Going to the Bahamas wasn`t anything a lot of people did back in 1971. Hell, I`ll dare to say that it is quite unusual even today. Slade were there for four months according to this article, but it paid off as they got their first ever No. 1 single out of it. And the hits would continue to flow out of them for many years thereafter.
Going to the Bahamas may not be such a bad idea when it pays off like this. Now, if it wasn`t for that damned Covid-19…
Read on!
How Slade`s image caused them bovver
By Richard Green
THE SKINHEAD era worked two ways on Slade – who had become the first group of the skinhead kind. It brought them to the attention of a whole lot of new people, but it also meant some cancelled bookings when promoters got scared about bovver boys in the audience.
When I first saw Slade they were called Ambrose Slade and playing at Newcastle City Hall some three years or so ago. With me was Chas Chandler, who is now the group’s manager, and he was there again when I met up with the lads again in London this week.
HAIR CUT
A series of interviews had been arranged, but when Slade’s single went straight into the NME chart at no. 9, Chas decided to hire a suite at the Inn On The Park and turn it into a celebratory work/play afternoon. Soon after I arrived I sat round a table with Chas, Dave Hill and Jimmy Lee and began chatting about the group. I first asked them about the changes that have taken place within Slade.
“You’ll probably find we’re doing the same opening number now as we were when we started,” Jimmy pointed out. “The only reason we had our hair cut was we were just fed up with looking the same as every other group. But if you look at pictures of us taken in the beginning, you’ll see Dave’s hair was short then.”
Commented Dave: “People made more out of the skinhead thing than we did. We got scared going round London and seeing posters up of us as skinheads.”
Manager Chas put in: “All we did was take three ads in the NME in a row and everybody else sprang in from there with labels.”
So if Slade weren’t real skinheads, why did a few promoters get the wind up?
“People were worried about the kind of people that we were going to appeal to and draw, and they thought ‘We’d better pull them out,’ ” Dave replied. Jimmy came in with: “We’ve never had any bother at gigs. Places we’ve played have built up and up and up for us.”
Which led Dave into: “They’ve accepted us as a group and they come to see us. They don’t bother how we look.”
The single, which Jimmy and Noddy Holder wrote, has given Slade’s career a big boost, and the group put their own success and that of the single down to five years of solid hard work building up a huge and faithful following.
Dave explained: “There was the following that we’d had for a long time anyway, and `Get Down And Get With It’ being played a lot through Radio One Club built a following over the top of that. It’s hard to say just what it is about the group that people like – I think we’ve just been going round the country for so long, working so hard, that our name has built up and people keep coming back to see us.
“Our show isn’t planned, it’s a natural. Last week we did ‘Top Of The Pops’ and we were really rushing about like mad and worrying about doing a recording session that night as well. We thought it would be really bad but it turned out so well we were surprised. You can hear the atmosphere on the tapes.”
AMERICA
“The other night we went on and we felt really p—d off, but it just happened, it just came about that people enjoyed us,” Jimmy added.
Don Powell strolled over to join us as I was asking Dave and Jimmy about the report that they’d turned down a million-dollar American deal, to which Dave said: “It sounds a bit too good to be true. We’re fine with what’s going on here now.”
Don commented: “The point is, if you hear two American guys come up behind you and say ‘We’re going to put a million dollars behind you,’ you think `Hello?`”
“We’d like to be successful in our own way in America,” Dave chipped in, and Don added: “We’ve had to fight to make it here and we`d like to do it the same way in America. We didn’t want to become another Monkees and go down as fast as we came up.” During Slade’s recording session — to which fans had been invited — at London’s new Command Studios, I popped in one night and was surprised at the sheer force of Slade’s performance and the uninhibited way in which the audience responded. It is, it seems, all down to excitement with Slade. Even when the group started out they were playing Tamla Motown numbers and giving them a bit of bite. Of that era, Jimmy recalled: “We were doing Motown when it was considered underground. The only other group we knew who were doing it were Action, though I never saw them.” “We often think about doing it now — there are great melodies in Motown stuff. Will we do any? We never know, we never know what we’ll do,” said Dave. And Jimmy came in again with: “We just try to get as much melody and excitement as we can.” And then Dave was saying: “We have mixed musical ideas but that’s good – we swop the writing round and different things come out.” Is there a typical Slade audience? “It’s mixed: there’s no bag for it,” Dave replied, and Jimmy took over by explaining: “About three and a half years ago we had to play a Top Rank and we thought `Oh, shit,’ but they were great and we went down well.”
By now, the suite was getting mighty crowded. Drinks were flowing freely, sandwiches had appeared, boxes of cigarettes were everywhere and a real party was beginning to emerge. So just to dampen the proceedings, I asked the lads if at any time, during all the years they’ve been cracking away before getting a hit record, they ever felt like packing it all in.
BAHAMAS
“We spent four months in the Bahamas getting ourselves together and we said `It`ll be make or break when we get back’ and it started to go up and up as soon as we get back,” Jimmy, told me. “It`s all becoming very solid, building up brick by brick. We’ve been improving all the time.” “There are things coming out all the time,” Don remarked. “More ideas seem to come out now than ever before.” Perhaps Jimmy summed it all up best when he said: “We’ve been together five years and we’ve been a GROUP all that time, not like four blokes just thrown together. The Beatles and the Who were together years before they made it. We’ve got past the stage where we’d break up — we’ve been together so long. When I see old mates that I haven’t met for years they sometimes say `Are you still with Slade` and they seem surprised, but none of us could play with anybody else now.”
And with that explained, we all got down to the serious business of ordering another round off Slade’ passing publicist. It all became a bit hazy after that – probably something to do with being so high up in the building!
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