Slade Bak 'Ome Article: 1973

Slade stomp back to Blighty with a silver Christmas banger!

one-page article in Record Mirror, December 22, 1973.

More Slade festive stomps added weekly..

THERE'S no need to tell you that Slade are back in England because you undoubtably know. Not only have they once again retürned from 'for-eign parts' but they've also come stomping back with a new single that went 'silver' before it was even officially released. 'Merry Xmas Every-body' is in my opinion the best one they've released since Cum On Feel the Noise and I've no doubt that many swinging grandma, let alone a happy bopper, will be leaping about to its strains over the New Year.

They just never seem to stop do Slade. They put in more gruelling hours on the road than any other band I know and yet they're always the same. Cheerful, pleasant, and in the nicest possible way a bit loony

Wednesday at Top of the Pops was no exception. They'd had two breakdowns on the way down the motor-way due to petrol problem which a certain gentleman insists on telling us there is nothing to worry about(!) and they'd recently returned from an extensive tour of the States and a shorter one of Europe.

Don Powell is undoubtably well on the way to a complete recovery and a confirmation of this lies in the fact that he's managed to stand up to ri gours of the last two tours.

'It was my doctor who advised me that the best thing I could do would be to get back into touring again as soon as possible,' he said. I think he thought that this would help me get over the accident mentally which was obviously of prime impor-tance. The only thing was, that before we left, I had to re rehearse the numbers, be cause I found that I'd forgot-

ten them. I'm back into the swing of things now though which is a bit of a relief'.

Slade's tour of the States looks as though it could be the beginning of the clincher that will finally break them over there in a big way.

'On this tour we were head lining' said Noddy. 'On the whole, the audiences were fantastic and even in places where we hadn't had any kind of record success, news of our reputation seemed to have preceeded us and we had full houses. On average we were playing in halls that seated around six to eight thousand. You see, we think the only way to break through there is to do it gradually. We'll get around to the twenty thou-sand seaters later!

Early teen

'Another good thing on this last tour is that the audiences were younger than on the last trip and I think this is a good thing. We're trying to reach the early teen market because this is how we've done it in England. There's still a sprinkling of the over twenties* who come along though and that certainly does no harm.

Although their records re-ceived good reviews, their live shows were often panned by the critics and Noddy feels that more often than not the criticism was totally unjusti-fied.

'In Seattle for instance, the chap who came to review us wrote 'Slade fail to rouse audience'. We couldn't be-lieve it. We'd had six encores and the kids were leaping around all over the place.

Finally this particular critic had so many complaints from the kids who were there, the he rewrote the thing saying com-pletely the opposite. He sounded a bit bonkers to me. Still, perhaps he was never at the show in the first place.

'It's weird actually because N it seems that only the bad reports have filtered back to England. Its always that way. But quite honestly, the tour went very well indeed.

'The only major changes we did to the act was to cut out the soccer cheers because obviously they mean nothing over there. In fact we cut out a lot of the chat and just concentrated on good solid rocking.'

The band are all looking forward to the Xmas holiday. Although the actual time off they'll get is only a week, they spend so little time at home that it must seem like a godsend. Dave for instance has recently bought a new house just outside of Birming ham and at the moment he's planning to throw a party for the rest of the band.

'It'll be sort of a house warming' he explained. 'Be-sides I've recently bought a Great Dane and I need some help to exercise him. I can't believe how quickly he's grow-ing. Each time I come back he's about three feet taller. If I run with him round the garden I take about five steps to his one. On top of that he eats ten pounds worth of food a week. I've got a feeling it would be cheaper to feed an entire family! Actually he's a fantastic dog besides it'll be good exercise for Noddy!'

After Xmas of course its

back on the road With over-seas tours of Japan, Australia and the States lined up, as well as the release of their new

album 'Old New-Borrowed Blue' in February, '74 looks like being yet another success ful year for the group. Mean

Be happy for Christmas

by Michael Jackson

HI RRM READERS,

This is Michael Jack-son speaking to you from Los Angeles. A few weeks ago I spoke to Robin along with Jer-maine and Hazel. I had just rushed home from school and as you prob-ably know, we were fooling around a lot when we were talking. We were asked about Christmas, but all of us were in such a funny mood that we couldn't really think about Christmas too serious-ly. So, Reggie said that I would make sure to send you all a Christmas message that would ar-rive in time. Anyway,

here goes. On behalf of all of us in the Jackson Five, Merry Christmas We've been very lucky this year and I think that's about the best thing anybody could get for Christmas

good luck, and being very healthy. Presents are good too,

We also visit nearby hospitals to bring presents to kids who are going to have to spend

while its 'Merry Xmas Everybody', of as Noddy might put it 'keep on Roooooockiiiing!

but being happy is much more important. We're sorry that we didn't make it to England this year. I hope you don't think that we've forgot-ten you, because it's not like that at all. We had other things we had to do and one of them was schooll

We always get asked what we do for Christ-mas. We celebrate it just like you do, except we have a pretty big noisy family. It's the one time of the year when we all gather round a piano and sing, even my mom and La-Toya who's usually too shy to even sing in the bathroom. This year, Hazel's family will be with us, and if Tito's baby makes as much noise as he has already, he'll howl us all out of the room!

their holidays in the wards. It's a great ho-nour for us. We don't usually see who's in our audiences, but when you go into a hospital ward, you see everyone. It's the greatest feeling, you know. And you don't have to be in a group to go around cheering up less fortu nate people at Christ-mas. Anyway, that's about all. We'll be back next year, and that's a

promise. In the mean-time, keep playing our records, and Merry Christmas from the Jackson Five!!!