‘We flew on to Freeport, this island where Frank Sinatra goes, and there’s a posh hotel there, the Sheriton. Now, for a bunch of council house kids, this is a big deal! This guy, Ken, says, ‘I’ve put you in this hotel. It’s really good, just put the food on the bill. Nod was in one room that had an adjoining door with Jim, and I was with Don. And it’s overlooking the sea. It was very nice. We were all going, ‘Ooh, look ’ere – fillet steak!’

I said, ‘It’s a great place, innit. I went in the bathroom, and they’ve a thing in there where you can wash your feet.’

‘Have you got it yet? Ha! I said, ‘It’s bloody great, I put my feet in there!’ And he said, ‘It’s a bidet, Dave!’

A staggering 54 years after Slade topped the UK singles chart for the first time with the wondrous ‘Coz I Luv You’, Dave Hill is there in all his rockin’ glory on my computer screen, chatting away on Zoom about his confusion at the bathroom arrangements in a swish hotel on the island of Grand Bahama, handy for Lucaya Beach, this council house lad from Wolverhampton (he was born in Devon, but always a Black Country lad at heart) transporting us back to 1968, having lost none of his boyish wonder when it comes to relaying tales about his adventures in music down the decades.

As well as his ’N Betweens bandmates Noddy Holder, Jim Lea and Don Powell – the group that became Slade – the other fella mentioned is Ken Mallin, a Willenhall lad who in 1968 lured the foursome out to the Bahamas, more than 4,000 miles from home. And Dave, 22 at the time and for whom holidays more likely involved trips to Rhyl, Tywyn or Skegness, was clearly in his element on his first trip to truly exotic climes, finding himself in what proved ‘too good to be true’ circumstances in the lap of luxury.

For despite what their Midlands agent might have told them about that dream booking (and bear in mind that the youngest, Jim, was barely 19), they were soon on for a major reality check, shifting circumstances ultimately bringing them together, setting them up for an amazing quarter-century working together.

This was even before Ambrose Slade came to be, guitar player Dave and drumming bandmate Don, who first joined forces with The Vendors, part of the ‘N Betweens by 1964, joined within two years by mighty-lunged singer/guitarist Noddy and gifted young all-rounder Jim on bass guitar, the new line-up soon bedded in, that classic Slade fourpiece remaining together (at least in the studio) until 1992. And by then they’d amassed 24 top 40, 16 top 10 and six No.1 singles as well as three No.1 LPs on the UK charts, quickly building a major international fanbase, the world’s love for the band still very much evident today… and not just at Christmas.      

As for that early ‘90s split – main songwriters Nod and Jim having decided they were done – that wasn’t the end of it for Dave, old pal Don soon rejoining him as a new version of the band took shape. Initially known as Slade II, the pair in time allowed to drop the suffix, continuing to tour together for another quarter of a century or so before a fall-out ended that working partnership in 2020, Dave and John Berry (vocals, bass, violin, on board since 2003) these days joined on stage by Russell Keefe (vocals, keyboards) and Alex Bines (drums). And now that unit has announced its ‘final Xmas tour’… not as if that’s the end of the story, according to ‘H’.

In a couple of weeks’ time, it’ll be 52 years since Dave was seen prancing around on Top of the Pops in trademark eye-catching clobber miming along to ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, the third Slade single in that momentous year of 1973 to go straight in at No.1 on the UK chart, something no act had ever achieved before. Elvis only managed it twice in his lifetime, and The Beatles once. Even when The Jam saw their third single go straight in at the summit, their December 1982 finale ‘Beat Surrender’, their feat was over the space of two years, with Slade’s three in a year not equalled until Take That in ’93… and they needed Lulu to get them over the line.  Besides, charts meant bugger all by then. Not like in my day (says the old bugger).

We’ll get back to the Bahamas again later, but first I’ll go back to the beginning of our online chat, my iconic interviewee asking ‘Can you hear me?’ as we stare blankly at each other… albeit Dave with more rock star poise, as if he’d just stepped out on stage at Castle Donington.

Loud and clear, H, loud and clear.

‘Can you see me?’ he added. I certainly could… catching sight too of some of his treasured six-string instrument collection behind him.

‘A little view of my guitars. Ha!’

Incidentally, I tell him, when I was at the Louder Than Words music book festival in Manchester recently, I chanced upon and had a brief chat with former Adam and the Ants guitarist Marco Pirroni. Were his ears burning? We got talking about a certain guitar he bought in Birmingham back in the day, the stuff of Slade legend.

‘Marco has got my guitar! He’s got the original Superyob! Apparently, he used to watch me on Top of the Pops and had a thing about that guitar. Which I understand. It’s a good story, y’ know, he goes into that shop in Brum and they don’t know who he is. ‘Who the ‘eck’s this guy?’ they’re saying, ‘It’s not for sale.’ But he got it, didn’t he!

‘The shop was run by a man called David Quill. He had Musical Exchanges, a very big shop on Broad Street by the indoor arena, on the main drag into the centre of Birmingham. They had a small shop at first, and I remember walking in, looking for something, and it transpired that I was going to part company with that guitar. I spoke to David, and he said, ‘I’d be glad to give you three really good guitars for that. We could use that as our calling card.’

‘There was a young guy called Gary Chapman hanging about, quite young then, he wasn’t working there at the time, but remembers me coming in. I had a semi-acoustic SG-shape, really good Gibson, I had a Fender, and I think there was another guitar. Basically a swap, he put the Superyob guitar in the window, and they made these cards with it on. People were looking in the window, saying, ‘I’ve seen that guitar before. Oh, that Slade, isn’t it!’

‘And then Pirroni comes in, because Adam and the Ants were playing in Brum, and they hadn’t got a clue who he was. They just thought it was somebody come off the street, having a go. They tell him it’s not for sale, and he said, ‘Everything’s for sale!’ I think he drummed up a funny figure and went for it. But he didn’t come back himself – he sent the roadie with the cash.

‘I met up with him in London with a guy working for Fender, and he relayed the story to me. And in the end Madness borrowed the guitar…’

Indeed they did, Chrissy Boy Foreman playing it on the ‘Shut Up’ promo video.

‘Correct! Then, next thing, this arena in London approached, wanting to do a memorabilia sale, various things, asking if he would loan the guitar. They put it in a big frame. I saw it there, you could press a button and it tells the story about it. They also got me to send some clothes. A bit like what the Beatles had in Liverpool {The Beatles Story}. I assume Marco’s got it back, because I never saw that again. I still think they’ve got my cape somewhere. They had memorabilia from Bolan and all sorts.

‘It’s certainly iconic. I also had YOB I on my Rolls-Royce. Mind you, I flogged that, and can you believe the number plate was a great deal more money than the car? Ha! I offered it to Sotheby’s. I thought they could put it in a memorabilia sale. They said, ‘No, we won’t do that. We’ll put it in a proper sale as a classic car,’ being the old Rolls-Royce shape. They said, ‘We’ll film it and advertise it.’ It was quite funny when I went down to deliver it – the bloody exhaust went! It was going all wrong, so I pulled up outside Sotheby’s. I’d come down from the Black Country in this gold car, walked in, there’s a bloke knocking about, and I said, ‘Can you help me? I’ve brought this car. It’s going to go into an auction with some very classic cars.’ He said, ‘Oh yes, I know where that is.’

‘It was RAF something or other, just outside London. I said, ‘There’s only one problem, the exhaust’s gone, and it’s making a noise.’ He said, ‘That’s not a problem. I used to work for KwikFit.’ So he got a suit on, and came in the car with me. It was all farting and blowing, and we went just outside London where he got some gunk, got under and started repairing it. And it was brilliant. So I took it to the event and left it. Three days later, I went down, and it went past the reserve. I’d had 13 years with that car, so it had paid me back, you know.’

Including your wedding hire sideline business at one point?

‘Yes, that was a going joke. I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but there’s Noel Gallagher talking to Ricky Gervais, who’s taking the piss out of me. Noel’s going, ‘Oh yeah, Dave Hill went to Australia, and they come off with some glittery hat or something, when they were out there with Quo…’ He tells this story, it’s quite funny, and Ricky asks if it’s true I had this wedding business. And he says, ‘Oh yeah! You could rent a pop star, and it was an extra few quid if he turns up for the wedding.’ Obviously, it was a little low period in my career at the time.’

Remind me, was that just before Slade’s famous rebirth at Reading Festival in 1980?

‘I think it was after that. We’d already done Reading. As the years rolled by, the records weren’t selling particularly, after a few big hits, and having three kids… this would lead to me reforming the band in the end. I rang Nod and said, ‘I think I’m going to flog the car. It’s doing nothing, it’s in the garage, I never take it out, and when I do, kids let the tyres down!

‘I’d moved to an area where having a Rolls Royce was a bit too showy. Nod said, ‘Well, you’ve had your mileage, you sell it.’ And it was a relief when I did, but as the years rolled on, towards the end of the ‘80s and into the 90s, we had a bit of a hit, ‘Wall of Sound’, our last hit, then in 1992 it was all over. I spoke to Nod, said, ‘I really need to do something.’ By then he’d finished with touring and making albums, didn’t want to do that anymore, and I understood his reasons but I kind of missed it… and I had a mortgage to pay.

‘So I spoke to Nod about the use of the name. I wanted to say what I felt about that. I’d been contacted by Suzi Quatro’s husband {her long-time guitarist, Len Tuckey, the pair divorcing in 1992} and he said to me, ‘You don’t want to form a new group, you need to go out as Dave Hill’s Slade or Slade. So I put it to Nod – there was just me then – and he really understood, which was great. I suggested Dave Hill’s Slade and Nod said, ‘Why don’t you call it Slade II? I thought that was a good start. I couldn’t control the ‘II’ though – sometimes promoters took that off – but that was in 1992 and I haven’t stopped playing since…

‘And now I play as Dave Hill’s Slade, everybody’s happy with it, and it doesn’t really matter, because everybody knows I’m doing it and I’ve kept the songs alive.’

In fact, he’s now been out there doing his thing without Nod and Jim for more than 30 years. And yet, as I put it to him, he’s still only 48, right?

‘Good one! Yes, my bass player says, ‘He looks really good for 40-odd, doesn’t he? Ha!’

I say that, but I do realise that next April you’re in line to hit the big ‘Eight-Oh’.

‘Yes, and that’s when I shall release a solo album, which has been worked on and I thoroughly enjoyed. I didn’t write in the hit years, but the more I wrote, the better I got. I’ve also got a voice now, which I didn’t have before, but primarily guitar playing remains important to me, and Nod’s encouraged me to step outside of Slade, do an album for myself. And it’s a true friend to advise me like that. I trust his opinion, and he was right. I went ahead, started to put it together, and I’m very happy with it.’

So will this be a whole new phase, the octogenarian Dave Hill stepping up to the plate?

‘Mmm, I suppose when I saw Rod Stewart on Glastonbury, it’s not remarkable to see that people you know… Being a guitar player is different, but I have two excellent singers, because that’s the only way you can cope with the tunes. They’re not Noddy Holder, they know that, but they’re really good singers, the band is very happy, and it’s been together quite a few years now. And my bass player {John Berry} has been with me for 23 years. The phase I feel that’s happening… there is something natural going on with me…’

I should point out that I wrote a few questions ahead of my chat with Dave, things I wanted to get on to. I shouldn’t have bothered. I think I’d managed two or three by this stage. It’s more about prompts really, H hardly drawing breath.

‘This year they re-released and remastered the movie we made in the Seventies, Slade in Flame, and we went to a premiere on the first of May in London at the British Film Institute, and I felt like Tom Cruise when I walked in. A new Tom Cruise, y’ know! Me and Nod had a really good time, met some of the actors in the film, and some of the people that worked on it. David Puttnam was the producer, Richard Loncraine was the director, who also became quite successful after Slade in Flame, and Tom Conti was a new actor who certainly got more work after our film. Then there was Johnny Shannon, who’s not with us now. He was in Performance, and there was my girlfriend in the film… although I seem to have several girlfriends in the film, while nobody has any girlfriends in the rest of the band…’

He’s about to go off on another tangent, so I’ll add that he was about to mention Sara Clee there. Anyway, carry on…

‘And that Mark Kermode (the film critic) said about me. ‘Dave Hill is either a really good actor or he’s just playing himself.’ And he was dead right!’

I’ll let you decipher that response, readers.

‘But the decision to re-bring it out was remarkable, because it wouldn’t cost us any money for them to remaster it, to brighten it, and it looked so good when I sat there. I took my son down, Noddy took his down, his son met my son, and it was ever so nice, we stood there thinking we’ve done this all those years ago, and look at it now!’

When I first interviewed you, a decade ago, you were still a little unsure of the film, still thinking it was a miss-step. I’m guessing you’ve had a rethink since.

‘I think I saw it in a different light. I thought the fans wouldn’t be comfortable watching us arguing in a film, when we were still currently massive.’

I guess it was confusing for some, not least that it was set in the late Sixties in an era when we were more likely to get nostalgic about 1950s rock ’n’ roll days.

‘Yeah, the way I viewed it was like this. It made more sense now. And the decision (Slade manager) Chas Chandler made to have a serious film, not a silly film like A Hard Day’s Night, but a film that had truth in it… Because, you know, a lot of the stories in the film are true, although not necessarily things that happened to us. The film is a little Get Carter like, a bit tough, but acting-wise I thought the four of us did a really good job considering we had no experience of acting… although I’m not saying anybody rushed to get us again!’

Well, you were rather busy.  

‘Well, yes, with commitments… I think that’s one of the words!’

Before I came on to you to this afternoon, I played something that was topping the charts 44 years ago, this point in 1971 having marked your second week at No.1, ‘Coz I Luv You’.’

‘Ooh!’

I know a few of the Top of the Pops performances were wiped, so this may have been one for European TV, but in the footage you’ve got a blue satin top on and the band are playing in the round, the audio improved with use of the studio version. And that song sounds as fresh today as it ever was.

‘It’s a great record, that! But we were a little unsure. We had a hit with ‘Get Down and Get With It’, a rock song, and the DJs of the day were saying, ‘What’s your next one going to be? Another rock song?’ So we thought that’s what would happen. But they’d {Slade’s management} told us all to write a song, and Jim said, ‘We’ve got this song with a violin in it.’ Chas said, ‘Well, what’s it sound like?’ Nod had an acoustic guitar, they started to play it, and Chas said, ‘That’s great. That’s a hit. In fact, that’s a number one!’

‘He was adamant about that. And when we made the record, it sounded so fresh, with all the clapping, you know, the stomping, the violin. Jim’s a really good violinist, Nod’s voice was very commercial sounding, and it was a really good record. I played it to my sister, and she said the hairs on the back of her neck were tingling. She said, ‘That sounds fantastic!’

Carol was clearly a good judge too.

‘Well, she’s an entertainer, like me. A dancer, a singer, an actress, everything. She said the feeling of it was strong, and she was right. We didn’t know it’d be a No.1, but it didn’t take it long to get there!’

I often gaze back at Slade historian Chris Selby’s cracking Slade gigography (linked here), going right back to the days of the earlier bands you all featured in- in Dave’s case starting with the Sundowners – and I’m reminded that 60 years ago you were in Germany (two and a half years before that Bahamian residency), between dates with the ’N Betweens at the Habarena club, Dortmund, and New York City club, Witten. Heady days, eh?

‘Ah, the Habanera club was on our first trip abroad with the original band – not the band that became famous – and I remember it was the first time I’d ever gone out with a German girl. She was 17 and came to the gig. We were entertaining a lot of (British) servicemen staying in Germany that used to come along.

‘We also started to come across pomme frites {in fact, I’m sure he said ‘pomme fritz’} topped with what we thought was salad cream. I said, ‘They put salad cream on their chips!’ and they said, ‘It’s not salad cream, it’s mayonnaise!’ We got used to that and used to go for hühnchen – chicken – and pommes frites. There was a guy from Canada with a little eating place right by the Habanera. We used to call him Canada Pete and would go scoffing down there.

‘When we went back to England, we thought, well, we’ve been to Germany, and when The Beatles came back, they made it. But that wasn’t the case. It didn’t make any difference.’

While Hamburg arguably proved to be the making of The Beatles, for Slade it was more likely to have been their stint on the Bahamas, that highs and lows experience proving to be the bonding experience that truly brought the band together.  

‘Yeah, the trip to the Bahamas, when we flew to Nassau. We didn’t think it was really going to happen. The guy who wanted us to come over was from our local area. There were a lot of strange things going on with this guy… not that we knew that at the time. The agent said, ‘The tickets have come through. He’s booked you on a plane from Gatwick. You’ve got to fly the gear over by cargo. So we flew to Nassau, which sounds a little James Bond, and when we got off the plane, me and Nod are going, ‘’Ruddy ‘ell, they got grass skirts on there!’ Then he says, ‘They’ve give us a drink with a bloody flower in it!’

‘You could make a film out of that story. The whole idea of us going there was always a little unusual. It was very warm, very humid, very nice, right? Not known to council house kids in Britain. But they took us down the club, and I saw cockroaches larking around in the dressing room. The very fact it was called the Tropicana {the venue they were booked at} sounded a little strange. The idea was that a British band would attract Americans coming over there. But it developed into a completely different ball game. We were there a couple of weeks playing this club, hardly anybody in, and the guy looking after it, Eric, was out of his box most days. He looked like a soul singer, but was slightly bonkers, with a dodgy eye.

‘Two weeks on, the boss of the Sheraton said, ‘Who’s paying this bill? It’s $2,000.’ We said, ‘Oh, Ken’s in charge. He’s managing the money, we’re just working the club.’ He said. ‘Well, I need to talk to him, someone’s got to pay this.’ I said, ‘Fine, we’ll get hold of him.’ But he wasn’t around. There’s a knock on the door later, and it got a bit rough. Two guys with dark shades, mafia, standing at the door. ‘Where’s Ken? We’re gonna kill him. He owes us money.’

‘I said, ‘What do you mean, who are you?’ He said, ‘We loaned him money to bring you over.’ I said, ‘It’s nothing to do with us, we don’t know anything about that.’ He said, ‘Well, we’re gonna get him!’ It was like Get Carter. The next thing, it turns out Ken disappeared, and he’d lied. We thought we’d met his sister, who had something to do with loaning the money. It wasn’t his sister at all, but we didn’t know until after. We said to this guy, ‘Go and see his sister.’ He said, ‘He hasn’t got a sister. That’s his Mum!’ We thought, ‘This looks a bit tricky.’

‘Then the people that run the club decided to flog it, and in came some Americans from Miami. The hotel got in contact with the new owners, said, ‘We spoke to the band. They owe us $2,000, we need to start taking part of their wages.’ And that’s what they did. They put us in a staff apartment then, four beds in one room, bog on one side, and a kitchen. But we learned to live with each other at that time.

‘There was an awful lot of substances going on around the island, y’ know. I didn’t go for it personally. I’d never get anywhere near any of that, but that was going on and there were all sorts of strange hippies knocking about, peace and love and all that – it was the late Sixties, with the flower power mob. We made a few friends though, and by the end we had to hide from each other so they didn’t notice we might be a group. I left the day before, slept on a beach… well, I tried… until the crabs come at me. I then went up to Nassau airport, slept in a bloke’s car until the others arrived. I owed 50 bucks to some bird I fancied on the island. She had a big brother – I didn’t want him to find me!’

They got back in one piece, thankfully, three months after flying out, the following autumn and winter spent honing their sharpened and more diverse live set on the UK circuit, mostly around the Midlands. Come the new year, they were recording the debut Ambrose Slade LP, Beginnings. They were still a couple of years away from true elevation to the big time, but were on their way.

As for that initial German tour in late ’65, I reminded Dave that 60 years ago, while Noddy was on the same circuit with Steve Brett and the Mavericks, some four months before he and 17-year-old Jim debuted with them – the ’N Betweens were supporting Generation plus Peter and the Wolves at the Pavilion on the seafront at Exmouth in South Devon on December 3^rd, followed by shows far closer to home – at Wolverhampton Civic, Walsall Casino, the Golden Torch in Tunstall, and so on. And it was quite a circuit then, right?

‘Ooh, the Golden Torch. I forgot that one! That’s in the Potteries, innit?’

That’s it, and a bit of a special venue on the old Northern Soul circuit. And you upped your repertoire with a few soul records while in the Bahamas in ’68, I seem to recall.

‘That’s right, and there was another one, The Place, that was all soul music. That’s how we got into all that. We also learned ‘Born to be Wild’ when we were in the Bahamas, a Steppenwolf record. Nobody in England had heard it. And ‘Journey to the Centre of Your Mind’. Very cosmic, right!

‘When we came back from the Bahamas, we were a somewhat changed band. We actually played quieter, because we had a lot of problems with the female boss of the club. There was a guy that worked there, ‘The Iceman’. He was a real Mr. Cool! He used to come to the stage and say, ‘She doesn’t like you playing loud. She’s going to put a bulb above your head. If the light comes on, she’s going to switch you off, right?’ Anyway, she come down the front shouting at us, and we ignored her, so she goes back to the Iceman, saying, ‘They’re not listening to me. Go and cut his strings!’ So he takes a big pair of scissors, comes up to Nod and says, ‘I won’t do it, but she wants me to cut the strings off your guitar.’

Talking of which, at this point I let Dave know we’re likely to end up cut off soon, time running out on our online session. But he tells me, ‘You can always come back – you know that, don’t you. Problem is, there are so many stories. You could write a book just talking to me, y’know.’

True enough. And leading on from his cut strings tale, I relaid a story I was told for Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade about Nod, Jim, Dave and Don playing not far from my old Lancashire patch at a venue called Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Darwen on the last day of October ’71. Just 10 days after they completed the recording of the iconic Slade Alive! at Command Studios, Piccadilly, London. While ‘Coz I Luv You’ riding high in the charts, the band first promoting that momentous single with a performance on Top of the Pops on October 21^st, Pat Fleck recalled that this was hardly a band being afforded any slack, for all their new-found success. Apparently, Noddy was warned by the venue’s manager to stop swearing or they’d cut the power. As Pat put it, ‘Of course, Noddy didn’t stop swearing, and the power was duly cut. It only came back on after Noddy promised to be a good boy.’

And that reminded me of a similar tale concerning a venue barely two miles from my door here in West Cornwall, Slade playing – with very little fanfare, judging by the West Briton that week – the Flamingo Ballroom in Pool, between Camborne and Redruth, on Thursday 5^th October 1972, the site of the venue these days holding a Morrisons superstore we tend to visit for the weekly ‘big shop’.

‘I remember that place, yeah!’

At that point, ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’ was slipping down the charts after three weeks at the summit, the band’s third No.1 single, with Slademania building all the time… yet the band still honoured an earlier booking cancelled (I found one in July at the Corn Exchange, Penzance, 30 miles down the road, and there may well have been another set for early September) when they headed off on an US tour, joining Humble Pie, Sly and the Family Stone, Boz Scaggs, the J Geils Band, and Peter Frampton en route.

According to the venue’s adverts in the West Briton, it was £1.25 on the door or £1 in advance from The Garden, Penzance (aka the Winter Gardens or the Wints, a venue which attracted many of punk’s leading lights a few years later, including the Sex Pistols, Ramones, Talking Heads, The Damned, The Adverts, Elvis Costello’s first show with the Attractions, The Saints, The Police, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, UB40 and U2, as memorably honoured in Simon Parker’s wonderful PZ 77: A Town, A Time, A Tribe, which necessitates a feature of its own on this website, soon as the stars align), which seemed to be the co-promoter, with Strife supporting and the promise of ‘Lights and Disco’, provided by the Chris Warren Discotheque. Heady days.

And among those who saw Slade at the Flamingo was Kevin Lean, also featured in Wild! Wild! Wild! He told us, ‘That night they played all their hits and more. Tartan was the rage then, and skinhead was the rage, and us youngsters followed suit, with Doc Martens, braces, the lot – to think we used to dress like that! I was courting a girl when I had my hair exactly like Noddy’s (permed). At the same time my girlfriend sent a photo into a Women’s Own competition, ‘Copy a Star’, and lo and behold, I won it and was matched with Noddy! Good days!’

What’s more, I also read somewhere that night the Flamingo owner, Joy Hone, told them to turn the volume down or ‘I’ll pull the plug, my lovelies.’ And that’s something else I put to Dave.

‘That sounds like it could be a true story. More than once that happened, by the way! And I do remember something he said up north, and they said they wouldn’t have us back! Haha!’

Meanwhile, although Dave clearly deserves time off for good rockin’ behaviour after all these years on the road, I can’t imagine him not touring the world to the same extent from now on. He’s going to miss all that, surely. Or is he looking to the future now (it’s only just begun)?

‘With regards to dates here and abroad and all that, that will remain as long as I want to do it. And for me, I feel although I’m coming on 80, that makes no difference whatsoever. Look at Norman Wisdom, he was still jumping up and falling off bloody things when he was 90! My point is, why would I leave something that I love so much? If it wasn’t working for me, that might be different. But it is working for me.

‘The only thing I’m going to change is that the UK tour will be different next year. It will be cherry-picked, one or two shows, and bigger venues. The rest of the work in England remains the same – Butlins, and all those things I do. Also, working abroad is a lot easier, because they pick me up, the rest of the band too, and they organise the gear. I find it very pleasurable. I was in Holland last week and did two shows, and it really was excellent. And when I played with Alice Cooper and people like that this year, and Billy Idol, it was so much fun, because the crowds were big.

‘I just stood there one day, thinking there’s nothing quite like this. It’s everything I worked for. I stand there and I’m completely in control of it, because I’m somewhat the last man standing on that stage, right?’

And with that our link was lost and Dave was gone, probably with just about enough time for a quick cup of tea (maybe even a cup-a-soup) before his next call. Here’s to the future, Dave, it’s only just begun. Keep on rocking, into the next decade and beyond.

Dave Hill’s Slade are joined on their final Xmas UK tour by Oxfordshire four-piece Sons of the Seventies, playing covers of classics from the era. They open at the White Rock, Hastings (Fri 28 Nov) and Dreamland, Margate (Sat 29 Nov), then head for Holmfirth Picturedrome (Wed 10 Dec) before O2 drop-ins at Liverpool Academy (Fri 12 Dec), Bournemouth Academy (Sun 14 Dec), Oxford Academy (Tue 16 Dec), Shepherd’s Bush Empire (Wed 17 Dec), Newcastle City Hall (Thu 18 Dec),  Birmingham Academy 2 (Sat 20 Dec) and the Ritz, Manchester (Mon 22 Dec), with tickets via here. For more information head to the website or head to Instagram or Facebook.

You can also order a copy of the hardback edition of Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade (Spenwood Books, 2023) via Burning Shed or direct from the author via this website for a signed and personalised copy… while stocks last.