Darren Johnson selects his top five deep cuts from Slade’s 1970s output. This coincides with publication of Slade In The 1970s, part of Sonicbond’s Decades series, which examines the band’s career during the decade that made them famous, including a track-by-track look at every album and every single released during that decade.
‘Sweet Box’ (1970)
Ex-Animal and Hendrix manager, Chas Chandler, took over as the band’s manager and producer in 1969 whereupon he shortened their name from the clunky Ambrose Slade, encouraged them to tone down some of the overly-fussy, more psychedelic arrangements heard on their debut album and set about producing their next one, Play It Loud. The final track is one of the album’s real highlights and most closely points the way towards the archetypal Slade song – combining melody, simplicity, power and punch. The main writing team at this stage was still Jim Lea (coming up with the melodies) and Don Powell (working on the lyrics). Though Noddy Holder was soon to replace Powell in the lyric department, Powell excelled himself in his inspirations for this one, with the opening line ‘Five! Shade! Six! Size! Cut! Out!’ coming from a dressmaking pattern!
‘Kill ‘Em At The Hot Club Tonight’ (1973)
‘Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me’ was the last in a run of five fast and furious hard-rocking Slade anthems that began with ‘Take Me Bak ‘Ome’ – and followed with ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’, ‘Gudbuy T’ Jane’ and ‘Cum On Feel The Noize’ – before the band slowed things down a notch with the likes of ‘My Friend Stan’. The B-side of ‘Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me’ is ‘Kill ‘Em At The Hot Club Tonight’ – a gorgeous, unexpected hot-club-jazz-like number that channels the spirit of Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli. Holder and Lea were huge fans of the duo, and Lea’s violin-playing on the track very much echoes that of Grappelli.
‘She Did It To Me’ (1974)
After the release of the stand-out ballad from the Old New Borrowed And Blue album, ‘Everyday’, as a single, it was back to full-throttle Slade with ‘The Bangin’ Man’. However, the B-side – the beautifully poignant ballad ‘She Did It To Me’ – is perhaps the best non-album B-side the band ever released. It can be viewed as a companion piece and lyrical follow-up to ‘Everyday’, and appears to address the same lover. But the love that ‘won’t die’ in the former song appears to have hit a brick wall. Like ‘Everyday’, ‘She Did It To Me’ definitely had the qualities needed for a memorable, heartfelt hit, but Slade were wise to the fact that they could not release another ballad so soon after ‘Everyday’, and that it was time to hit the fans with a blast of what the band were best known for.
‘Nobody’s Fool’ (1976)
Slade’s all-consuming obsession during 1975 and 1976 was trying (and failing) to crack America. Accordingly, they recorded an album over there. Holder told Sounds in 1975: “It’s a rock album, but it’s not the old Slade Rock. It’s completely influenced by being in America. We’ve spent a lot of time, a lot of care over it. There are lots of new ideas. There are some connections with the past, admittedly, but there’s also a lot of new stuff.” ‘Nobody’s Fool’ was the title track of said album and was also released as a single. With its laid-back AOR rock vibe and soulful female backing vocals, this was Slade entering new musical territory. While the album reached a respectable 14 in the UK album charts, the single failed to reach even the top 50 – by far the worst showing for a Slade single since 1970. Its commercial failure was the first sign that Slade might be heading for serious trouble.
‘It’s Alright Buy Me’ (1978)
This was the B-side of a 1978 single called ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Bolero’. With its piano intro, ghastly syndrum and Lea’s electric violin, ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Bolero’ is the sound of Slade trying to keep up with the times, but losing what they are about in the process. It sounded overwrought, over-produced and overly cluttered. It was the first single the band produced themselves, and has the feeling of kids being let loose in a sweet shop and wanting to try a bit of everything. The B-side – the wonderful ‘It’s Alright Buy Me’ – was produced by Chandler, and is vastly superior to the A-side. It remains an unsung Slade classic, with its powerful machine-gun-like bass and life-on-the-road lyric. It showed that the band could deliver memorable hard rock with a modern twist – if only they could find a market for it. It took until the early-1980s to find such an audience – following Slade’s spectacular comeback at the 1980 Reading Festival – but much of the sonic template for that comeback could be found in this obscure B-side.
Further information
‘Slade In The 1970s’ by Darren Johnson – published by Sonicbond Publishing is out now:
Blog: https://darrensmusicblog.com/
Publisher: https://www.sonicbondpublishing.co.uk/
Book: https://burningshed.com/sonicbond/darren-johnson_slade-in-the-1970s_book
Also listen to The Strange Brew Podcasts covering Slade’s biggest hits: Jim Lea – Part 1 and Jim Lea Part 2
SLADE ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!…………….YEAH!
The inspiration for “Sweet Box” is quite obviously Jethro Tull’s “Sweet Dream”. Slade even used a guitar riff from that JT-song at 1:50.
I remember buying “Skweeze me Pleeze me”, when it came out. I always preferred the b-side “Kill em” and never understood, why they didn’t use that as the a-side. Maybe they did not want to return to that “Coz I luv you” style…who knows… BTW the original “Skweeze me” single mix (in mono !) has never ever appeared anywhere else since. Every sampler contains the much longer stereo mix, which does not have the same energy.
Anyway, Slade were a great band with a lot more “deep cuts” in their catalogue.