony Blackburn and Pan’s People were doing their thing in a 7.20pm slot on BBC One.
That Polydor single made a huge impression on me though. And what a Christmas for music, the closest chart to the big day chock-full of bangers, Slade keeping (whisper it) Gary Glitter’s ‘I Love You Love Me Love’ off the top spot, with Wizzard’s ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’ at No.4, Alvin Stardust’s ‘My Coo-ca-Choo’ next, Leo Sayer’s ‘The Show Must Go On’, David Essex’s ‘Lamplight’, Mott the Hoople’s ‘Roll Away the Stone’ and Roxy Music’s ‘Street Life’ completing the top 10.
That’s not just nostalgia, is it? We’re talking quality fare from a golden era for pop music. We also had Roy Wood solo with ‘Forever’ at No.11, then T.Rex’s ‘Truck on (Tyke)’, Gilbert O’Sullivan’s ‘Why, Oh Why, Oh Why’, and Steeleye Span’s ‘Guadete’ (one of the few festive ditties in the top half of the charts), with The Faces’ ‘Pool Hall Richard’/’I Wish It Would Rain’ at No.20, Mud’s ‘Dyna-Mite’ at 22, Paul McCartney & Wings’ ‘Helen Wheels’ at 24, Golden Earring’s ‘Radar Love’ at 25, and Elton John’s ‘Step into Christmas’ no higher than 26.
And while I’m at it, how about David Bowie’s ‘Sorrow’ (32), John Lennon’s ‘Mind Games’ (35) and Ringo Starr’s ‘Photograph’ (37), among hits I’d rather not recall from the likes of David Cassidy, various Osmond family members, The Carpenters, and The New Seekers.
I recently dipped in and out of the Tony Blackburn and Noel Edmonds-hosted Christmas Day ’73 edition of Top of the Pops, starting and ending with Slade, ‘Cum on Feel the Noize’ opening proceedings and ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ providing the finale. And alongside the Donny and Jimmy Osmond and David Cassidy video clips, the Simon Park Orchestra, Tony Orlando and Dawn, and Peters and Lee for the non-glam generation (actually, I do love ‘Welcome Home’), there’s Glitter’s ‘Leader of the Gang’ (no doubt the main reason this won’t be getting a BBC iPlayer run-out in full), Suzi Quatro’s ‘Can the Can’, Sweet’s ‘Blockbuster’, Pan’s People giving it their all with a few bewildered dogs on a bench to the sound of Gilbert O’Sullivan’ ‘Get Down’, and 10cc’s pleasingly off-the-wall ‘Rubber Bullets’, before Wizzard’s wondrous ‘See My Baby Jive’ sets us up for the big finish (which by rights should have been followed by their current festive hit), the stage invasion at the end somewhat tame, the cameras not picking up who custard-pied Nod in the boat race, mid-song.
I can’t recall if we watched it on the day. Our black and white set was rarely on, even though my Nan and Mum might have been keen to see the Queen talking reconciliation and all that sort of thing just after, at 3pm. And while we all have rose-tinted specs when it comes to nostalgic memories of The Morecambe and Wise Show on Christmas Day, I should point out that BBC One’s schedule also included The Black and White Minstrel Show and Billy Smart’s Christmas Circus and the evening offered up The Generation Game and a Mike Yarwood Christmas Special before Eric and Ernie.
With my Grandad Wyatt staying with family in St Ives that Christmas, we had my nan around for the big day (they separated in the mid-‘50s), with his sister Win and hubby Bill visiting on Boxing Day, no doubt involving lots of laughs, good food and the odd tipple for the old ‘uns, amid hands of cards and raucous family games of Pit.
As for Slade, there had been no live shows since a string of dates in mainland Europe ended at Zirkus Krone, Munich on November 20th, and that remained the case until January 9th when they stepped out at The Spectrum in Philadelphia, appearing with US outfits Brownsville Station and Jo Jo Gunne.
The Old, New Borrowed and Blue topped the charts for one week that February, and there would be three more top-three hits that year on our side of the Atlantic, but Slade had peaked, commercially, and by the time of their finest 45, ‘How Does It Feel’ in early ’75 it would rise no higher than No.15 (while Telly Savalas was at No.1 with ‘if’). Pop had moved on, the masses far less interested in the band’s new direction.
But surely that’s always been the nature of that fickle world. Besides, there would remain a passion for what Slade dun at our place though. I may have been 150 miles and a world away from The Trumpet in Bilston, where Nod, Jim, Dave ad Don regularly returned to celebrate those significant landmarks and achievements, but in the small bedroom of a council house in the idyllic rural setting of Shalford, near Guildford, that love for the Black Country’s Finest never left me. I was barely four when ‘Coz I Luv You’ became their first UK chart-topper, but they were already my band by the end of ‘73, my brother’s devotion proving somewhat contagious.
And all 17 Slade Top 20 hits from 1971/76 will forever be steeped in nostalgia for this fan-boy, so it’s hard to convey my sense of wonder at getting to interview Dave, Don and Jim in recent years, let alone catch the band live in late ’82 and see Noddy on a stage a couple of times in recent years.
That classic fourpiece will forever Take Me Bak ‘Ome to idyllic days when, as the youngest of five kids, I dipped between David Essex, Hot Chocolate, Bay City Rollers, Pilot and ABBA in my sisters’ bedroom and The Beatles and Slade in ours. And while Dad had no time for all that racket (he preferred massed military bands quick marching at Wembley tattoos), Mum appreciated those Holder/Lea ballads, and we caught most of those iconic Top of the Pops appearances, this lad sold on the glam pop/rock dream. So, imagine my delight at Suzi Quatro and Sweet’s Andy Scott contributing forewords when I finally got the chance to write a book honouring their legacy.
In time, punk and new wave rocked my brother’s world and accordingly mine, but as the Walker Brothers put it in late ’65 – while the ‘N Betweens, the band that became Ambrose Slade and then simply Slade, toiled away in Dortmund and Witten – ‘You were my first love, and first love never ever dies.’ What’s more, many of those who came through afterwards later acknowledged a debt to Nod, Jim, Dave and Don, even if Bowie, Bolan, Mott and Roxy got more kudos.
Mark was there with schoolmate Alan as Slade played Surrey Uni on my 11th birthday in ‘78 (telling me he caught ‘H’ – his hair growing back under a bandana – with a flying bog roll) and again in early ’81, before I joined them on 18th December ’82 for my first London gig.
Heading up by train, Hammersmith bound, that night is sketchy and vivid in equal measures. Barely 15, I shouldn’t have touched the ale, but the occasion commanded it, the Britannia across the road, a motley mix of hippies, rockers, skins, punks and new wavers creating a cracking pre-gig vibe. The first series of The Young Ones had just aired, and it seemed I was living it. A ginger-haired guy led the choir, his voice strong enough to secure the gig if Noddy rung in sick; a biker on the balcony poured beer on a stranger’s head below (getting little more aggro than a few swear-words); and a Vyvyan-like skinhead commanded, ‘Oi, hippie, buy me a pint!’ and his brazen request was granted.
At the Odeon, the absolute power certainly registered, as did the sight of Santa-suited Nod and his scantily clad elves for the inevitable ‘MXE’ encore. My evening caught up with me on a packed Tube jolting back towards Waterloo, but what a night. And thankfully there are more in-depth recollections for that show and many more within the book that help tell the tale with more clarity.
In the UK in the 1970s, there was no bigger band, yet six No.1 singles, three consecutive No.1 albums, 17 straight Top 20 singles and eight Top 20 LPs don’t tell the whole story. And from Nod’s wondrous voice and showmanship to Jim’s studio/stagecraft and genius, H’s guitar mastery, unique style and glitz, and Don’s dependable drumming and utter cool, they were the full package and deserve all the praise finally coming their way.
In Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade, author and publisher Tony Beesley, of Days Like Tomorrow Books, writes, ‘When Christmas 1973 arrived, Slade’s evergreen festive classic, ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ seemed to completely take over and that Christmas and many others will always be synonymous with that record. I got my first guitar that Christmas, a crappy kids-dedicated acoustic, and even though I couldn’t play a single chord on the damned thing, I could effectively mime in our front room, guitar in hand, to the sound of Slade’s never-to-be forgotten declaration of, ‘It’s Christmas!’’
Belfast city tour guide Arthur Magee wrote a wonderful piece for the book in which he perfectly conveys just what ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ meant to him, growing up at the height of the Troubles. It’s a piece I’ve shared a few times on library visits promoting the book, and always brings knowing looks and smiles. It’s an everyman’s tale of what Christmas was all about for so many of us back then, growing up in our various parts of the UK, and totally chimes. After one such reading, a woman confided, ‘You couldn’t see, because you had your head in the book, but I was smiling throughout that.’ It triggers so many memories, and when I first read it, I had a few tears.
I can’t convey that without including the whole piece, but I will add these lines from Arthur, who wrote, ‘It’s part of the furniture now is ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, like old Morecambe and Wise re-runs and The Sound of Music, but it has never become stale or boring. It translates the excitement I felt as a 10-year-old and makes me remember the pure euphoria and joy for life you have at that age. Noddy’s voice is a siren call to a reminder of better days and the promise of better days to come when hurt and loss have subsided and new memories are made.’
I mentioned the BBC schedule earlier, but it’s worth noting that fellow contributor Martin Blenco got to see Slade on ‘the other side’ on Boxing Day ’73, special guests with Les Dawson on That’s Christmas Sez Les! He recalled,‘When it was announced that Slade were going to be performing ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ on television over Christmas, I had to watch it. There was only one problem. We didn’t watch ITV in my house. My dad thought the three biggest evils of the modern world were Harold Wilson, Mick Jagger and commercial television, and the theme music of Coronation Street never sullied our ears. But I’d been given a second-hand reel-to-reel tape recorder for Christmas and persuaded Dad that, although it was on ‘the other side’, the Christmas edition of the Les Dawson show was a must see. My dad relented, the family called to order (or shooed out of the room) as I set up my mic in front of the big black and white television.
‘VCRs were many years away and for our family, colour television was only going to arrive when Cliff Pack, the local TV repair man, finally said our trusty 20-inch black-and-white had finally given up the ghost. I still have the tape with Noddy’s dismissive response to the host’s jokey introduction. ‘Ta for that introduction, Fatty. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ History tells me Slade were actually miming to a backing track and weren’t live at all, having pre-recorded the song at Yorkshire Television in September or October before an audience composed of Slade Fan Club members. Never mind. It was Christmas. Slade were on telly, and all was right with the world.’
Lancashire-based multi-instrumentalist Daev Barker is even younger than me (I know, ‘even younger’ is pushing it, seeing as I’m nearer to 60 than his age, 50, but…), but wrote, ‘I was born in the same year ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ was released, my first exposure to Slade the best Christmas song ever, year after year. It’s no mean feat to create a cool Christmas song. Other than the other big hits, I had no further exposure to Slade until I was in my twenties, when a work colleague and fellow Seventies punk fan suggested I give them a listen. I thought Slade were no more than a fun band with two or three well-known songs. I borrowed a copy of Slayed? and didn’t really hold much hope for enjoying it. But from the opening track, ‘How D’you Ride’, I was hooked.’
The genius behind those pop hits was also touched on in a chat I had with JC Carroll, of The Members, insisting, ‘Songwriting-wise, there’s a little thing that happens in the chorus of ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ that’s like, ‘Whoa! What are they doing there? What’s going on here?’ There are little bits in it that are like, ‘This is the secret!’ Little bits that make it really, really work. Bits of magic.’
Best-selling children’s author Cathy Cassidy also has great memories of ‘MXE’, telling me, ‘When I was 16, I saved and saved and bought myself my first high-heeled shoes. They weren’t platforms – they’d fallen from grace by then – and I tottered dangerously as I made my way to the big Christmas party. I felt like a giraffe in those shoes. I towered over every boy there, and no way could I dance… but when Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ came on, I’d had enough. EVERYBODY had to dance to that. It was the law. I kicked off the shoes and danced, and a boy danced with me. He walked me home through the snow, me in my stocking feet and him with the hated shoes in his pocket. My feet were blue and bleeding slightly, and I had a cold that Christmas, but my first boyfriend was a lot better than my first (and last) pair of high-heeled shoes. Thank you, Slade. I never did try the page-boy haircut, and that’s probably a good thing.’
Gavin Fletcher revealed that he hadn’t bought any singles until autumn ’73, ‘The Ballroom Blitz’ by Sweet a fine place to start. But then came ‘that single’, as Don Powell would put it, adding, ‘It stayed at No.1 for several weeks, into January, and was eventually replaced at the top by The New Seekers’ ‘You Won’t Find Another Fool Like Me’, which I absolutely hated then – and now! We had a regular babysitter for my younger brother and me, a Mrs Armstrong. She must have been in her fifties, but still liked her pop music. She was babysitting one Thursday in January ’74 when we were watching Top of the Pops. The New Seekers were performing ‘You Won’t Find…’ in their first week at No.1. Mrs Armstrong asked what I thought of that song. ‘Rubbish!’ I replied, ‘nowhere near as good as Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’!’ She said, ‘Yes, but this can be played anytime, whereas ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ can only be played at Christmas, and now Christmas is over you’ll never hear it again.’ I wonder how many times I’ve heard it since!’
Of course, ‘MXE’ gets plenty of mentions in the book from the recollections of those who saw Slade steal the show at Reading Festival in late August 1980, and inevitable features in lots of later year stories about the band. Take for instance Norfolk-based Peter Keeley, who saw them at the University of East Anglia in early December ’82, shortly before my Slade debut, saying, ‘They finished with the obligatory ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, and I felt like a kid again.’ It was already all about nostalgia by then, Pete one of many who loved the band way before he found his way with punk.
A few days later, Nick Latham caught them at Keele University’s Students’ Union, and added, ‘It was a party from beginning to end. We danced, sang and jumped around for the whole two hours. Noddy swapped his famous mirrored hat for a Santa hat for ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, which was all the more poignant at that time of year.’
It was a similar story for Alan Kent at Cornwall Coliseum, Carlyon Bay, St Austell, revealing, ‘They played ‘Get Down And Get With It’ next, then encored with ‘Mama Weer All Crazee now’ and ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. The place went nuts again. Noddy came out wearing a Santa outfit and I remember some kind of confetti coming down from the ceiling.’
I mentioned my blurred recollections of Hammersmith Odeon a few days later, and it turns out that Gavin Fletcher was there as well, writing, ‘Elton John was playing a Christmas season there and had had the building wrapped up, so it looked like a huge Christmas present. He had a couple of nights off and on those two nights Slade played. When the group returned for the encore, Noddy was dressed as Santa Claus. He shouted to the audience, ‘Has anyone got any requests? You’d better say ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’!’ After the show was like being in the crowd at a football match. The subway to Hammersmith tube station was absolutely packed with Slade fans, everyone singing the chorus of ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. Brilliant!’ I do hope he wasn’t one of those who had to evacuate my carriage rather quickly.
Bruce Pegg was also at the Hammy Odeon, and added, ‘My fiancée didn’t know any of the songs, not even set closer, ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’. As it was the weekend before Christmas, all 3,500 of us in the audience (apart from my fiancée), knew what was going to happen next… a spontaneous sing-song, ‘So here it is, Merry Xmas, everybody’s havin’ fun!’, broke out in the crowd as two beautiful young women walked on stage in scanty Santa Claus outfits. At this point, the whole place went bananas. The band then walked on and launched into ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, and everyone (but my fiancée) screamed all the words back to Noddy and the band. Forty years on, I don’t think she’s fully recovered from the culture shock of that moment.’
Come December 84, the live shows had ended, but there was still plenty of capital to be made from ‘MXE’, and friend of this website, Andy Strickland, guitarist for The Loft, The Caretaker Race and The Chesterfields, was working as a music press reporter at that stage. He wrote, ‘I’ve been working as a freelancer at Record Mirror for a year. Slade hit the Top Ten earlier in ’84 with ‘Run Runaway’, so there’s enough interest from the editor to let me chase an interview for their ‘All Join Hands’ release – if, and only if, we can somehow roll it into our Christmas festivities and get some quotes about ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. It’s suggested that I go on a pub crawl with Noddy Holder. Oh, go on then.
‘Slade’s press officer is Keith Altham – possibly the most famous music journalist and now PR guru of the Sixties and Seventies. Keith tips me the wink that Noddy probably won’t want to spend an afternoon trawling Soho’s pubs with me, but he will meet me for a half in The Ship, outside the famous Marquee Club on Wardour Street. Noddy is a joy. Everybody recognises him and it’s not easy to keep his focus, but he’s happy to talk about Slade’s ‘rebirth’ since that 1980 Reading Festival appearance, and the new single, and to have a photo with me outside the pub raising a glass. Just a half for him.
‘Back at Keith’s office, I get 30 minutes with an engaged Jim Lea. Jim makes it very clear that he is the musical brain behind Slade and is delighted to tell me the story of writing and recording ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. I’d always imagined a snowy Olympic Studios in West London or similar, but Jim explains how the band were halfway through an American tour in 1973 and he woke early one summer’s day with the song complete in his head. He rang Noddy and said, ‘I’ve got our Christmas No.1.’ The band recorded it as soon as possible in a sweltering New York, using the hallway of the Record Plant studios to get the big sound that Jim could hear in his head. Slade were not big in the US in 1973 and studio staff thought they were crazy, singing about Christmas in August. Half a million advance orders later that year suggested otherwise.’
Andy’s words save me from going into the stories about the song’s roots and recording here. They’re in the book though, and instead I’ll just add a few quotes from Don Powell, who in a previous interview with yours truly, remarked, ‘It’s amazing, y’know. We’ve had something like 24 hits, but people only remember that one! Don’t get me wrong. I’m not putting it down. It’s just so funny. When we recorded that, we were on a world tour, in New York in a heatwave, around 100 degrees. Yet there we were, recording ‘that song’. Chas said, ‘Do you have anything? If you have, we can go in the studio, do something.’ I remember Nod and Jim saying, ‘We’ve got this Christmas song.’ They played it to us, and Chas said, ‘We’ve got to do this!’ So we booked the Record Plant in New York City, 100 degrees outside, and there we were, singing ‘that record’. And would you believe that when we finished it, we didn’t want to release it? Chas thankfully said, ‘I don’t care what you lot say, this is coming out!’ I don’t reckon it’s been out of the top 100 at this time of year since. It’s phenomenal! Everybody must have this bloody record, but it keeps on selling. When I’m in a supermarket when it’s playing and I’m getting my groceries, all the attendants are singing it at the top of their voices.’
And I’ll conclude with a further line from Arthur Magee from his contribution to the book, writing, ‘If a song can have colours, ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ is in primary shades, illuminating the damp and grey like the twinkling of Woolworth’s fairy lights against a wood chip wall.’ Can’t say fairer than that, eh.
Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade includes more than 350 accounts about the band – live sightings, appreciations, and key moments – from down the years by close to 300 contributors, from committed fans to musicians who played alongside the band or were inspired to follow their lead. It also includes my interviews with Dave Hill, Don Powell and Jim Lea, words from Noddy – used with permission from the interviewer – and forewords by Suzi Quatro and Sweet’s Andy Scott. There are also pieces from members of Status Quo, The Beat, The Jam, Lindisfarne, The Members, The Selecter, The Specials, The Stranglers, The Style Council, The Undertones, The Vapors, The Beautiful South, Carter USM, The Chords, Dodgy, The Farm, Folk Devils, The Loft, The Wolfhounds, The Wonder Stuff, and The Woodentops. Nik Kershaw, broadcasters Gary Crowley, Andy Kershaw and Mark Radcliffe, legendary photographer Gered Mankowitz, children’s author Cathy Cassidy, music writer John Robb, and Slade’s poet laureate Paul Cookson also feature.
There’s still just about time to order direct via Spenwood Books (link here), from your local bookseller, online via Amazon (link here), or try before you buy through your local library. You can also track down copies in my old hometown at Ben’s Collectors Records, Tunsgate, Guildford, Surrey, or Action Records, Church Street, Preston, Lancashire.
writewyattuk 