The year that Slade took the country by storm was perhaps one of the most tumultuous in British history. As London was rocked by IRA bomb attacks, millions went on strike in protest over government pay restraints. The oil crisis saw motorway speed limits reduced from 50mph and, by the end of 1973, coal shortages resulted in power cuts and the implementation of the Three-Day Week.
Yet blaring out from every battery-operated radio and every teenager’s bedroom was the sound of Slade. Cum on Feel the Noize and Sqweeze Me Pleeze Me both topped the charts, as did their best-selling Christmas hit Merry Xmas Everybody. The joyous glam rock sound, with their quirkily misspelt song titles, was quite the contrast to the chaos unfolding across the nation, but flamboyant guitarist Dave Hill is convinced that’s exactly why they captured the public’s imagination.
“1973 was one heck of a year,” he reflects. “The mood of the country was low, amidst strikes, lack of money and three-day weeks. But all through that there was joy in the music we were doing. We raised a nation. I think people thought, ‘To hell with all of this, we’ve had a rough year, we’ve had a lot of problems, look at this’. We brought fun and colour.”
Incredibly, today, 52 years on, the group is still touring to packed audiences of thousands of excited fans. Dave, who has been with the group since the start, has no doubt as to why they are still pulling in the crowds all these decades later. “There is something reassuring about Slade’s music,” he says. “Everyone wants to have that feeling of returning to their happiest times. It doesn’t mean to say they’re not happy now, but they’ll never be the same as they were when they were young and the world was in front of you.”
In 1973 Slade consisted of lead guitarist Dave, lead singer Noddy Holder, drummer Don Powell and bass guitarist Jim Lea. But it was Dave, in his trademark gigantic platform boots and with a huge grin across his glitter-painted face that always caught the camera on their frequent Top of the Pops appearances.
“I used to say to Nod and Jim, ‘You write ‘em and I’ll sell ‘em’.” he recalls with a smile. “And I’d come with the magnificent crazy costumes – I was having the time of my life.”
Sadly, all good things eventually come to an end and 62 years on from their 1963 formation in Wolverhampton, the band are about to embark on their final tour. The shows kick off in Hastings and Margate next month, followed by further dates around the country.
“I will not stop doing gigs or festivals, I’m just stopping touring,” Dave explains. “The joy hasn’t gone. But I’m approaching 80 and while I don’t feel at all old, realistically, when I’m on stage, it is quite physical, so I don’t want to do back-to-back shows anymore.”
As nostalgic as the concerts will be, the final tour sadly isn’t enough to bring the four original bandmates back together. Dave is still good friends with Noddy, who was the first to quit Slade in 1992, but he is no longer in touch with Don and Jim.
“There’s no chance of the four of us getting back together to perform,” he says frankly. “It wasn’t possible years ago; it certainly isn’t now. I don’t really want to get into any reasons why people are not with me. There are a lot of reasons. Everybody’s changed, everybody’s doing something else.
“I don’t see Jim and Don. Jim lives quite close to me and he’s doing his own music. Don married a Danish girl and has a couple of bands and he’s doing his own thing. But Nod and I have always been extremely close – we’re buddies for life. When he retired from music, I understood. But I was only 40 and I had to continue. I was still young and I had three kids.”
Dave is chatting via zoom from his music room, with an impressive number of guitars displayed on the walls behind him – 15 at the last count, including the original electric guitar that created the unmistakable Slade sound.
“It was 1967 and our manager told me to get a better guitar. He said I wouldn’t get anywhere with the guitar I had,” Dave recalls. “I went down to London on the train and saw this guitar in the window of a shop on Shaftesbury Avenue. I told them I was going to go home and ask my dad for the money. They put it away for me and my dad drove me down the next day and parked outside the shop and bought it for me. And that guitar sound is Slade. I have a very strong, loud style in the Slade songs – it has a lot to do with the guts of the music.”
Dave still lives in Wolverhampton with Jan, his wife of more than 50 years, who he met before the band found fame. The couple have three children and six grandchildren, who all appreciate Slade’s music. “My nine-year-old grandson tells Alexa: ‘Play Granddad’s Christmas song’, Dave laughs. “And Alexa says, ‘Excuse me? What do you mean?’”
While the band have amassed an incredible 21 Top 20 records, including the hits My Friend Stan, Mama Weer All Crazee Now and Far Far Away, it’s Merry Xmas Everybody that is still the most played of all their songs. But Dave says that it was only thanks to John Lennon that it was recorded in the first place. In the summer of 1973, Slade found themselves in New York with a few days off.
“The record company wanted us to release a Christmas song. Noddy and Jim had written it, but I hadn’t even heard it at this stage,” he says. “Our manager said he would speak to John Lennon who was in a studio. John said, ‘You can have the studio time, I’ll leave my album for now, I can come back to it’. We went into the studio, learnt the song and recorded it in a week.”
Released in December of that year, it became their sixth number one, remaining in the top spot until January and staying in the Top 50 for nine weeks. The song charted every year in the early half of the 1980s, again in 1998 and every year since 2006. “The impact of that record really threw me,” Dave says. “We once played Reading Festival in the middle of the summer. We hadn’t planned to sing it, but 40,000 started shouting for it!”
Life hasn’t always been easy for Dave. He has suffered bouts of depression and in 2010 had to take three months off work after having a stroke on stage in Germany in front of 8,000 people.
But at 79 he is still as exuberant and happy as the young guitarist stomping around the Top of the Pops stage and he is still breaking new ground; next year he releases his first ever solo album, poignantly produced by Noddy Holder’s son Django. Meanwhile, when he walks out on stage next month during his farewell tour, alongside new Slade bandmates John Berry, Russell Keefe and Alex Bines, he will allow himself a small moment of reflection.
“I’ll stand on stage and think to myself, ‘Here’s a boy that was really bad at school and a bit of a loner; here’s a boy that didn’t get girlfriends. I had buck teeth and big ears, I was conscious of that and I wondered what I would do in life’,” he says. “Yet here I am at 79 still performing. And in those moments of fun on stage, I become very young in my head. Not many people in their lives will stand in front of 80,000 people and know that the majority of that audience are affected by your music. People come up to me and say, ‘Thank you for making my youth great’. That is a legacy.”
Slade’s final tour starts November 28 in Hastings. For tickets and dates, visit davehillslade.com/tour-dates
