Celebrating another 12 months of WriteWyattUK feature/interviews – the 2023 quotes review

Posted on December 30, 2023 by writewyattuk

In which we take our annual delve into the WriteWyattUK feature/interview archives, picking out a few choice quotes from the last 12 months

January

Guitar Man: Damian O’Neill, out with The Undertones, amid acclaim for an crann. Photo: Rosa O’Neill

The Undertones, That Petrol Emotion and The Everlasting Yeah guitarist Damian O’Neill, on the rightly acclaimed an crann, in this case on the subject of ‘Malin Head Imminent’, conveying ‘happy childhood holiday memories at Slievebawn, Co. Donegal.’

“Yeah, most of the album is very introspective, looking back, and the music suits the mood, I think, especially on that – that’s one of the standout tracks. It builds and builds and has this lovely feel about it, this nostalgic look back to when we were kids, staying in this little green hut. Lovely memories.”

Signing Up: Rick Buckler with an early draft of The Jam: 1982, co-written with Zoe Howe

Legendary Jam drummer Rick Buckler, following the publication of The Jam 1982, co-written with Zoe Howe, regarding the affinity the Woking three-piece had with their devoted fanbase

‘A lot of that came from the very early days when we were playing the clubs. A lot of people twigged that if they got there in the afternoon, especially London shows and pubs, we’d be doing soundchecks at about three or four o’clock. They’d come along, get stuff signed, and just talk to us.

‘This was prior to us getting signed. And the first thing we did with the record company was sort a tour, which involved only London – the Red Cow, the Nashville, the Marquee, those sorts of places. John {Weller} wasn’t particularly keen on it. But it was something we did and carried on through to playing the larger shows.’

Parasol Survivor: Sam Brown found her voice again, for album Number 8. Photo: Ren Brocklehurst

Singer-songwriter Sam Brown on how 2023 album Number 8 required a little thinking outside the (voice) box, mid-lockdown, alongside long-time friend/co-writer Danny Schogger

‘When I began experiencing difficulties with my voice, I started on a rigorous pursuit of answers. I worked with top voice trainers, here and in America. I saw reputed voice doctors, did speech therapy, hypnotherapy, therapy, therapy! Yoga, acupuncture, nutrition, crystal healing …

‘Nothing changed my inability to achieve pitch and closure simultaneously. A fundamental problem. Along with my voice, my creative impetus also disappeared. I didn’t play anything or write anything. I didn’t want to. It was upsetting, to say the least. 

‘Long story short, we tried, and we did. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, and there were tears. Danny was amazingly patient, and we ended up with an album’s worth of tracks, the recording a wonderful revelation, all done on Skype and Zoom. Danny did most of the instrumental side of things in his home, I worked at home with my Melodyne programme, allowing me to sing something in any pitch then move it to where I wanted it … and tune it – essential!
 
‘It also meant I could add harmonies, double-tracking, etc. My brother Pete came on board at the mixing stage, fine-tuning what I’d done already. The end-result? Like nothing I’ve ever done before. In short, it’s all fake!’

February

Head Trip: Andrew Roachford, facing up to his live performing fears down the years

Former Roachford frontman turned long-established solo artist Andrew Roachford, who also features with Mike + the Mechanics, on whether he still gets nervous before live engagements, and if he reckons such nerves are essential

‘Ah, always. Especially the first date. Even if you haven’t done it for a month or something, you still feel there’s a bit of rust and wonder, ‘How’s this gonna go down?’ It’s a weird thing that you get into this head trip, but I can’t remember many bad gigs, so I don’t know where that’s all coming from, because it always works out. But I think some artists say it’s because you care, and you want it to be the best.

‘I grew up listening to really great live performers and really appreciate a good live gig. I don’t want, you know, lukewarm – people going, ‘Oh, it was okay.’ It doesn’t work that way for me. I’m looking to have people leave there completely blown away and lifted. It’s quite a pressure I put on my own shoulders.’

Heart Full: Graham Gouldman, still on the road and in the studio, six decades after writing his first songs

Graham Gouldman, touring with his Heart Full of Songs show in 2023, on Jeff Beck, the songwriting legend and former 10cc star having first met the guitar hero – who died in January 2023 – and The Yardbirds, just after they recorded his song, ‘Heart Full of Soul’, in 1965. Jeff went on to record another of his songs, ‘Tallyman’, in 1967

‘I never really hung out with them. I was introduced to them by their manager, Giorgio Gomelsky. They were very nice and everything, but it was never like, ‘Let’s have a drink together.’ I’m not being detrimental to them. I was quite a shy boy anyway. They were very nice, and I’m eternally grateful to them, because they recorded my songs. And also because Jeff recorded ‘Tallyman’, so I’m really proud to have had an association with them and with him in particular. Like many others who have said it because of his untimely passing, he was quite simply the greatest guitarist in the world.

‘There’s no one that plays like him. I’ve worked with some of the greatest guitarists in the world. Most recently, Brian May, doing a record with him. He is a phenomenal guitar player but he himself acknowledges the fact that Beck is the greatest.’

Sweet Marlody: Skep Wax Records signing Marlody put out a winning debut LP in 2023

Kent-based solo artist Marlody, discussing some of the darker subject matter on her stunning 2023 debut LP, I’m Not Sure At All

‘I wrote most of it when I was in the process of being diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a very tumultuous time for me, when going to sing and play piano was kind of like my therapy, really.

‘I never wrote the songs with the idea of sharing them, they were just for me. This was other people’s suggestions that I thought, okay, put them into the world. The only one I wrote with other people in mind was ‘Friends in Low Places’. I was doing a spark therapy group as part of my trying to get through my depression. And there were these people that I met there, some really struggling with loneliness and stuff. I wrote that song kind of thinking I would share it with them, but then I was too shy. But now I’ve put it out into the world, more people are going to hear it than the eight people that are in the group!’

Goth Justice: John Robb published The Art of Darkness in 2023. Photo: John Middleham

Louder Than War supremo and Membranes/Goldblade frontman John Robb, on the subject of 650-page epic read, The Art of Darkness: The History of Goth, in which he concludes ‘goth is in rude health’

‘The art of darkness is all around us, reacting to the dystopian like it always has. Every generation is still dealing with its blues.  

‘Culture blur continues – where it was once easy to stand out in the crowd, provocative clothing has become normalised, and those without tattooed skin are the exception. Piercings fall in and out of fashion and are no longer the signifiers of alternative culture. Black clothes are just another Friday night option, and skulls adorn everything from school bags to cereal packets. The dark side has become cartoon fun instead of a badge of the underground.

‘Yet beyond the mainstream’s meddling and cynical appropriation of the surface of a darkly attractive form, the post-punk alternative’s dark matter and energy are everywhere. Thankfully, the new dark ages still require a fitting soundtrack and the art of darkness is the only modern art that truly defines these dystopian end times.’

March

Troubadour Tread: Steve Brookes in live action, five decades down the line. Photo: David Coombs

Steve Brookes, co-founder of The Jam, who saw plenty of praise for 2021 LP Tread Gently, on how – despite 45-plus years as a solo singer-songwriter – he’s still remembered for that early role, despite leaving the band in 1975, before they properly took off

‘I still get that, especially if I do a gig around Woking, these people that come out of the woodwork. People you’ve never met in your life come up to you and have these recollections of things {they feel} you were at that they were. They talk to you about it, and you think, ‘You know what, mate, I wasn’t there. You’ve got it all wrong. That was two years after I left the band, and you’re telling me you remember me doing something.’ But I don’t bother correcting them. It’s just too complicated. I’ll just say, ‘Yeah, you’re probably right,’ or ‘I don’t remember that, but you’re probably right,’ let them carry on!’

Think On: Nik Kershaw, still recording and performing four decades beyond his MCA Records deal

Eighties synth-pop icon Nik Kershaw, who now has nine solo albums behind him and continues to tour frequently, describing himself as a late developer, having first picked up a guitar when he was 15, inspired by a small screen feature on David Bowie just after the Ziggy Stardust era

‘I was just getting into music when I saw a documentary on Nationwide, which was like The One Show in the ’70s. It was literally a 20-minute documentary piece about Bowie on tour. He must have already released the Aladdin Sane album because he was doing songs from that. That would have been my first {Bowie} album, then I went back to Ziggy and Hunky Dory and all that.

‘I always wanted to be the centre of attention, and thought, ‘I want to be a famous racing driver’, ‘I want to be a famous footballer’, ‘I want to be a famous actor’ … Then Bowie came along, and it was, ‘I want to be a famous performer, singer-songwriter, whatever.’ Then a mate got an electric guitar and I used to go around his and every Sunday afternoon and he’d pretend he was Marc Bolan and I’d pretend I was Bowie, and we just sort of made a lot of noise together.

‘Then I got my first guitar and locked myself in my room, slowing down Ritchie Blackmore solos.’

Road Rave: Dodgy’s (from left) Nigel, Andy, Mathew and Stuart. Photo: Jason Mcintyre

Nigel Clark, busy as a solo artist and with Dodgy in 2023, on joining forces with bandmate and Dodgy co-founder Mathew Priest back in the late ‘80s

‘I answered an advert in a local paper, looking for a singer. I was just starting out, musically. I’d been doing it quite a few years, recording demos, and thought it was about time I got a band. I met Mathew that way, he was the drummer in the band, and we decided after about a year that we were really serious about it.

‘I went to America, travelling, came back and decided I was either going to live in New York or London. And he said, ‘I’ll come.’ So we did it together, which was brilliant. It would have been difficult on my own. I tried to always be Mr Overconfident, saying, ‘I’m going’ but it was a lot better and easier that I had someone with me.

‘When we first moved down in 1988, we lived in Battersea, and as someone into punk, the soundtrack to our first year in London was The Story of The Clash. Mathew knew The Jam more, so I kind of influenced him there. Then his mum and dad went travelling and we sort of inherited their records, which is when I got into Sly and the Family Stone, in a big way. I still think they’re probably the greatest band ever.

‘We were DJs as well. We bought a set-up and would go around colleges and places like that. So we knew what we liked, were vivacious in the music we wanted to listen to, and took on everything. There were things going on – techno, baggy, all that, but we were consuming Simon and Garfunkel, The Beach Boys, then The Beastie Boys, Neil Young. And when we first heard Crosby, Stills Nash and Young, that was it. I love harmony. I don’t think anything’s complete if you can’t sing a harmony. I listen to a lot of Townes Van Zandt these days, always sing harmony to him, thinking, ‘If I knew him …’

Doorstepping Out: Hugh Cornwell, back on the road soon. Photo: Bernard Fevre

Stranglers frontman turned solo artist Hugh Cornwell, out and about with his band in 2023, on his current winning three-piece formula, alongside bass player Pat Hughes and drummer Windsor McGilvray, both lecturers at the ACM, Guildford, a stone’s throw from where The Stranglers formed

‘They’re very gifted, and between us we’ve managed to cover the keyboards option, because I don’t want to take keyboards with me on the road. What I’ve discovered is that because they’ve got such great voices, you can actually summon up a lot of the extra instruments from that, which is really nice. And on some of the old Stranglers songs – we can recreate them using the voices to supplement the guitars and bass, so there’s not so much missing as people would imagine.’

April

Pawn Stars: The Higsons, back in the day, and remembered with much punk/funk fondness

Go-to session brass player Terry Edwards on how important John Peel was to the cause with his breakthrough funk-punk outfit, The Higsons – who released Run Me Down – The Complete 2 Tone Recordings on limited-edition black vinyl in 2023 – fronted by The Fast Show co-creator turned author Charlie Higson, the legendary BBC Radio 1 DJ suggesting a Norwich scene that wasn’t really there until he mentioned it on air

‘Colin {Williams} heard him on the radio saying he lived in East Anglia and there didn’t seem to be any bands around there doing anything. So he wrote in and said, ‘We’re The Higsons, we’re supporting The Fall next week, if you want to come.’ We’d just done our very first demo. He said he couldn’t come to that, but he’d come to whatever the next one was, and we gave him a cassette of five tracks we’d done to eight-track, one of which was ‘I Don’t Want to Live with Monkeys’. He gave us a session on the back of that, out just before two of its tracks came out on a local compilation album {Norwich: A Fine City}.’

Livelong Quartet: Lankum, back with another winning album. Photo by Sorcha Frances Ryder

Ian Lynch on the Mercury Prize-shortlist nominated False Lankum, which won Lankum huge critical acclaim in 2023 and ended up on many end-of-year favourites’ lists, this scribe suggesting the exquisite ‘Clear Away in the Morning’ has elements of Richard and Linda Thompson style folk

‘The way we understand it, or the way we see it, is that we wouldn’t really call the music we make folk. The term isn’t used as much in Ireland anyway, but even traditional … we all know what traditional music is, and all know that what we make is not traditional music.

‘It’s obviously one strong element of what we do, but amongst many other things. But maybe it’s easier to let other people define and analyse to what degree those things are there. We just like making the music, we don’t try and pass all that down, you know.’

Ian’s bandmate Radie Peat, in the same interview, asked what she heard on Jean Ritchie’s 1963 take on ‘Go Dig My Grave’ that made her think it could work for Lankum

‘I just loved that song. I didn’t think it was going to work as a Lankum song for years, but I was tinkering with it, thought it would probably go on a solo album, then it just kind of floated up into my memory or my head or whatever, when we were getting together the material for this album.

‘Hearing the kind of stuff we were writing, I thought it would bring another element to it. It was very obvious it would fit, and it was really easy that day, trying to figure out what to do with it. It came together really fast. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes it’s fast, sometimes it’s really obvious which songs are the right ones, and sometimes it’s not. You just have to work them all, see what jumps out.’

Dynamic Duo: The Selecter originals Pauline Black and Gaps Hendrickson. Photo: Dean Chalkley

The iconic Pauline Black, of The Selecter, who brought us the splendid Human Algebra in 2023, on her long-time friendship with fellow 2 Tone star and sometime tour mate Rhoda Dakar, who won acclaim with her solo LP

‘We are good friends, and she’s an artist in her own right. It doesn’t serve either of us any good just to be lumped together as the women of 2 Tone, and yet people want to do that to us, so we rail against that. I can’t wait for her new album, Version Girl, to be out, because she’s really got the bit between her teeth at the moment.

‘We’ve learned from each other over the years, we’ve learned the pitfalls and we’ve learned how you negotiate everything, because everything was still skewed to a white male kind of musical fraternity. But you make your way in it. And we of course, have the music, which, if you’re dealing with more political or more social things, then we are in the firing line, if you know what I mean. It would be easier to pick us off than it would be, say, the late Terry Hall, or Suggsy, for instance.

‘When you have consistently been there, and really upholding, I think, those twin desires of what 2 Tone was supposed to be about – an anti-racist and an anti-sexist stance … So all power to her, and I think it’s absolutely wonderful that ladies, you know – ha ha! – of a certain age can be doing this.’

May

PA Veteran: Chris Hewitt with his 50th anniversary edition of the 1972 Bickershaw Festival book

Musical archaeologist/vintage audio collector and Deeply Vale Festival creator Chris Hewitt explaining the premise behind his The Development of Large Rock Sound Systems book trilogy  

‘When I first wrote, collated and published Volume 1 in 2020 it was to try and record the history of the PA industry and the companies that grew up as the demand for larger sound systems for larger festivals and larger indoor gigs increased.

‘Volume 2 was released to celebrate 50 years since the Pink Floyd at Pompeii film, which must have inspired many musicians and sound engineers to want to build a large sound system. By then I was researching chapters on particular companies in the pro audio industry and on particular vintage PA systems like the Led Zeppelin and the Pink Floyd Pompeii WEM systems.  

‘Working on the Pistols’ Disney TV series recreations of classic Sex Pistols gigs in 2021 with various PAs brought me into researching Bowie/Ziggy and Ground Control at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1973, as that system had to be recreated for the film, so that led to the Bowie/Ground Control/Turner chapters.

‘When PA systems first started being toured as hire systems and used for festivals, it was an industry of mavericks, often described by people who were doing it as pirates setting sail on a ship and not really knowing where they were going. Hire companies and manufacturers came and went or got taken over, bought out and reinvented. Sometimes the hire companies were set up by bands wanting to get their equipment used when not on the road, like Colac Hire (Colosseum) and Britannia Row (Pink Floyd).

‘It usually started with someone building some bass bins and horns in their garage or building a mixer in their garden shed, and developed from there.”

June

Bathroom Idol: The Beat’s Mirror Man, Dave Wakeling, reflects on his past and looks to the future

Dave Wakeling, touring again with The Beat in 2023, on how he and sorely missed co-frontman Ranking Roger supported Queen on The Works tour in 1984 with their other major band project, General Public, whose first two LPs were reissued on vinyl this year

‘Oh, my heavens! We were thinking it was the Queen that had just done the song with David Bowie, kind of hip and dancy, so thought, ‘It’s a stretch but should be alright.’ But for the live show it was very much the heavy metal fans’ ‘let’s pretend he’s not gay’ show, which always stunned me. So we didn’t really go down that well. I think we went down a bit better in Dublin than other places, but even Birmingham was tough work.

‘At the end of the English run, I said, ‘We really can’t do any more, we’re going down terrible, they’re shouting at us, we’re not even doing our job warming the crowd up, because we’re not their flavour. I said I didn’t want to do the European part of the tour… and we didn’t – we got fired by the agency instead, U2’s agents too. I think it had been done as a favour, some bloke at Virgin was the brother-in-law of the drummer of Queen, although it didn’t really fit together and everybody knew that. But when the obvious became obvious and people were waving ‘fuck off’ fingers at us, I did what I thought was the decent thing, and I’m afraid we got punished for the favour.’

Monochrome Set: The charismatic Steve Harley, without Cockney Rebel, in live action 

Steve Harley, who ended the year revealing his ongoing battle with cancer, talking about 2020 LP, Uncovered, and his fresh take on 1976’s ‘(Love) Compared To You’, complete with poignant third verse

‘Yes, the third verse at last! Ha! We went to Rockfield {Studios, South Wales} to record that, and it’s just strings – guitars, violin, viola, double bass, and a string quartet. No keyboards at all, no electric notes. And that’s how I’m touring, plugging this album, playing four or five songs from it. And the songs evolve, they develop, it’s really thrilling, and the band are such great players.

‘It’s funny how the muse comes and sits on your shoulder for inspiration. You can wait years. And with that third verse, I’d been trying to write it for many, many years, and then I was down at Rockfield in the sunshine at the beginning of July 2019, and I went out into the meadow. My dad died two weeks earlier, and he was being cremated at 8.30 in Bury St Edmunds, about 250 miles from where I was. I was in the meadow while someone was cooking breakfast, looking at the horses and the trees and just enjoying nature, thinking about my dad.

‘And when I walked back in at nine o’clock I said to my engineer and friend Matt Butler, who had been hassling me to write it, ‘I’ve got it. I’ve done it. What do you think of this?’ And he just said, ‘Spot on, well done.’ Very weird. My dad was passing through, yeah.

‘It needed a third verse. It was a bit of a cheap shot, just two verses and repeating one of them. What happened there?’

Mick’s Up: Mick Talbot with Stone Foundation at the Piece Hall, Halifax. Photo: Simon Cullingworth

Style Council co-founder Mick Talbot, who has also featured with Dexys Midnight Runners and more recently guested with Stone Foundation, reminiscing about his music roots

‘We lived with my Nan and she played the piano. It was always essential to her. I remember, when we moved, she was a bit upset we couldn’t take the piano with us. We’d only been in this new place for a matter of days and a piano arrived, hired. She just felt every house should have one – more essential than hot water or central heating! I guess in her childhood that may have been, pre-telly and radio, the most compelling form of entertainment in the room.

‘She’d play by ear and I asked her to show me some things. She tried to, but said that because that was just from instinct, ‘I don’t know how much more I can show you.’ So she got me piano lessons. I didn’t really like the idea of that. I just went ‘no, I like it when it’s just magic.’

‘I could play a little bit by ear, but I did go to lessons for two or three years. It always felt like an interference to me. I was more focused on playing football than going to lessons, but most of it went in… so I’m a bit of a mixture, really.

‘We were in Tooting when we left the old piano behind, about three stops up the Northern Line. My mum listened to the pirate stations in the ‘60s, because they were playing the most soul, I suppose. She liked Tamla and all that.’

Former Carter USM frontman Jim Bob, an established solo artist for a quarter of a century now, on ‘The Prince of Wales’, the closing track of winning 2023 LP, Thanks for Reaching Out, after I suggested it carries elements of The Clash’s ‘Stay Free’

‘Yeah, and ‘Stay Free’ is another good example of that kind of song. But I was thinking of ‘Kooks’ and that idea that, ‘It doesn’t matter what happens, we’ve got each other.’ I always liked that, Bowie telling his kid, ‘If it comes to, we’ll just leave, we’ll walk. If you don’t like school, you can just leave. We’ll just set fire to the books,’ that sort of thing. In an adult way, if you’re having a bad day, it’s, ‘Let’s just go for a drink, forget about it for a bit.’

Do you see this as part three of an album trilogy that opened with 2020’s Pop Up Jim Bob?

“I think so. Because I’ve said that a few times, I’ve started to believe that’s the case. I don’t know how I’ll follow it. I can’t just do another exactly the same. I said this to someone the other day and said it more as a tongue-in-cheek thing, but it sounds sort of arrogant – if Pop Up Jim Bob was Ziggy Stardust and the second one was Aladdin Sane, this one’s Diamond Dogs… and then it’s Young Americans.’

July

Blooming Marvellous: Fliss Kitson and her fellow Nightingales say it with flowers

The Nightingales drummer, co-writer, co-vocalist and tour manager Fliss Kitson, on how she first met Robert Lloyd, while performing alongside Cheri Amour in Norwich indie outfit Violet Violet

‘That was amazing, some of the best times ever. We were at sixth form and there was a battle of the bands’ competition. There were some boys that started a band to take part in it and we wanted to just beat the boys, so we started a band.

‘I was already having drum lessons, and a couple of my friends started to play the bass and guitar and stuff. We didn’t really know what we were doing. We were just having lots of fun. We didn’t win, but we did beat the boys! And we decided to carry on.

‘Some of the girls weren’t as passionate about it or didn’t want to spend that much time making music. They had other stuff they wanted to do. They went off and it was kind of me and Cheri, and we carried on. We had an amazing time… and that’s how I met The Nightingales. We got to support them and travelled around Europe and America and the UK with the ‘Gales. It was so much fun. We just loved it.’

August

Pier Pressure: Wreckless Eric, out and about in old Blighty again last autumn. Photo: Bert Eke

Veteran singer-songwriter Wreckless Eric, making great music 46 years after debut single, ‘Whole Wide World’, on the release of 2023’s Leisureland, which I suggested captures a seaside feel and sense of Englishness, not just with a Beatles, Kinks and Who vibe, but also incorporating a little David Essex in That’ll Be the Day spirit

‘Oh, that’s a very underrated film, an incredible document from that time. You know, you can’t find it anywhere anymore. I thought that was a great film. That was the generation just before mine, but there are so many overlaps. I could relate to it – that post-war austerity was still lingering when I was growing up. But I didn’t want {this album} to be nostalgic. It is contemporary, I think.

‘My viewpoint is contemporary. I mean, the seaside is a fantastic thing. You have these places, and they have a grimy, darker side which is like, what you see is people enjoying themselves, middle-aged men taking their shirts off, their wives thinking, ‘You can carry this off, Mick!’ and they’re going, ‘Yeah, I can. I’ve taken my shirt off. Deal with it!’ I miss that kind of belligerence of the British holidaymaker.

‘But most people are really nice, and there’s something really sweet about people being on holiday and having a great time. You see all that, but behind there’s a whole world of everyday life. There’s seasonal employment, there’s minimum wage employment, there’s a lack of decent places for people to live because everywhere’s rented out for holiday accommodation and the odious AirBnB. And what you get with that is drug problems, and you get a town like Great Yarmouth.

‘Y’know, when everyone was going abroad for their holidays, those towns got incredibly run down, so you get asylum seekers there. ‘We’ll put them where nobody else wants to go.’ And it builds this hell on earth sometimes. It’s a strange dichotomy – on one hand you’ve got this jollity and joyful seaside experience, then you’ve got this awful, dark, other side to it. And to me, the thing that would really sum it up is the stagnant boating lake. They’ve actually filled in the stagnant boating lake in Cromer, made it into a crazy golf {course}.’

September

Powell Praise: Don Powell’s copy of Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade arrives in Denmark

Slade drumming legend Don Powell, in an interview for the final chapter of Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade, on the band’s ‘wilderness years’ – returning from a long spell in America in ’77 and finding themselves at rock bottom, most of their audience having moved on, the loyalty of those who stuck by them seeing them through to a triumphant 1980 Reading Festival rebirth

‘I tell you what, Malc, it never deterred us. We were still giving them the same show. We were down in the dumps, and it was hard to get gigs, so we started doing those particular kinds of clubs. But we wanted to work, and still wanted to play shows. That was it, really. And it wasn’t until the Reading Festival {1980} came up that…

‘I remember Nod calling me. We hadn’t worked together for a couple of months, I think, but he told me we’d been offered Reading Festival, and we were killing ourselves laughing over the phone! But we felt we’d got nothing to lose. We got our gear together, with our equipment in the school room where we used to rehearse in Wolverhampton – just a classroom in a disused school. It was the local vicar who ran it, loaning the classrooms out for bands to rehearse in. I think it was about £4 or £5. We called him Holy Joe. He’d get his fiver, then he’d be up the pub on the corner, about 50 yards away. If you needed him to lock up, you’d find him in the pub!

‘That’s what we did when we were offered Reading. We just had a couple of rehearsals. And we’didn’t really have any passes. We were walking through with the punters, everyone saying, ‘What are you lot doing here?’ And we said, ‘Well, we’re playing tonight!’”

October

Family Entertainers: The Undertones, 21st Century style. From left – Paul, Damian, Billy, Mickey, John

Undertones drummer Billy Doherty on how the band’s homesickness for Derry back in the day may have cost them in the long term

‘Well, I was bad, but John {O’Neill} was even worse – he was on another planet, really extreme. But I would say there was – particularly with me, John, and maybe to some point Mickey – always a reluctance to do it. But unfortunately, I left it too late to realise – and this is going back to 1981 – it is a business.

‘When the band got a {new} record deal and we signed to EMI, I decided I was leaving the band. I went over to England but didn’t go to the signing of the record deal with EMI – which was a really, really good deal. Then I realised I’d made a dreadful mistake, phoned the hotel where the signing was being done to try to speak to my manager, and said to Andy {Ferguson}, ‘I want back in the band.’ He was livid. He said, ‘Billy, do you realise we’re signing a contract here? You’ve left the band, now you want to get back in?’ It got really silly. Anyway, thankfully they allowed me back in again, and the rest is history.

‘Unfortunately, I found the whole kind of rock ‘n’ roll thing… I don’t sit well with it. I find it very uncomfortable. I realised you’ve got to tour and all that, and thankfully – now we’ve got bus passes and some of us are drawing down on the pension – we are exceptionally lucky that we get great support at shows. And I’m really humbled by it. It’s terrific.’

Slady’s Man: The WriteWyattUK wonder with Jem Lea and Gobby Holder. Photo: Richard Houghton

Danie Cox and Wendy Solomon, aka Gobby Holder and Jem Lea of treasured all-female tribute Slady on their raison d’etre, from another interview for Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade

Danie: ‘We do this entirely for the fans. That and the fun of it all. It’s really a truly special feeling being onstage in front of hundreds of people who have all come together in one room to celebrate their love of Slade. Seeing men and women of all ages, screaming out those songs, some even crying. Knowing that I’ve brought a special memory to people’s lives, as a vessel of the Slade experience. We don’t get critics at all really. We get the odd sexist comment or envious swipes, but that’s expected. We can’t make everyone as happy as we are.’ 

Wendy: ‘I agree it’s really special. It’s often about nostalgia for the fans, just capturing an essence of their youth through the songs, the atmosphere, the friends in the crowd. It’s pretty emotional at times and there is a real sense of poignancy underneath the joyous craziness of it all. The doubters are few and far between… and very lonely and sad…’

Poetic Justice: Lancashire lad Paul Cookson loved Slade from an early age

Performance poet and Slade’s own poet laureate, Paul Cookson, again for Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade, on his Lancashire village roots and how that impeded bids to see his favourite band for a few years

‘Being in Walmer Bridge, growing up … when you’re 12 or 13 and from a Methodist church family, none of us took the bus into town to gigs until we were 16 or 17. We’d be playing football and stuff like that. So the only time we were aware of them was on Top of the Pops, or Crackerjack, or Runaround, or Supersonic, or Lift Off with Ayshea. Or as guests on The Bay City Rollers’ show, with the Arrows, or whatever. Because there was nothing on telly, you’d watch every music programme.

‘The thing is, people today think we all dressed like them on Top of the Pops, but we were in browns and yellows. You couldn’t afford the clothing. I had a brown tank top with four stripes, which I thought was very glam, but I looked more like a liquorice allsort… and the fat one that you don’t like eating!

‘I saw them at a big disco place at Liverpool. Oscar’s, 1979. The stage wasn’t even 3ft high. A glitterball disco. They hadn’t yet come back into fashion. ‘We’ll Bring the House Down’ hadn’t come out, and they hadn’t done Reading {Festival}, but some of those songs they played at Reading [August 1980} they played that night, and there were loads of skinheads there, because they always had that following. The girl I was with had this handbag and they were sat around it, so I was a bit nervous, but then they were real gentlemen and said, ‘Here y’are, love!’ and handed it back.

‘I remember them playing ‘Wheels Ain’t Coming Down’. There was loads of dry ice, then they suddenly stopped, as there were two skinheads knocking seven bells out of each other. Noddy said, ‘Will you effin’ stop your effin’ fighting! We’re have to have effin’ fun, for eff’s sake!’ So these two guys stopped, and he said, ‘Right, we’ll effin’ carry on! One-two-three …’ Ha!

‘That was my first time. I was at college at Edge Hill in Ormskirk, and they played Liverpool once or twice over the next couple of years. And I once missed Noddy going into a record shop in Ormskirk, when that EP, ‘Six of the Best’ came out {1980}.

‘I remember walking into Ormskirk, and on the way back I looked in the record shop, having gone a different way into town, and it said, ‘Noddy Holder,’ written on cardboard, ‘appearing at 10 o’clock today.’ And it was 12 o’clock, and he’d gone! I thought that might be my last chance, but I’ve met him several times since…’

November

Sweet Harmonies: Andy Scott, still out and about with Sweet, more than 50 years on

Veteran guitarist Andy Scott, who joined Sweet in 1970, at the beginning of their hitmaking run, the sole survivor from the classic four-piece, on his continued passion for songwriting and performing

‘The older you get, as a record producer… Well, I’m such a bad editor. When I say bad, I mean… if I don’t think an idea is anywhere near where it should be, it gets ditched straight away. So you have these moments where you spring up in the middle of the night and you write down some lyrics or you patter down to the studio area – which is on a gallery, because I live in a barn – and I pick up an acoustic guitar and hopefully record it on the phone before it goes completely.

‘In your dreams, the song’s magnificent. ‘Fox on the Run’ was one of those. It was my friend Kevin who found the original demo. He goes through my cassettes and stuff, where I’m almost whispering and just chunking the acoustic guitar. I wrote that one when living in a house near Heathrow Airport. I woke up in the middle of the night and didn’t want to wake my fairly new-born son and first wife, so I’m going {Andy whispers}, ‘I – I – I don’t want to know your name…’’

Light Painter: Gered today. Photograph copyright of Gered Mankowitz / Iconic Images Ltd. 2023

Legendary music photographer Gered Mankowitz on Christmas parties at his West London studio, with Slade frequent flyers, in another interview for Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade

‘When we had the studio in Great Windmill Street {Soho, pretty much throughout the ’70s, they’d come several times a year. We’d have a big Christmas party there. I’d cook a turkey and a ton of sausages, and we’d make a huge punch, famous for being an absolute killer punch. You had absolutely great sounds, and we invited people from all walks of life, and we’d invite Slade and their roadies, particularly Swinn {Graham Swinnerton}.

‘They arrived, one year, were almost the first there, and I’m at the door welcoming people, saying, ‘Great to see you, go right through, there’s food over there.’ After about 20 minutes, I managed to escape the door, went inside, and the turkey had gone, the sausages had gone, and Slade and the roadies were just sitting around. ‘Great grub!’ They cleaned us out in 20 minutes!’

Neil Sheasby, co-founder and bass player of Stone Foundation, whose tour diary, Bass Notes, was published to acclaim in 2023, on how – amid the 100% effort, drive and determination needed to break the band – an element of luck or fate was needed, in their case a chance meeting at a gig in Camden with Specials drummer John Bradbury, who invited the band on tour.

‘Good luck, fortune, yeah, and that night particularly. These were the early days of the internet and he was just searching, under the pretence it was going to be a Northern Soul night he was starting in London. And he probably did have that in mind. But he walked in, and it was just fortune that the night he had off – and he lived up the road from the Fiddler’s Elbow – we were playing and were the first thing that came up on his search. And in his mind what he really wanted was one of the choices for the support for the tour. He wanted a soul band rather than a ska band. And there we were.

‘My default setting was JB’s Allstars, rather than The Specials, so I was asking how Bill Hurley and Drew Barfield were and what they were up to. He was like, ‘Fucking hell, you remember all that?’ We just kind of bonded, y’know. Common ground, and thankfully we did our thing and he got it. It all unfolded and transpired that this was what he wanted to do, take us out, and that changed everything. For example, we’d never really played Scotland before, yet there we were at the SECC, and then could go back to Glasgow and sell something like King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut.

‘All of a sudden, 10% to 20% of that crowd is going to get what you do. We’re forever thankful for that. Everyone focuses on the {Paul} Weller thing now, but that was a big full circle for me as well, from being a kid. Lynval {Golding} came into the dressing room, and I told him I was at the Rock against Racism gig they played with The Bureau at the Butts. He said, ‘God, man, we done it for the kids like you!’ It steers your path, really – your consciousness of racism or political stance. It influences you. That was 2011, but even at the time was, ‘Bloody hell, that’s mad!”

The Competition: Daryl checks out Wild! Wild! Wild! while promoting Whatever Happened to Slade?

Daryl Easlea on the lesser-known stories he was keen to explore in Whatever Happened to Slade? When the Whole World Went Crazee, not least the Black Country four-piece’s late ‘60s emergence on the London scene, with the Gunnell brothers then Chas Chandler managing

‘As you know, they were sort of removed from the scene, but there was an association, you know – all the people Chas brought with him were the cream of the London scene. And if I hadn’t made contact with these people over the years… Chris O’Donnell is incredible, a sort of secret weapon. He  went on to become Thin Lizzy’s manager, but started with the Gunnells and is still working now, at Live Nation. Such knowledge, and a lovely bloke.

‘When you join all that up, it’s like, ‘So that’s why the Gonzalez horn section was used!’ {on Slade in Flame} – because of the connection Chas had to know them and get them in. For me, finding out Steve Gregory played the flute on ‘How Does It Feel’…!

‘I looked at all the other books and referenced the work, making sure the crediting was there – the work Chris Selby’s done, that Dave Kemp did, and that amazing detail out there. But then {it’s about} bringing the bits to life around it, the context, and why they were there that night or what happened at that time.

‘Like seeing the horn section listed on the back of that record. To me, the thing that makes that record is the flute. When that flute’s doing the semaphore, who played that? I got Chris Thomas and various people to find Steve Gregory. We had this quick interview on the phone, just to say, ‘Yes, it was me.’ That’s what I wanted to do – treat {Slade} like another person would treat The Beatles or treat The Pink Floyd…’

That’s it for this year, with 731,000-plus reads to date at http://www.writewyattuk.com, half a million of those coming in the last half-dozen years and 85,000-plus of those coming this year… so thanks for your ongoing support, folks. The year 2023 also saw the publication of my second book (five years after my Clash biography), Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade, and the 12 months ahead also promise to be busy. Another gear change is expected, but expect several more feature/interviews and reviews here. Watch this space.

And until then, Happy New Year, one and all. Stay safe, keep the faith, and cheers again for checking out the WriteWyattUK website and my online social media links.

You can order Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade direct via Spenwood Books or online via Amazon or try before you buy at your local library or order through your favourite bookseller. You can also track down copies in my old Surrey hometown at Ben’s Collectors’ Records, Tunsgate, Guildford, or closer to my current Lancashire base at Action Records, Church Street, Preston.

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Slade Alive at Christmas – a two-decade trip down Memory Lane … towards Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre

Posted on December 20, 2023 by writewyattuk

There’s a rather wonderful website out there listing more than 20 years of live performances for Noddy Holder, Jim Lea, Dave Hill and Don Powell, marking Slade’s evolution from their time with the bands that preceded the Black Country’s finest through to the final dates for the classic four-piece line-up.

I’ve lost myself in its pages many times, not least while writing, researching and editing Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade. Kudos there, as with so much detailed online information and history concerning this legendary outfit, to Chris Selby, who happens to remain on close terms with members of the group to this day and almost dismissively suggests he was just around ‘right time, right place’ to witness the band’s emergence and chart their progress. From newspaper cuttings to numerous hours scrolling through library archives, Slade fans have much to be thankful for regarding his painstaking research; with Don’s diaries also a great help along the way.

And this week is as good a time as any to skim through those archives in search of festive fixtures from the days of Dave and Don’s old band, The Vendors onwards, celebrating two decades of Christmas shows for an iconic West Midlands outfit forever associated with this magical time of the year.

I’ll start on Friday 20th and Saturday 21st December 1963, with The Vendors at Etheridge Youth Club, Bilston, then Claregate Boys Club, Tettenhall, Wolverhampton, while Noddy’s fledgling outfit The Rockin’ Phantoms were doing their own thing the following lunchtime and the night after at regular haunt, the Three Men in a Boat in Bloxwich, before a Christmas Eve engagement at North Walsall Working Men’s Club.

The following December, 1964, The Vendors were getting bookings as The ’N Betweens, including a Sunday 20th show at the Ship and Rainbow, Wolverhampton, supporting Alexis Korner, and a Boxing Day bill with The Moody Blues at the Casino Club in Walsall, By then, Noddy was with Steve Brett and the Mavericks, also playing Walsall’s Casino Club (23rd), Nottingham’s Bridgford Beat Club (24th), and supporting Tony Dangerfield & the Thrills at the Ship and Rainbow (26th), both bands managing two more shows before the year out, each in Wolverhampton.

By Christmas Eve ’65, The ‘N Betweens were apparently managing appearances at both Harold Clowes Hall in Bentilee, Stoke-on-Trent and the Civic Hall, Brierley Hill, Dudley, ending the year with a New Year’s Eve show at Sneyd Lane Youth Club, Bloxwich. And the following Christmas Eve, 1966, both Nod and Jim now also on board – the classic four-piece in place – they were at Le Metro, Livery Street, Birmingham, finishing the year there a week later at the Silver Blades ice rink. And in December ’67 – when I was barely eight weeks old – they were between dates at the Bolero Club in Wednesbury (24th) and the Woolpack in Salop Street, Wolverhampton (26th), just a few days after a Dudley Zoo date with Jimmy Cliff. Oh, to have witnessed that.

According to the records, they returned to the Woolpack the following Christmas Eve, 1968, also squeezing in a visit across town at Club Lafayette, appearing with the Montanas, before a Boxing Day Bolero Club return, then playing Wolverhampton Civic Hall on Friday 27th with The Idle Race (Jeff Lynne now featuring prominently in Roy Wood’s old band) and The Evolution.

But while there were a pre-Christmas trip to the Bolero Club in 1969, the year they became Ambrose Slade, released their debut album, then with Chas Chandler taking over the reins shortened the name, they were regularly venturing further afield, playing Fisher’s Melody Rooms in Norwich with Eyes of Blond on Christmas Eve, before a Boxing Day return to the Ship & Rainbow (although they were also down for Annabel’s nightclub in Sunderland, that day, a third visit that year, the first two as Ambrose Slade), with Wolverhampton’s Park Hall Hotel and Dudley Zoo’s Queen Mary Ballroom that weekend.

Things had clearly moved on come the first Christmas of the ‘70s, two nights at Glasgow’s Electric Gardens the weekend before the festive break – by which time Play it Loud was in the shops –  followed by a George Hotel date in Walsall on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day’s trip down to the Temple Club on Wardour Street, central London… albeit keeping it real with a Sunday 27th Connaught Hotel show in Wolverhampton.

By Christmas ‘71 we’re talking bona fide pop stars, on the back of first UK No.1, ‘Coz I Luv You’, Slade‘s engagements that festive season including Preston Public Hall (21st), Up the Junction in Crewe (23rd), and back on Wardour Street, this time at the Marquee (24th), finishing the year with a Friday date at The Boathouse, Kew Bridge (29th), the audience for the latter including Andy Scott and Mick Tucker of The Sweet.

In fact, Andy told me recently, “I remember dragging Mick, when I first joined The Sweet, down to the Boathouse at Kew. We walked in, went into the dressing room, and you could see they were getting ready to go on. I said, ‘Nice to see you,’ they went on, and we stood at the back somewhere. And it was like being in a war zone, the sound. They had that huge WEM PA system, which was like, I suppose, a good quality transistor radio turned up very loud. There wasn’t a hell of a lot of frequency differences. But the band themselves… I remember Mick and I both going, ‘Well, you know, that is full on energy!’”

December 1972 involved three London dates between the Sundown Centre, Brixton (a short-lived disco in a venue now better known as the Academy) and linked Sundown Theatre, Edmonton (better known as The Regal), up to the 18th, the final date added to cope with demand. But there were no festive dates listed in 1973, while ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ was at No.1, their third single to enter the charts at the top in that momentous year, a gap showing between November 20th’s European tour finale at Zirkus Krone in Munich and a January 9th US tour opener along with Jo Jo Gunne and Brownsville Station at the Spectrum, Philadelphia.

As for Christmas ’74, the schedule just shows Paris Olympia on December 16th – where French super-fan Gerard Goyer missed out, two days after his 19th birthday, as he was doing compulsory military service – and a TopPop performance in the Netherlands on the 29th, appearing with Mud, The Rubettes, George McCrae, ABBA and Carl Douglas… which all sounds a little bit frightening.

During their US exile, they appeared on Friday 19th December 1975 at The Centrum / Cherry Hill Arena, New Jersey, with Kiss and Steppenwolf, the first band majorly inspired by Slade, the other a key influence on the band at the tail end of the ’60s. And to see Slade ‘Bak ’Ome’ at Christmas you had to wait until December 1979, a private do at St Bart’s Hospital followed by a Goldsmiths College date then Camden’s Music Machine (13th), the latter venue becoming familiar to the Slade faithful (this being their fourth of eight dates at a venue at other times in its distinguished history known as Camden Palace and now Koko), before a Beau Sejour Leisure Centre engagement in Guernsey (22nd), a mixed bill also including West London punks The Lurkers. Times had certainly changed.

Daryl Easlea mentions the St Bart’s function in fellow 2023 arrival Whatever Happened to Slade? He writes, ‘Cutting engineer Phil Kinrade, a lifelong fan, was in hospital in December 1979 at St Barts in London’s Smithfield. Recovering from an operation, lying in bed, he kept thinking he could hear Slade playing in the distance. Worried, perhaps, that he may be hallucinating, Kinrade asked a nurse if he could hear Slade. It transpired the band were playing the hospital’s Christmas party.’

Meanwhile, Dave Hemingway, the former Housemartins drummer/vocalist who went on to feature with The Beautiful South and these days Sunbirds, told me that Goldsmith’s date was his second Slade show, while he was a student there in New Cross. ‘They played the students’ Christmas party when they were assumed to be past it – has-beens. Not a chance. The students’ hall they played had a really low roof, and was long and narrow, with Slade at one end, and I was lucky enough to be around ten yards from the front. I say lucky, but my ears were ringing for two days afterwards. They got a girl up on the stage and Noddy, Jim and Dave just rocked out at her while she danced.’

Live Presence: Dave Hemingway at The Continental, Preston, with his copy of Wild! Wild! Wild!

The following year saw them play Grimsby’s Central Hall on December 22nd, eight days before a Rotters Club engagement in Doncaster, that landing four months after their Reading Festival triumph, fortunes changing again.

That’s where it really came together, those next three Christmases all about celebrating with Slade and finishing the year in style, December ’81’s schedule climaxing at Newcastle’s City Hall (18th), Birmingham Odeon (19th) and Hammersmith Odeon (20th), while the following year also ended at those venues, two nights back in the capital (17th/18th) followed by a Birmingham return (19th).

And then came December 1983, Friday 16th’s Queen Margaret University date in Glasgow and Saturday 17th at Durham University followed by what proved to be Slade’s full UK live finale as the classic four-piece, at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre on Sunday 18th, 40 years ago this week and a year to the day after my sole live sighting of the legendary Nod, Jim, Dave and Don line-up at Hammersmith, when I was barely 15.

There were set to be more, the Black Country’s finest returning to America three months later, supporting their friend Ozzy Osbourne. But they managed just four warm-up dates – one in Texas, two in Colorado, then finally at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California, on Wednesday, March 28th. That was it, Jim collapsing in the dressing room after a performance, later diagnosed with hepatitis C. They returned home and never toured again, Noddy proving resistant to another bash, despite them finally making waves on the US charts, concentrating on sorting out his divorce, Slade’s final decade together confined to the studio and promo appearances.

In early December ’84, a 1985 tour was announced, but while they appeared on BBC children’s TV show Crackerjack! on Friday 14th, within a fortnight that tour was cancelled… and never rearranged.

I’ll head back here to Hammersmith Odeon on Saturday 18th December 1982. Backpacking around the world in 1990/91, I grew to understand how well known the support act, Cold Chisel, were in their native Australia, frontman Jimmy Barnes big news over there at the time. However, while reports suggest there was an impressive turnout from a fair dinkum expat/travelling fraternity, we were across the road soaking up the festive spirit in the Britannia instead.

As I put it in my introduction to Wild! Wild! Wild! heading up by train – Hammersmith bound – that night was ‘sketchy and vivid in equal measures.’ I shouldn’t have touched the ale, but the occasion commanded it, the clientele in the Fulham Palace Road boozer – lost to London by the end of the ’80s – that night ‘a motley mix of hippies, rockers, skins, punks and new wavers’, providing a cracking pre-gig vibe.

I wrote, ‘The first series of The Young Ones had just aired, and it seemed I was living it. A ginger-haired guy led the choir, his voice strong enough to secure the gig if Noddy rung in sick; a biker on the balcony poured beer on a stranger’s head below (getting little more aggro than a few swear-words); and a Vyvyan-like skinhead commanded, ‘Oi, hippie, buy me a pint!’ and his brazen request was granted.’ And I’d still love to know if anyone can name that red-haired ringmaster in the pub.

Overseas Pilgrimage: Gerard Goyer gets to meet Don Powell, backstage at Hammersmith Odeon, 1982

At the Odeon, the absolute power certainly registered, as did the sight of Santa-suited Nod and his scantily clad elves for the inevitable ‘MXE’ encore. And while my evening caught up with me on a packed Tube jolting back towards Waterloo, what a night that was… and thankfully there are more in-depth recollections of that show in Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade.

It wasn’t Slade’s first visit to the Odeon. In fact, there’s a testimony from Style Council/Dexys keyboard maestro Mick Talbot in the book about being there when they played there in mid-May 1974 (doing three nights on that occasion), when he was 15. A five-minute walk away – under the Hammersmith Flyover and beyond – there was also the Palais, where they filmed a scene for Slade in Flame in early September ’74, fan club member Steve Edwards among those recalling that appearance in the book, turning up both there and at the Rainbow Theatre (up on the Seven Sisters Road in North London) the previous night. Then there’s Trevor Brum, who mentions seeing them twice at the Odeon, something he managed at the Marquee too, as well as seeing them back at the Rainbow in ’77.

Lincoln lad Martin Brooks – nowadays with the Pouk Hill Prophetz tribute act – was also there, having first seen the band on home ground in late April ’78 at the Theatre Royal. As was Leeds-based regular attendee/commandeered roadcrew legend Nomis Baurley, on the scene since a March ’77 date at Sheffield City Hall, eventually amassing more than 100 Slade shows. And the same goes for fellow contributor Paul A. Smyth.

Dylan White, the London-based radio plugger and promo man responsible for getting Noel Gallagher on board for that ’96 Oasis cover of ‘Cum on Feel the Noize’ (and more recently getting plenty of acclaim for his own debut LP, Unfinished Business), has an association with Slade live dating back to the Palladium in January ’73… and he was also at the Hammy Odeon in ’74.

As for the aforementioned Gerard Goyer, he was there both nights in December ’82 for his fourth and fifth Slade shows (having also managed two Music Machine shows in 1980), taking a few photos too, his trip over from Paris by train and boat taking him three and a half hours, probably far less than those who came straight from a show in Glasgow that Thursday night.

I mentioned in my ‘Merry Xmas Everybody feature how that was Gavin Fletcher’s last Slade concert and author Bruce Pegg also enjoyed his night in the capital, in his case getting backstage with his US fiancée plus old friend Glenn Williams, later clambering out with Iron Maiden legend Bruce Dickinson and Girlschool drummer Denise Dufort, all five sharing a phone booth in a bid to keep warm while waiting on taxis. It was also Roy Capewell’s only chance to catch the classic Slade line-up.

As for Tony Roach, his recollections chime with mine. It was his last Slade show, and he recounted, ‘They were flaunting their heavy rock sound from Till Deaf Do Us Part, but it was regularly punctuated with Glam stompers like ‘Gudbuy T’ Jane’, ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’ and ‘Far Far Away’. Two immediate memories from that occasion: first, they were loud! You really did Feel the Noize. It vibrated through your ribcage like an earthquake. Second, the cross-section of the audience impressed me. There were kids and pensioners, hippy chick girls, black dudes, Japanese fans, middle-aged couples rubbing shoulders with Mohican-haired punks, Hell’s Angel types in studded biker leathers, dancing and joking with bovver-booted skinheads in denim and braces. Really, the most cosmopolitan crowd you could imagine, every one of them having a ball!

‘There wasn’t an ounce of trouble, just a groundswell of bonhomie which seemed contagious. The atmosphere in the audience itself was brilliant, let alone what was booming out from the stage… I’ve never seen anybody work an audience better than Noddy Holder. He teased us, he jested with us, he thrilled us. My God, that voice – like a pitch-perfect, melodic concrete mixer. If he stood next to the runway at Heathrow, he’d drown out the jet planes! Don Powell behind on the drums: immense, relentless. He had those trademark stick-of-rock stripey drumsticks and he was like a runaway juggernaut. Finally, twin imps springing in, out, up and down either side of Circus Ringmaster Noddy. Jim Lea gave a good impression of Spring-heeled Jack, playing his violin like a man possessed. And he was matched in energy by whirling dervish Dave Hill – resplendent in giant brimmed hat, bandolier and stack-heeled snakeskin boots. I remember him bouncing all over the stage that night, like Tigger on speed, his guitar breaks breath-taking.

Kew Noize: Andy Scott of The Sweet was impressed by the wattage at The Boathouse, Kew, in 1971

‘All in all, it was the most exhilarating concert I ever attended. We were visited by a musical cyclone that evening, and I didn’t see a single person leaving who wasn’t smiling and dripping with sweat. A fantastic night.’

Fast forward a year and they were clearly still on top form, not least judging by a piece online this week from another Wild! Wild! Wild! Contributor, Ian Edmundson, co-author with Chris Selby of the six-book The Noize series. Marking four decades since that final full UK show, he said, “I have to feel really sorry for anyone who didn’t see the original line-up totally destroy an audience in 70 minutes and a dozen songs. You missed out.”

Simon Harvey was among those who made it to Liverpool. He was 11 when he first heard ‘Get Down and Get With It’ and fell in love with Slade, three years later seeing them live for the first time at London’s New Victoria Theatre in late April ’75, travelling in from home town Slough with school friend Kim Bryant on public transport, embarking on his ‘Slade live journey in style’ with the first of 98 sightings between 1975 and 1983… up to that final gig on Roe Street, Liverpool, L1.

John Barker, who runs the Slade Are For Life – Not Just For Christmas online pages, saw them the previous day, writing, ‘I didn’t discover Slade until 1983. Keith Chegwin was doing an outside broadcast for the BBC’s Saturday Superstore from Saltaire, West Yorkshire. It was only about a mile from where I lived, so I thought I’d pop along and meet some school friends there. I found out that the band appearing with Cheggers that day was Slade. As a 13-year-old into Adam Ant and other popular ’80s acts, I knew ‘We’ll Bring the House Down’ but I didn’t really know ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ and so on.

‘Seeing them do a playback performance of ‘My Oh My’ that day changed my life forever. There was a sense of fun about them, and Noddy’s personality shone through. He was wonderful with the crowd, even when the cameras weren’t rolling. That afternoon I bought the ‘My Oh My’ single from my local record shop and found a second-hand copy of Slade Smashes! on the market. From that moment, I was a Slade fan. My collection grew quickly, and I discovered just how great they were as recording artists. Sadly, I never saw the original Slade play live, as their final UK show was the day after that Superstore appearance.’

Another regular Slade attendee, Peter Smith, caught them the day prior to the Liverpool finale at Durham University Students’ Union, and wrote, ‘Slade were, as usual, excellent. A packed Dunelm House gave Slade a rapturous welcome. I didn’t know it at the time, but it would be the last time I would see the original Slade line-up. A UK tour was scheduled for 1985 but cancelled. An era had come to an end and one of the greatest rock bands the world has ever seen were no more.

‘Slade were truly one of the best bands I ever saw, and I carry many fond memories, particularly of wild shows in the 1970s. A class act. Their like is never to be seen again. The front cover of the tour programme at Durham shows Slade on stage at Reading in 1980. The concert was recorded and released as the live album, Slade on Stage. They were clearly very proud of that performance and wanted to be remembered for it and their status as heavy rock heroes. I am somewhere in that crowd close to the front, but I can’t see myself.’

Nomis Baurley revealed that the Liverpool gig wasn’t meant to be the 1983 tour finale. ‘It should have been Durham Uni, but gigs got switched to allow for Top of the Pops appearances in a bid to push ‘My Oh My’ to No.1. It didn’t happen, but we came so close. I’m glad the last gig was in a big theatre. Durham Uni was a small sweatbox. I travelled down from there with two of Slade’s old crew, Haden Donovan and Mickey Legg, in a Smith’s Self Hire van. We thought it would be a good idea to steal a Christmas tree from a service station to hoist above the stage in Liverpool at the gig.

‘Once again, it was another triumphant tour, with lots of back-slapping and ‘see ya next year’s… but it wasn’t to be. They got the call to support Ozzy in the States on the back of the success of ‘Run Runaway’ there, but a couple of gigs in, Jim got ill, and they had to cancel. A tour was announced for 1985 and then got cancelled.’

Peter Farrington, who first caught Slade on Top of the Pops when he was nine but didn’t get to see them until 1981, catching both Liverpool shows that year – at the Empire Theatre in February and the Royal Court Theatre in October. And now a policeman, he was back at the latter for ‘the last hurrah’ in December ’83. He wrote, ‘I later acquired a video recording, a story in itself. On the night I had no idea it would be the last show. That June, I was involved in a serious motorbike accident. I spent three weeks in hospital and my leg was in plaster for several weeks. I was on crutches and only returned to work late in November. I’d persuaded a doctor to let me back as I was worried I’d have my probationary period extended. I should not have been walking a beat as I couldn’t run or even cross the road easily – stepping on and off kerbs was very hard. I couldn’t bend at the knee. Nevertheless, such was the desire to see Slade, I took my chances. Again, I was blown away by the sheer power and their exuberance. Holder is the greatest frontman of all time, better than Mercury, Jagger, Lydon or anybody else that might contest that accolade. If you’ve never seen Slade, you just can’t grasp how different they were on stage to the TOTP sound and image most people know.’

Andrew Rigby added, ‘Did anyone ever see Slade play a bad gig? I doubt it. Although I missed them in their pomp, even in the doldrum years of the late Seventies and early Eighties they never failed to deliver, regardless of whether there were 100 people there or if it was at their Reading renaissance. For excitement and audience participation, I don’t think I’ve witnessed anyone to touch them, and that’s after nearly 45 years of concert-going. I would match them only with The Clash, Springsteen at his best and Thin Lizzy in their prime. And that’s some company! There are of course other artists with more credibility and respect, but no matter. Nod, Dave, Jim and Don had that something that made them untouchable as a live act, a bit like The Who. The sum of their parts together was never matched by them as individuals. Years of paying their dues up and down the M1, Nod’s almost vaudeville-like approach to audiences, Jim’s intensity and need for respect, and Dave and Don’s pop background all made for an untouchable live sound.

‘I think I saw them twelve times in all. Highlights were the infamous Christmas gigs, where the roofs were literally blown away when they launched into that song, and the Reading and Donington festivals, where they were considered underdogs on both occasions, only to blow away all the opposition even without lights or stage gimmicks to rely on. My personal favourite is what was (regrettably) their last stand, at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool. It was another Christmas tour, complete with Nod in Father Christmas garb. You could literally eat the atmosphere when they hit the stage, and they gave a performance never bettered by a rock ‘n’ roll band. You could feel the balcony literally shake, but this was nothing new at a Slade gig. Anything less was not acceptable.”

And I’ll leave you with another Royal Court Theatre finale attendee, Les Glover, of Don Powell’s Occasional Flames (alongside Slade poet laureate Paul Cookson), telling me, ‘It was brilliant, a full-on assault of the senses. I’m convinced they, along with Judas Priest and Motörhead, were the main cause of my hearing problems in later years. I’ve seen them several times since, and although never as good as the original four, they can still make you sing, smile and stomp like the best of them.’

Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade (Spenwood Books 2023) features more than 350 accounts about the band – live sightings, appreciations, and key moments – from down the years by close to 300 contributors, be those committed fans or musicians who played alongside the band or were inspired to follow their lead.

There are also excerpts from Malcolm Wyatt’s interviews with Dave Hill, Don Powell and Jim Lea, further insight from Noddy – with permission from the interviewer – and forewords by glam legends Suzi Quatro and Andy Scott (Sweet). Contributors include members of Status Quo, The Beat, The Jam, Lindisfarne, The Members, The Selecter, The Specials, The Stranglers, The Style Council, The Undertones, The Vapors, The Beautiful South, Carter USM, The Chords, Dodgy, The Farm, Folk Devils, The Loft, The Wolfhounds, The Wonder Stuff, and The Woodentops. Legendary photographer Gered Mankowitz, ‘80s pop icon Nik Kershaw, children’s author Cathy Cassidy, music writer John Robb, and Slade poet laureate Paul Cookson also feature.

There’s still time to order before Christmas direct via Spenwood Books or online via Amazon, or you can try before you buy at your local library or order through your favourite bookseller. You can also track down copies in my old hometown at Ben’s Collector’s Records, Tunsgate, Guildford, Surrey, or Action Records, Church Street, Preston, Lancashire.

For Chris Selby’s impressive Slade concertography, my main source above, head here. And for more about Ian Edmundson and Chris Selby’s six-book The Noize series – namely The Noize: the Slade Discography; Six Years on the Road: 1978 – 1983; Did You See Us?; Slade on 45 (Volumes 1 and 2); and the newly added Prime Cuts: A Barn Records Singles Discography – head to the authors’ Amazon page.

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Whatever Happened to Lord Wakering? Talking Slade, McCartney, Our Price, and more with Daryl Easlea

Posted on December 15, 2023 by writewyattuk
Legends Both: Daryl Easlea with his celebrity interviewer, Don Powell, Louder Than Words 2023

Catching up with fellow author and freelance writer Daryl Easlea recently, we got the mutual backslapping out of the way fairly quickly, complimenting each other on our recent Slade publications.

It’s not just about being complimentary though, preferring the term complementary when it comes to the competition factor. We know full well that if fans of the Black Country’s finest (diehards or perhaps just more generally interested in ’60s, ’70s and ’80s music and culture, and the nostalgia that goes hand in hand) want to buy a Slade book this Christmas, there’s only so much money to go round, so £50 for two books, wonderful as they are, is a tall order. But I’d suggest you at least order both through your library, feeling first-hand the quality and width.

It’s not even a case of choosing between Daryl’s Whatever Happened to Slade? When the Whole World Went Crazee and my Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade. There are other fine Slade publications doing the rounds, not least those up for grabs (yeah, yeah, yeah) from fellow long-time fan Ian Edmundson and the band’s unofficial historian Chris Selby, equally busy in the year marking the 50th anniversary of Slade’s most commercially successful year.

Before we get going, a little about Whatever Happened to Slade? When the Whole World Went Crazee, in which Daryl endearingly tells the band’s story alongside personal histories of Noddy Holder, Jim Lea, Dave Hill and Don Powell, in his own inimitable style, charting their emergence from the ’60s beat boom, their initial successes, their glam heydays and attempts to crack the US. He also covers cult 1975 film Slade in Flame in depth, their re-emergence as hard-rocking heavyweights, their final dissolution, and their post-Slade careers. Drawing on hours of new interviews and meticulous research, there’s a foreword by Bob Geldof and an afterword by Jim Moir, the author reassessing a treasured band that won hearts across four incident-filled, bittersweet decades.

One of his Record Collector pals called it a ‘comprehensive analysis of all things loud and yobbish,’ suggesting Daryl ‘walks us through a long-gone world that is both vivid and chaotic.’ I’d agree, and the man himself adds, “Although The Beatles were my earliest love, Slade were the first band I found myself and the first pop poster I had on my bedroom wall. There was something so exciting, so vibrant, so dangerous about those singles, they just leapt out of the radiogram at you in a way few others did. Slade are one of the last bands of such magnitude to receive a serious reappraisal, as they are so much more than the cartoon image of them that prevails. It is a story of surprise and wonder, of the underdog at an extremely evocative time.”

I’m genuinely pleased that Daryl and I covered similar ground and quizzed many of the same contacts for further info and views yet ended up with very different books, despite each of us affording space in our respective publications to many of those who kept Slade’s (ahem) Flame burning down the years – from manager Chas Chandler to roadie Graham Swinnerton and on to the band’s fans’ champion, Dave Kemp – and many more who gave their own takes on the group, including Gered Mankowitz, Paul Cookson, David Graham, Stu Rutter, and the afore-mentioned Edmundson-Selby writing partnership.

And there was another factor at play in the process of delivering these publications that we both had to deal with – gingerly navigating our ways around the Slade experts out there. Most of whom are friendly and approachable, lovely people, I should add, but often fiercely protective (albeit with good intentions) of that wonderful legacy. It was a bit of a minefield at times, I suggested to Daryl.

“I wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.”

The Opposition: Malcolm Wyatt with Daryl Easlea’s latest masterpiece

Was that a wry grin directed my way on our WhatsApp call?

“Erm… But it’s great to see some of the same characters recurring. And why I think the two books work is that you can read about it in mine, then read someone’s reaction to the moment who was there in yours. I think they’re perfect partners in that sense.”

Daryl’s wisely keeping out of it, but I still feel a need to vaguely mention some lesser publications out there – some with awful fonts, lacking layouts and half-arsed content (often half-inched straight off t’interweb, most likely authored by AI). Arguably, that impacts less on Daryl – we know the quality we’ll get with his writing and Omnibus Press’ production. Yet others may have shelled out on shabbier publications and now fear they’ll get the same shoddy quality from an indie publisher. So this is my chance to say that’s not the case with anything my publisher, Richard Houghton produces at Spenwood Books, as feedback received confirms.

Anyway, enough marketing bolleaux. Let’s move on to the interview proper, once Daryl’s added one more plug…

“All of those things are what they are, but when you look at the quality of The Noize, I think that is an astonishing piece of work.”

That’s the Edmundson-Selby book series, with links for that too at the end. As for Daryl’s book, he’s keen to praise Michelle Hickman, aka 8bitnorthxstitch, for her original cross-stitch artwork on the endpapers.

“I really love her work. She did this thing with all the members of The Fall. I edited a Record Collector Fall special, and she’s in that too. I suddenly thought, wouldn’t it be fun… turn the sort of cartoon thing on its head a bit, because the first thing you see {in the book} is a form of cartoon of them {Slade}. And there’s a mug with it, and a poster you can buy. It does it very well, and it’s all genuine cross-stitch.”

This being what I assume is a fairly typical conversation with Daryl, we dart hither and thither throughout, soon veering on to the subject of past WriteWyattUK interviewees Smoke Fairies (he’d just caught them live and was mightily impressed) and Wreckless Eric (ditto), before we get back to the main subject matter. He even let it slip that he was off to the University of Warwick, where his daughter is studying, to see Steeleye Span, another band who had a festive UK hit in 1973, ‘Gaudete’ at No.14 while Slade were No.1 (their sixth chart-topper and the third of their singles going straight in at the top) and Wizzard were at No.4, with Elton John’s ‘Step Into Christmas’ the fourth highest, barely reaching the top-30 first time around.

The Opposition: Daryl Easlea with Malcolm Wyatt’s latest masterpiece

Let’s face it, Essex lad Daryl’s a busy man, between freelance writing duties, talks and stints as part of his Middle Age Spread DJ collective (grown up disco for those unafraid to dance). He was certainly a hard man to staple down at Louder Than Words at Innside, Manchester, a few weeks ago, to the extent that I now have Don Powell’s signature in my copy of his Slade biog, but not the author’s. In fact, it turns out that Daryl never got round to asking Don to sign his. We should do a swap.

Whatever Happened to Slade? When the Whole World Went Crazee is written with genuine love, everything that should be in is within those pages, and lots of interesting nuggets and background make it for me. For instance, when you talk about Ambrose Slade and detail the Gunnell brothers’ management, a period I’m intrigued by – looking at Soho and London at the time, and the part Rik and Johnny G played on that scene. Not least as I love Georgie Fame’s Rhythm and Blues at the Flamingo (Rik introducing Georgie’s set in Wardour Street that night, and writing the LP sleeve notes).

That level of detail is just one example of the colour Daryl adds. Having recently completed my Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade 2023 World Tour of Lancashire Libraries, many a time there and talking to radio presenters I’m asked more obvious questions like ‘will Slade ever get back together again?’ and ‘how much do they make each year from ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’?’ But that doesn’t interest me. I want nuggets. That’s how I approach my feature/interviews, not asking standard questions interviewees tend to trot out glib responses to without properly engaging or giving any real thought. And Daryl takes a similar approach, as illustrated in his detail from throughout Slade’s long career.

“As you know, they were sort of removed from the scene, but there was an association, you know – all the people Chas {Chandler} brought with him were the cream of the London scene. And if I hadn’t made contact with these people over the years… Chris O’Donnell is incredible, a sort of secret weapon. There’s a great story about Chas having a go at Phil Lynott, saying, ‘You’ve got to do it better than that, son, or you’ll be off the tour.’ Chris went on to become Thin Lizzy’s manager, but he started with the Gunnells, and is still working now, at Live Nation. Such knowledge, and a lovely bloke.

“When you join all that up, it’s like, ‘So that’s why the Gonzalez horn section was used!’ {on Slade in Flame} – because of the connection Chas had to know them and get them in. And for me, finding out Steve Gregory played the flute on ‘How Does It Feel’…!”

I don’t tend to add many exclamation marks, but Daryl’s still on a high discussing the wonders of that film, its soundtrack, and his own research, finding out about the accomplished musicians who helped put that LP together alongside Slade.

“I looked at all the other books and referenced the work, making sure the crediting was in there – the work Chris Selby’s done, that Dave Kemp did, and that amazing detail out there. But then {it’s about} bringing the bits to life around it, the context, and why they were there that night or what happened at that time.

“It was things like seeing the horn section listed on the back of that record. To me, the thing that makes that record is the flute. When that flute’s doing the semaphore, who played that? I got Chris Thomas and various people to find Steve Gregory. We had this quick interview on the phone, just to say, ‘Yes, it was me.’ He was coming to my launch in London where Helen O’Hara {ex-Dexys Midnight Runners} played, to play the flute, but in the end he couldn’t.

Drum Majors: Daryl Easlea with Don Powell and Simon Wolstencroft, Louder Than Words 2023

“But that’s what I wanted to do – treat {Slade} like another person would treat The Beatles or treat The Pink Floyd, not just…”

At this point Daryl lapses into an impression of a more neanderthal cliched revelation about Slade, as if revealing for the first time that they were loud and loved, and wore garish clothes. That said, those aspects are also extremely well dealt with in his book, including in the case of the latter, some wonderful insight from H’s costume designer, Steve Megson.

From there, I got on to Slade’s timeline and the fact that while I’d struggle to remember exactly what was going on, music-wise, in late 2016 as opposed to late 2023, I remain astounded that there were barely six years between The Beatles’ Abbey Road and the Sex Pistols’ ‘Anarchy in the UK’. And that was more than six months after the release of the debut LP by the Ramones, who loved ’50s rock ‘n’ roll and ’60s surf music, but also took inspiration from Slade.

And there’s another case in point – while The Clash sang, ‘No Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones in 1977,’ so many of my punk and new wave heroes turned on by that band, The Jam, the Pistols, Ramones and Buzzcocks took inspiration from Nod, Jim, Dave and Don as well as Bowie, Bolan, Mott, and so on. In fact, as testimonies show in Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade, those iconic Top of the Pops appearances and live shows influenced many acts that followed.

What’s more, while we tend to categorise and put things in boxes, when I hear Ambrose Slade cover Marvin Gaye’s ‘If This World Were Mine’ on Beginnings, I hear a band that bonded over soul music as much as any other genre, thinking – for example – of Jim’s audition, launching into Otis Redding’s ‘Mr Pitiful’ at Wolverhampton’s Blue Flame Club in February 1966; and the band expanding their set with a few soul covers in residency at the Tropicana in Freeport, Grand Bahama, a couple of years later, the ‘NBetweens still finding their way. It was never just about psychedelic pop, beat and rock, Beatles numbers, and rock ‘n’ roll.

“Yeah, and I think {that’s the case} with all those ‘overnight successes’ at that time. At Record Collector we’ve done this Roots of Glam special {O, Cum All Ye Faithful, linked here}, and all of them had a past, apart from maybe Roxy Music. There’s also that difference between glam and glam rock. When you think Gary Glitter was going in 1960, Bernard Jewry {later becoming Alvin Stardust} was with Shane Fenton and the Fentones in 1962…

“And when they hear ‘You Better Run’ by the ‘NBetweens or before that ‘Don’t Leave Me Now’ by The Vendors or ‘Sugar Shack’ by Steve Brett {and the Mavericks}, people are aghast, because they thought it began with ‘Coz I Luv You’ or ‘Get Down and Get with it’. But like any other band they did their time, learned their chops, did their 10,000 hours. And they were so ready to do what they did.

“And that’s the lovely thing about your book, where you’re talking to people who saw that happening, saw that evolution.”

Wakering Writes: Daryl Easlea asks, ‘And who should I make it out to?’

True, and I love the tale, for instance, of a young and impressionable Chris Selby on the top deck of a double-decker bus in the Black Country in late 1969 spotting these skinheads, finding out they were in a band and that one was called Noddy Holder – cue schoolboy sniggering – then going to see them in a community hall, where they were already ‘slam-against-the-wall loud’. Those stories make it for me. I’m not so interested in how they swapped the fifth song in the set at a uni show in ’82. And while I love the eyewitness reports from Reading Festival, I felt I knew a fair bit of that story already.

“Well, what I’ve learned is how little people do know! When I’ve gone, ‘We’re gonna do Don’s crash week, or Reading, or Flame {at one of my events}, most people genuinely don’t know. One of the greatest accolades I had was a guy who’d been in the music business for years, and was absolutely Bowie and Bolan through and through. He came to the launch, Liz Lenten and friends (who Daryl named Nicky-Nacky-Noo for the night. When Helen O’Hara played ‘Coz I Luv You’ they became Nicky-Nacky-Noo-Rye-Ay) did three songs, and he said, ‘You know, I’m gonna go back and listen to all these songs. I can’t believe how well written they are.’ And some 20-year-old from Liverpool reviewed the book and said, ‘I had no idea, I’ve gone back and listened, and in a way it’s a perfect storm – there’s a group with a perfectly-formed collection.’”

At that point, we head off track again, in this case talking about Paul McCartney, as Daryl was in the midst of curating a Record Collector Macca special, admitting hidden depths there that he hadn’t previously fully appreciated.

“I was listening to records that have legendarily been slagged off that I never bought because of it, and actually, they’re better than most people’s entire output.”

Agreed. Even when the production is somewhat of its time, the songs are there.

“Oh, I mean, Off the Ground especially. When that came out, his stock started to plummet. I was working in a record shop. I knew ‘Winedark Open Sea’, but ‘Golden Earth Girl’ and ‘I Owe It All to You’… I mean, Christ, they’d be someone’s greatest hits!”

Getting back to the mighty Slade, I let on that I never owned Chris Charlesworth’s Feel the Noize! late ’84 illustrated biog. I’d moved on at that point, the cover didn’t entice me back, and it’s been fetching silly amounts as long as I’ve been searching for it since.

“Well, there was one copy that Omnibus had in the office. I had it for years, then gave it back at the launch. It was very good… and what’s fascinating is that {as} with George Tremlett’s book they were just about to conquer America… ‘Run, Run Away’ was in the top 20 there. Jim was poorly but they were still going to go back and do it. So they both ended on relative highs. And Chris did brilliantly – he spoke to Swin and all the relevant people at the time. But it’s more sort of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, written in a very sort of 1984 way.”

Not Orwellian, I’m guessing. As for the Tremlett biography, The Slade Story, that’s the first rock bio I read, borrowed from my brother. It was only later, re-reading it, that I realised the dates didn’t always tally up, the ages of the band somewhat inventive.

“All those Futura paperbacks were very central to people of our age’s love of music. There’s a whole bunch of people in their mid- to late-50s now who were kids then, growing up when The Beatles had gone but very aware of them. Then people started mythologising about rock ‘n’ roll, before Grease, Happy Days, and all that. Suddenly, you could read about all that. There was Rick Sanders’ Pink Floyd one. I had that when I was 10, there was the Slade one, a Paul McCartney one, Howard Mylett’s Led Zeppelin one… it was, ‘Wow, this is what I want to do!’”

I agree, but have to say the more in-depth biogs from that era and beyond, chiefly concerning film or music stars, like ex-Rolling Stone editor Chet Flippo’s 1988 study of McCartney, were too ‘warts and all’ for me, putting me off being a rock biographer.

“Well, my editorial {for the Record Collector special on McCartney} is like, ‘I’m glad I’m doing this now and not 10 years ago’. That space between the two Glastonburys, when it was all, ‘Exhibit A, the Frog song,’ blah, blah, blah. But to look at it from this distance, fortunately, he’s getting the respect he deserves, and I think that’s wonderful.

“But you’re right, in that era the books became like, ‘Oh, they’re all bastards. He was this nasty piece of work.’ But now we’ve seen Get Back and realise, actually, he was the one desperately trying to keep them together, in the most positive way, when the others didn’t really give much of a shit.”

Based in Leigh-on-Sea and also a DJ, presenter and A&R consultant, Daryl began writing professionally in 1999, becoming deputy editor of Record Collector in 2000. He remains a regular contributor there and was appointed editor of The Rare Record Price Guide last year. He also writes for MOJO and Prog, his work appearing in The Guardian, Uncut, The Independent and The Glasgow Herald, among other publications.

His hefty CV also includes his curator’s role for Decca’s 90th anniversary celebrations and as co-editor of Decca: The Supreme Record Company, while his talks on pop music, Fast Forward, have been performed at festivals, the British Library, and the V&A. Then there’s monthly broadcast, Easlea Like A Sunday Morning on Ship Full Of Bombs/Thames Delta Radio (found via www.sfob.co.uk). And his past subjects in book form have included Everybody Dance: CHIC & the Politics of Disco (he was ‘born to dance’, apparently), Without Frontiers: The Life and Music of Peter Gabriel, and Talent Is an Asset: The Story of Sparks.

Regarding the latter, one of my big moments, I tell him, was interviewing Ron Mael, which like talking to Don, Jim and Dave, or getting Suzi Quatro and Andy Scott to write my book’s foreword, proved one of those special ‘if only my eight-year-old self could see me now’ moments.

“I think that is the beauty. And if you can retain that when you write… and what I’ve seen of your writing, it’s how you can allow that inner child to come out in your writing, without appearing a prat, with that ‘If my 16-year-old self knew what I was doing…’

It is a bit of a cliché. I think I’ve been guilty of that.

“Well, I look back at some of the things I’ve written quite recently and sort of wince, thinking, ‘Oh, maybe I was a bit too ‘fanboy’ there. I mean, reviews are lovely, and I make money – not a lot – from reviewing stuff, but I’d rather not review something than slag it. Just constructive criticism. If I’m going to get a book or record I really hate, give it to someone who might like or understand it better.

“When you write a book, you put yourself on the parapet. And when you write about Slade you become very aware how dear they are to so many people… a small but perfectly-formed group who are obsessed with them… which is why I made sure I had David Graham and Chris Selby and Dave Kemp as sort of spirit guides. Chris and I spoke weekly, daily, all the way through, with plenty of, ‘What about this?’

“I was very aware that I was this Little Lord Fauntleroy coming up from the south with big words and all that, but you don’t spend that long on something if you’re going to do a hatchet job – why bother?”

I had a similar response at first – ‘are you really a fan, why have I not heard of you before?’ It seems that was the case for you when you did an event in Bilston in 2017, but you at least had a head-start. I like the fact, however, that independent of each other – because I didn’t know who you’d spoken to – we sought out the same players and chose to pay tribute to the same people no longer with us. And while I only ever had limited exchanges with Dave Kemp, via social media, I felt he knew I was genuine. He came over really well.

“Dave was lovely, and I think because it was on Omnibus, and Chris Charlesworth gave me the intro, I met him on day one, we did a four-hour interview, and he gave me his scrapbooks. There was plenty of stop and start and a major project with Decca for their 90th anniversary took me away. But those scrapbooks went back to him, and the last time I saw him was when he was managing Slady. Wendy {Solomon, aka Jem Lea in Slady} has been a friend for 15 or so years, and I was there the first night they came together.

“That was the last time I saw Dave, and he was so kind. He’s the person that ran the fan club, and ‘gatekeepers’ can be incredibly possessive, or divisive, or whatever. But he was none of that. All of them, whatever side they’re on, have all been very pleasant. And all I want to do is celebrate their group.”

That comes over in every chapter.

“I mean, I’m not in love with everything they did. Anything after 1983 is a bit sort of… but the songs are still there, y’know.”

I know what you mean. It became Slade by Numbers with some of the later grand ballads, but a few still get hairs on the back of my neck up. They weren’t cool by then, but could still write a great song, as I think Jim is still proving, delving back into his catalogue, reinventing a few of those numbers.

“Ah, Jim just can’t stop. The stuff he does at home now, in 1975 It would have been No.11. I don’t think it leaves you. A bit like Paul McCartney, he’s a melodicist, or whatever they say, and does it phenomenally well.

“Anyway, have you asked me a question yet? Ha ha!”

It has been that sort of interview. But go on then – is the book selling well? It seems to be from where I’m sat. You did a roaring trade at Louder Than Words, with Don Powell in tow.

“Yeah. It’s been in and out of the Amazon Rock Top 20 or whatever, up to about No.7. Not that I spend my life looking at it, but I do from time to time. And everything above it was like Bernie Taupin’s book, Barbra Streisand’s book, Boy George’s book, a Taylor Swift fan magazine…

“For quite an obscure group in the sense that, you know, it’s not Barbra Streisand, it seems to be… as much as rock books sell.”

Reading Matters: Don Powell awaits another quality aside from Easy-E. Photo: Richard Houghton

We’re not making much money out of this business, are we.

“No. That’s why we do so many other things, but fortunately in my case related to what I do… so I’m not having to go and work somewhere else.”

One of my favourite pieces in Wild! Wild! Wild! Is a piece by Belfast city tour guide Arthur Magee, about how important ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ was to him back then at the height of The Troubles, five decades ago. It genuinely moves me, being an everyman tale I can relate to, despite being brought up on a council estate in leafy Surrey. It’s instant nostalgia, takin’ me bak ‘ome, as Slade always do at this time of year. And when I do talks, it’s a story people pick up on and bring up afterwards, recognising many of the themes. And that’s what I wanted to convey with this book.

“That’s absolutely right. The thing is, you work on that fact that people’s childhoods have this tremendous resonance, and I think the way the world has turned to shit, really makes me look back. You don’t need rose-tinted glasses. It was simpler, we were happy with what we had, we weren’t told to have everything. As David Stubbs said in my book, your Christmas present lasted until your birthday present, and I think people love to go back there.

“Just hearing that harmonium at the start of ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, it’s like someone’s put a lovely cloak around you, full of nostalgia. And we’re of an age where parents are no longer with us or older brothers are no longer here, and we’ve all lost people, however near or far they are.

“I mean, why are Morecambe and Wise still on the telly at this time of the year? And why are we so obsessed with The Beatles? What I really enjoy is that my daughter is so unsentimental, whereas I can see a paperclip and start tearing up!”

I know what you mean. My better half and I were trying to explain Quink Ink to our foster lad the other day, me thinking, ‘How on earth can I be nostalgic about that?’

“I still have an old-fashioned Halifax savings book, but they sent a letter yesterday saying they really are no more. I think when I go into the Halifax, they think here’s the eccentric coming in on his penny-farthing!”

Incidentally, I worked for nine months at the Halifax Building Society on first moving to the North West, 30 years ago, before retraining as a journalist in Preston. And I see your background was with Our Price from 1979 to 1997.

“Well, WH Smith’s record department first, then Our Price came to town. Smith’s was the third or fourth record shop in town when I was growing up. We didn’t have HMV or Our Price. It was better than Boots.”

Actually, I worked in Boots, Guildford in the mid-’80s… nipping to the record department at lunchtime to buy vinyl with my staff discount.

“I was offered a job in Boots the week before Our Price came along! I’m of that era where I knew exactly where I bought all my records. For instance, David Bowie’s Lodger was in a sale in Keddies, our town’s department store. It’s still got the stickers on it.”

Anyway, getting back to that career progression…

“I was going to university or to drama school, having places at both, but took a year off and was a store manager at the age of 19, which now I think about it is horrifying. Our Price Romford was my first job, and Our Price Southend my first manager’s job. I’d sit there, the public only there {he’s pointing, always good on a WhatsApp link}, and at Christmas I’m sat with a fag on, counting £10,000 in notes.

“But the skills it gave me… The main thing is that you know you have to get up and do something. I went up north with the job, and Preston was one of mine, Southport, Wigan, St Helens, Blackpool…”

You could well have served me, fresh up from Surrey, having visited for five years before relocating.

“I’m so glad I was with Our Price. I found out what a great place Preston was, and Lancaster, Blackpool, Wigan… You have this image of the north, growing up in the south, but I remember seeing Bolton Town Hall, thinking, ‘My God, look at this!

“Then Our Price got taken over by Virgin, which was fine, but they were very suspicious of Our Price – we were all a bunch of bloody hippies! I was offered to go to a megastore, become a regional manager, but I went to university {in Keele, Staffordshire}.”

That sounds a similar path to mine – out there in the working world after my A-levels, in my case locking up as much as a million pounds at a time in a walk-in safe, barely 21 – similarly horrifying me now I think of it – and later travelling the world then switching jobs, not getting to uni until I was 28, a miserable short spell in banking sharpening my resolve to retrain, aided by a supportive partner.

“It is amazing. I suppose it’s the same now, seeing kids go into retail or banking. But maybe those sums of money aren’t there anymore. It was a great grounding though.”

It also makes you realise what you really want to do with your life.

“Although I was really happy. I loved it. I worked exceptionally hard. That night in Manchester {at Louder Than Words} three of my colleagues and one of my managers were there – we all had areas in the north. I only knew one was coming, so that was lovely. We’ve maintained a friendship and learned an incredible amount.”

And you got experience in DJ-ing on student radio?

“Yes, Kube Radio, which I think still exists on the internet. Again, the people were great. One is Claudia Winkleman’s producer on Radio 2 now. Someone else worked for Yorkshire’s tourist board, really senior, and I’d come straight out of retail so started running it like a shop. Before me, the guy who ran it would just spark up a bifter. I could also do that, but it was like {being frantic}, ‘Right, we’ve got to do this… we’ve got to do that…’

“I never thought I could go to university – I wasn’t clever enough. But my wife had been before me, and she went later as well. And I ‘grew down’ – I had my childhood at 31… through to, well, 57! But when I was 20, I was about 53!”

Riddim Section: Daryl gets lucky with Don Powell and Jim Lea, Wolverhampton, August 2022

Whatever Happened to Slade? When the Whole World Went Crazee by Daryl Easlea (Omnibus Press, 2023), billed as ‘the first serious biography of the group in over three decades’, is available from all good bookshops and online stores, with more details at www.omnibuspress.com. You can also keep in touch with Daryl via Twitter.

As for Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade, it features more than 350 accounts about the band – live sightings, appreciations, and key moments – from down the years by close to 300 contributors, be those committed fans or musicians who played alongside the band or were inspired to follow their lead.

There are also excerpts from Malcolm Wyatt’s interviews with Dave Hill, Don Powell and Jim Lea, further insight from Noddy – with permission from the interviewer – and forewords by glam legends Suzi Quatro and Andy Scott (Sweet). Contributors include members of Status Quo, The Beat, The Jam, Lindisfarne, The Members, The Selecter, The Specials, The Stranglers, The Style Council, The Undertones, The Vapors, The Beautiful South, Carter USM, The Chords, Dodgy, The Farm, Folk Devils, The Loft, The Wolfhounds, The Wonder Stuff, and The Woodentops. Legendary photographer Gered Mankowitz, ‘80s pop icon Nik Kershaw, children’s author Cathy Cassidy, music writer John Robb, and Slade poet laureate Paul Cookson also feature.

There’s still time to order before Christmas direct via Spenwood Books or online via Amazon, or you can try before you buy at your local library or order through your favourite bookseller. You can also track down copies in my old hometown at Ben’s Collector’s Records, Tunsgate, Guildford, Surrey, or Action Records, Church Street, Preston, Lancashire.

And for more detail about Ian Edmundson and Chris Selby’s six-book The Noize series – namely The Noize: the Slade Discography; Six Years on the Road: 1978 – 1983; Did You See Us?; Slade on 45 (Volumes 1 and 2); and the newly added Prime Cuts: A Barn Records Singles Discography – head to the authors’ Amazon page.

MC Easy: Daryl Easlea in full flow at Waterstones, Southend-on-Sea, supported by Slady
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Celebrating Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, 50 years on

Posted on December 8, 2023 by writewyattuk

I was barely six years old when ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ became Slade’s third single of 1973 to go straight in at the top of the UK charts. But I have vague memories from around then, and the Radio Times listings remind us that Johnnie Walker revealed that rundown on Tuesday, December 11th, just as he had on February 27th as Slade became the first band since The Beatles to enter at No.1, and again as they repeated the feat in the last chart of June with ‘Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me’.

What’s more, Slade also went straight in at the top of the album chart with the Sladest compilation LP that autumn, in a truly momentous year for a band at their commercial height, albeit one tinged with tragedy after Don Powell’s accident that summer.

Actually, The Beatles only managed that ‘straight in at No.1’ feat in the charts once, through ‘Get Back’ in late April 1969. And Slade’s singles’ treble remained unequalled until The Jam managed it in December ’82 with their final 45, ‘Beat Surrender’, following on from March 1980 double-A-side ‘Going Underground’/’Dreams of Children’ and February ‘82’s ‘Town Called Malice’/ ‘Precious’.

I can tell you Duran Duran were next in late March ’83 with ‘Is There Something I Should Know?’ But my interest in the charts was already dipping, and for all I know the likes of Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift could have eight singles enter the top 10 every week these days.

My brother, seven and a half years my senior, told an increasingly cartoonish tale down the pub in later years regarding him and his schoolmates – Mark barely a fortnight off his teens at the time – listening on the field at Tillingbourne Secondary Modern School as Johnnie counted down that chart, ‘Cum on Feel the Noize’ dramatically soaring straight to the summit (replacing Sweet’s ‘Blockbuster’, in fact). But it was half term that week, so it’s more likely that was for ‘Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me.’

Fast forward to the final month of that year, at which point my dad was working his longer shifts as a postman (remember those days when the post arrived the next day, whatever the backlog?), and what with all the germs doing the rounds, it always seemed a battle as to who would be under the weather first among us five children, some bug or other doing its thing. And on the weekend Slade were celebrating their third chart-topper of a truly momentous year I was off to hospital.

I remember having tubes in my nostrils and a nosebag across my trough, after massive nose bleeds led to cauterisation. That said, the three-and-a-half hours my mum and I endured at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Farnham Road, Guildford, seems fairly healthy by modern standards and our increasingly stretched, underfunded NHS. #ToriesOut

As it was, Mum and I had a two-and-a-half-hour wait for an outpatients’ appointment the following Tuesday 18th, my 10.45am appointment met just after Johnnie Walker confirmed a second week at the top for ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. But I was back at school the Thursday we broke up. I always seemed to miss those early school Christmas parties due to some illness or other (it was chickenpox the previous year), but recall going to a fancy dress do that day, kitted out as a post-box, the common consensus being that if my nose started bleeding again, it wouldn’t spoil the red paintwork. Different times, eh.

I like to pretend I recall Slade being on Top of the Pops that Thursday night, but mum’s diary reads, ‘Went round post office with Malcolm, and then he had awful nosebleed. Awful mess!’ Yep, doubly awful. So chances are that I was tucked in bed by the time Tony Blackburn and Pan’s People were doing their thing in a 7.20pm slot on BBC One.

That Polydor single made a huge impression on me though. And what a Christmas for music, the closest chart to the big day chock-full of bangers, Slade keeping (whisper it) Gary Glitter’s ‘I Love You Love Me Love’ off the top spot, with Wizzard’s ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’ at No.4, Alvin Stardust’s ‘My Coo-ca-Choo’ next, Leo Sayer’s ‘The Show Must Go On’, David Essex’s ‘Lamplight’, Mott the Hoople’s ‘Roll Away the Stone’ and Roxy Music’s ‘Street Life’ completing the top 10.

That’s not just nostalgia, is it? We’re talking quality fare from a golden era for pop music. We also had Roy Wood solo with ‘Forever’ at No.11, then T.Rex’s ‘Truck on (Tyke)’, Gilbert O’Sullivan’s ‘Why, Oh Why, Oh Why’, and Steeleye Span’s ‘Guadete’ (one of the few festive ditties in the top half of the charts), with The Faces’ ‘Pool Hall Richard’/’I Wish It Would Rain’ at No.20, Mud’s ‘Dyna-Mite’ at 22, Paul McCartney & Wings’ ‘Helen Wheels’ at 24, Golden Earring’s ‘Radar Love’ at 25, and Elton John’s ‘Step into Christmas’ no higher than 26.

And while I’m at it, how about David Bowie’s ‘Sorrow’ (32), John Lennon’s ‘Mind Games’ (35) and Ringo Starr’s ‘Photograph’ (37), among hits I’d rather not recall from the likes of David Cassidy, various Osmond family members, The Carpenters, and The New Seekers.

I recently dipped in and out of the Tony Blackburn and Noel Edmonds-hosted Christmas Day ’73 edition of Top of the Pops, starting and ending with Slade, ‘Cum on Feel the Noize’ opening proceedings and ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ providing the finale. And alongside the Donny and Jimmy Osmond and David Cassidy video clips, the Simon Park Orchestra, Tony Orlando and Dawn, and Peters and Lee for the non-glam generation (actually, I do love ‘Welcome Home’), there’s Glitter’s ‘Leader of the Gang’ (no doubt the main reason this won’t be getting a BBC iPlayer run-out in full), Suzi Quatro’s ‘Can the Can’, Sweet’s ‘Blockbuster’, Pan’s People giving it their all with a few bewildered dogs on a bench to the sound of Gilbert O’Sullivan’ ‘Get Down’, and 10cc’s pleasingly off-the-wall ‘Rubber Bullets’, before Wizzard’s wondrous ‘See My Baby Jive’ sets us up for the big finish (which by rights should have been followed by their current festive hit), the stage invasion at the end somewhat tame, the cameras not picking up who custard-pied Nod in the boat race, mid-song.

I can’t recall if we watched it on the day. Our black and white set was rarely on, even though my Nan and Mum might have been keen to see the Queen talking reconciliation and all that sort of thing just after, at 3pm. And while we all have rose-tinted specs when it comes to nostalgic memories of The Morecambe and Wise Show on Christmas Day, I should point out that BBC One’s schedule also included The Black and White Minstrel Show and Billy Smart’s Christmas Circus and the evening offered up The Generation Game and a Mike Yarwood Christmas Special before Eric and Ernie.

With my Grandad Wyatt staying with family in St Ives that Christmas, we had my nan around for the big day (they separated in the mid-‘50s), with his sister Win and hubby Bill visiting on Boxing Day, no doubt involving lots of laughs, good food and the odd tipple for the old ‘uns, amid hands of cards and raucous family games of Pit.

As for Slade, there had been no live shows since a string of dates in mainland Europe ended at Zirkus Krone, Munich on November 20th, and that remained the case until January 9th when they stepped out at The Spectrum in Philadelphia, appearing with US outfits Brownsville Station and Jo Jo Gunne.

The Old, New Borrowed and Blue topped the charts for one week that February, and there would be three more top-three hits that year on our side of the Atlantic, but Slade had peaked, commercially, and by the time of their finest 45, ‘How Does It Feel’ in early ’75 it would rise no higher than No.15 (while Telly Savalas was at No.1 with ‘if’). Pop had moved on, the masses far less interested in the band’s new direction.

But surely that’s always been the nature of that fickle world. Besides, there would remain a passion for what Slade dun at our place though. I may have been 150 miles and a world away from The Trumpet in Bilston, where Nod, Jim, Dave ad Don regularly returned to celebrate those significant landmarks and achievements, but in the small bedroom of a council house in the idyllic rural setting of Shalford, near Guildford, that love for the Black Country’s Finest never left me. I was barely four when ‘Coz I Luv You’ became their first UK chart-topper, but they were already my band by the end of ‘73, my brother’s devotion proving somewhat contagious.

And all 17 Slade Top 20 hits from 1971/76 will forever be steeped in nostalgia for this fan-boy, so it’s hard to convey my sense of wonder at getting to interview Dave, Don and Jim in recent years, let alone catch the band live in late ’82 and see Noddy on a stage a couple of times in recent years.

That classic fourpiece will forever Take Me Bak ‘Ome to idyllic days when, as the youngest of five kids, I dipped between David Essex, Hot Chocolate, Bay City Rollers, Pilot and ABBA in my sisters’ bedroom and The Beatles and Slade in ours. And while Dad had no time for all that racket (he preferred massed military bands quick marching at Wembley tattoos), Mum appreciated those Holder/Lea ballads, and we caught most of those iconic Top of the Pops appearances, this lad sold on the glam pop/rock dream. So, imagine my delight at Suzi Quatro and Sweet’s Andy Scott contributing forewords when I finally got the chance to write a book honouring their legacy.

In time, punk and new wave rocked my brother’s world and accordingly mine, but as the Walker Brothers put it in late ’65 – while the ‘N Betweens, the band that became Ambrose Slade and then simply Slade, toiled away in Dortmund and Witten – ‘You were my first love, and first love never ever dies.’ What’s more, many of those who came through afterwards later acknowledged a debt to Nod, Jim, Dave and Don, even if Bowie, Bolan, Mott and Roxy got more kudos.

Mark was there with schoolmate Alan as Slade played Surrey Uni on my 11th birthday in ‘78 (telling me he caught ‘H’ – his hair growing back under a bandana – with a flying bog roll) and again in early ’81, before I joined them on 18th December ’82 for my first London gig.

Heading up by train, Hammersmith bound, that night is sketchy and vivid in equal measures. Barely 15, I shouldn’t have touched the ale, but the occasion commanded it, the Britannia across the road, a motley mix of hippies, rockers, skins, punks and new wavers creating a cracking pre-gig vibe. The first series of The Young Ones had just aired, and it seemed I was living it. A ginger-haired guy led the choir, his voice strong enough to secure the gig if Noddy rung in sick; a biker on the balcony poured beer on a stranger’s head below (getting little more aggro than a few swear-words); and a Vyvyan-like skinhead commanded, ‘Oi, hippie, buy me a pint!’ and his brazen request was granted.

At the Odeon, the absolute power certainly registered, as did the sight of Santa-suited Nod and his scantily clad elves for the inevitable ‘MXE’ encore. My evening caught up with me on a packed Tube jolting back towards Waterloo, but what a night. And thankfully there are more in-depth recollections for that show and many more within the book that help tell the tale with more clarity.

Hero Worship: Malcolm Wyatt meets Don Powell at Louder Than Words, Manchester, November 2023

In the UK in the 1970s, there was no bigger band, yet six No.1 singles, three consecutive No.1 albums, 17 straight Top 20 singles and eight Top 20 LPs don’t tell the whole story. And from Nod’s wondrous voice and showmanship to Jim’s studio/stagecraft and genius, H’s guitar mastery, unique style and glitz, and Don’s dependable drumming and utter cool, they were the full package and deserve all the praise finally coming their way.

In Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade, author and publisher Tony Beesley, of Days Like Tomorrow Books, writes, ‘When Christmas 1973 arrived, Slade’s evergreen festive classic, ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ seemed to completely take over and that Christmas and many others will always be synonymous with that record. I got my first guitar that Christmas, a crappy kids-dedicated acoustic, and even though I couldn’t play a single chord on the damned thing, I could effectively mime in our front room, guitar in hand, to the sound of Slade’s never-to-be forgotten declaration of, ‘It’s Christmas!’’

Belfast city tour guide Arthur Magee wrote a wonderful piece for the book in which he perfectly conveys just what ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ meant to him, growing up at the height of the Troubles. It’s a piece I’ve shared a few times on library visits promoting the book, and always brings knowing looks and smiles. It’s an everyman’s tale of what Christmas was all about for so many of us back then, growing up in our various parts of the UK, and totally chimes. After one such reading, a woman confided, ‘You couldn’t see, because you had your head in the book, but I was smiling throughout that.’ It triggers so many memories, and when I first read it, I had a few tears.

I can’t convey that without including the whole piece, but I will add these lines from Arthur, who wrote, ‘It’s part of the furniture now is ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, like old Morecambe and Wise re-runs and The Sound of Music, but it has never become stale or boring. It translates the excitement I felt as a 10-year-old and makes me remember the pure euphoria and joy for life you have at that age. Noddy’s voice is a siren call to a reminder of better days and the promise of better days to come when hurt and loss have subsided and new memories are made.’

I mentioned the BBC schedule earlier, but it’s worth noting that fellow contributor Martin Blenco got to see Slade on ‘the other side’ on Boxing Day ’73, special guests with Les Dawson on That’s Christmas Sez Les! He recalled,‘When it was announced that Slade were going to be performing ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ on television over Christmas, I had to watch it. There was only one problem. We didn’t watch ITV in my house. My dad thought the three biggest evils of the modern world were Harold Wilson, Mick Jagger and commercial television, and the theme music of Coronation Street never sullied our ears. But I’d been given a second-hand reel-to-reel tape recorder for Christmas and persuaded Dad that, although it was on ‘the other side’, the Christmas edition of the Les Dawson show was a must see. My dad relented, the family called to order (or shooed out of the room) as I set up my mic in front of the big black and white television.

‘VCRs were many years away and for our family, colour television was only going to arrive when Cliff Pack, the local TV repair man, finally said our trusty 20-inch black-and-white had finally given up the ghost. I still have the tape with Noddy’s dismissive response to the host’s jokey introduction. ‘Ta for that introduction, Fatty. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’ History tells me Slade were actually miming to a backing track and weren’t live at all, having pre-recorded the song at Yorkshire Television in September or October before an audience composed of Slade Fan Club members. Never mind. It was Christmas. Slade were on telly, and all was right with the world.’

Lancashire-based multi-instrumentalist Daev Barker is even younger than me (I know, ‘even younger’ is pushing it, seeing as I’m nearer to 60 than his age, 50, but…), but wrote, ‘I was born in the same year ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ was released, my first exposure to Slade the best Christmas song ever, year after year. It’s no mean feat to create a cool Christmas song. Other than the other big hits, I had no further exposure to Slade until I was in my twenties, when a work colleague and fellow Seventies punk fan suggested I give them a listen. I thought Slade were no more than a fun band with two or three well-known songs. I borrowed a copy of Slayed? and didn’t really hold much hope for enjoying it. But from the opening track, ‘How D’you Ride’, I was hooked.’

The genius behind those pop hits was also touched on in a chat I had with JC Carroll, of The Members, insisting, ‘Songwriting-wise, there’s a little thing that happens in the chorus of ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ that’s like, ‘Whoa! What are they doing there? What’s going on here?’ There are little bits in it that are like, ‘This is the secret!’ Little bits that make it really, really work. Bits of magic.’  

Wild Wood: Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade at Ben’s Collectors Records, Guildford

Best-selling children’s author Cathy Cassidy also has great memories of ‘MXE’, telling me, ‘When I was 16, I saved and saved and bought myself my first high-heeled shoes. They weren’t platforms – they’d fallen from grace by then – and I tottered dangerously as I made my way to the big Christmas party. I felt like a giraffe in those shoes. I towered over every boy there, and no way could I dance… but when Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ came on, I’d had enough. EVERYBODY had to dance to that. It was the law. I kicked off the shoes and danced, and a boy danced with me. He walked me home through the snow, me in my stocking feet and him with the hated shoes in his pocket. My feet were blue and bleeding slightly, and I had a cold that Christmas, but my first boyfriend was a lot better than my first (and last) pair of high-heeled shoes. Thank you, Slade. I never did try the page-boy haircut, and that’s probably a good thing.’

Gavin Fletcher revealed that he hadn’t bought any singles until autumn ’73, ‘The Ballroom Blitz’ by Sweet a fine place to start. But then came ‘that single’, as Don Powell would put it, adding, ‘It stayed at No.1 for several weeks, into January, and was eventually replaced at the top by The New Seekers’ ‘You Won’t Find Another Fool Like Me’, which I absolutely hated then – and now! We had a regular babysitter for my younger brother and me, a Mrs Armstrong. She must have been in her fifties, but still liked her pop music. She was babysitting one Thursday in January ’74 when we were watching Top of the Pops. The New Seekers were performing ‘You Won’t Find…’ in their first week at No.1. Mrs Armstrong asked what I thought of that song. ‘Rubbish!’ I replied, ‘nowhere near as good as Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’!’ She said, ‘Yes, but this can be played anytime, whereas ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ can only be played at Christmas, and now Christmas is over you’ll never hear it again.’ I wonder how many times I’ve heard it since!’

Of course, ‘MXE’ gets plenty of mentions in the book from the recollections of those who saw Slade steal the show at Reading Festival in late August 1980, and inevitable features in lots of later year stories about the band. Take for instance Norfolk-based Peter Keeley, who saw them at the University of East Anglia in early December ’82, shortly before my Slade debut, saying, ‘They finished with the obligatory ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, and I felt like a kid again.’ It was already all about nostalgia by then, Pete one of many who loved the band way before he found his way with punk.

A few days later, Nick Latham caught them at Keele University’s Students’ Union, and added, ‘It was a party from beginning to end. We danced, sang and jumped around for the whole two hours. Noddy swapped his famous mirrored hat for a Santa hat for ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, which was all the more poignant at that time of year.’

It was a similar story for Alan Kent at Cornwall Coliseum, Carlyon Bay, St Austell, revealing, ‘They played ‘Get Down And Get With It’ next, then encored with ‘Mama Weer All Crazee now’ and ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. The place went nuts again. Noddy came out wearing a Santa outfit and I remember some kind of confetti coming down from the ceiling.’

I mentioned my blurred recollections of Hammersmith Odeon a few days later, and it turns out that Gavin Fletcher was there as well, writing, ‘Elton John was playing a Christmas season there and had had the building wrapped up, so it looked like a huge Christmas present. He had a couple of nights off and on those two nights Slade played. When the group returned for the encore, Noddy was dressed as Santa Claus. He shouted to the audience, ‘Has anyone got any requests? You’d better say ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’!’ After the show was like being in the crowd at a football match. The subway to Hammersmith tube station was absolutely packed with Slade fans, everyone singing the chorus of ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. Brilliant!’ I do hope he wasn’t one of those who had to evacuate my carriage rather quickly.

Bruce Pegg was also at the Hammy Odeon, and added, ‘My fiancée didn’t know any of the songs, not even set closer, ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’. As it was the weekend before Christmas, all 3,500 of us in the audience (apart from my fiancée), knew what was going to happen next… a spontaneous sing-song, ‘So here it is, Merry Xmas, everybody’s havin’ fun!’, broke out in the crowd as two beautiful young women walked on stage in scanty Santa Claus outfits. At this point, the whole place went bananas. The band then walked on and launched into ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, and everyone (but my fiancée) screamed all the words back to Noddy and the band. Forty years on, I don’t think she’s fully recovered from the culture shock of that moment.’

Come December 84, the live shows had ended, but there was still plenty of capital to be made from ‘MXE’, and friend of this website, Andy Strickland, guitarist for The Loft, The Caretaker Race and The Chesterfields, was working as a music press reporter at that stage. He wrote, ‘I’ve been working as a freelancer at Record Mirror for a year. Slade hit the Top Ten earlier in ’84 with ‘Run Runaway’, so there’s enough interest from the editor to let me chase an interview for their ‘All Join Hands’ release – if, and only if, we can somehow roll it into our Christmas festivities and get some quotes about ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. It’s suggested that I go on a pub crawl with Noddy Holder. Oh, go on then.

Cheers Nod: Andy Strickland raises a festive glass with Noddy Holder, Soho, 1984. Photo: Joe Shutter

‘Slade’s press officer is Keith Altham – possibly the most famous music journalist and now PR guru of the Sixties and Seventies. Keith tips me the wink that Noddy probably won’t want to spend an afternoon trawling Soho’s pubs with me, but he will meet me for a half in The Ship, outside the famous Marquee Club on Wardour Street. Noddy is a joy. Everybody recognises him and it’s not easy to keep his focus, but he’s happy to talk about Slade’s ‘rebirth’ since that 1980 Reading Festival appearance, and the new single, and to have a photo with me outside the pub raising a glass. Just a half for him.

‘Back at Keith’s office, I get 30 minutes with an engaged Jim Lea. Jim makes it very clear that he is the musical brain behind Slade and is delighted to tell me the story of writing and recording ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. I’d always imagined a snowy Olympic Studios in West London or similar, but Jim explains how the band were halfway through an American tour in 1973 and he woke early one summer’s day with the song complete in his head. He rang Noddy and said, ‘I’ve got our Christmas No.1.’ The band recorded it as soon as possible in a sweltering New York, using the hallway of the Record Plant studios to get the big sound that Jim could hear in his head. Slade were not big in the US in 1973 and studio staff thought they were crazy, singing about Christmas in August. Half a million advance orders later that year suggested otherwise.’

Andy’s words save me from going into the stories about the song’s roots and recording here. They’re in the book though, and instead I’ll just add a few quotes from Don Powell, who in a previous interview with yours truly, remarked, ‘It’s amazing, y’know. We’ve had something like 24 hits, but people only remember that one! Don’t get me wrong. I’m not putting it down. It’s just so funny. When we recorded that, we were on a world tour, in New York in a heatwave, around 100 degrees. Yet there we were, recording ‘that song’. Chas said, ‘Do you have anything? If you have, we can go in the studio, do something.’ I remember Nod and Jim saying, ‘We’ve got this Christmas song.’ They played it to us, and Chas said, ‘We’ve got to do this!’ So we booked the Record Plant in New York City, 100 degrees outside, and there we were, singing ‘that record’. And would you believe that when we finished it, we didn’t want to release it? Chas thankfully said, ‘I don’t care what you lot say, this is coming out!’ I don’t reckon it’s been out of the top 100 at this time of year since. It’s phenomenal! Everybody must have this bloody record, but it keeps on selling. When I’m in a supermarket when it’s playing and I’m getting my groceries, all the attendants are singing it at the top of their voices.’  

And I’ll conclude with a further line from Arthur Magee from his contribution to the book, writing, ‘If a song can have colours, ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ is in primary shades, illuminating the damp and grey like the twinkling of Woolworth’s fairy lights against a wood chip wall.’ Can’t say fairer than that, eh.

Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade includes more than 350 accounts about the band – live sightings, appreciations, and key moments – from down the years by close to 300 contributors, from committed fans to musicians who played alongside the band or were inspired to follow their lead. It also includes my interviews with Dave Hill, Don Powell and Jim Lea, words from Noddy – used with permission from the interviewer – and forewords by Suzi Quatro and Sweet’s Andy Scott. There are also pieces from members of Status Quo, The Beat, The Jam, Lindisfarne, The Members, The Selecter, The Specials, The Stranglers, The Style Council, The Undertones, The Vapors, The Beautiful South, Carter USM, The Chords, Dodgy, The Farm, Folk Devils, The Loft, The Wolfhounds, The Wonder Stuff, and The Woodentops. Nik Kershaw, broadcasters Gary Crowley, Andy Kershaw and Mark Radcliffe, legendary photographer Gered Mankowitz, children’s author Cathy Cassidy, music writer John Robb, and Slade’s poet laureate Paul Cookson also feature.

There’s still just about time to order direct via Spenwood Books (link here), from your local bookseller, online via Amazon (link here), or try before you buy through your local library. You can also track down copies in my old hometown at Ben’s Collectors Records, Tunsgate, Guildford, Surrey, or Action Records, Church Street, Preston, Lancashire.

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Santa Bail Me Out – spreading festive cheer with Skep Wax Records’ Swansea Sound and Heavenly

Posted on December 7, 2023 by writewyattuk

Those fiendish folk with the hummable, dance-around punk and indiepop song catalogue at Skep Wax Records are up to their festive tricks again right now, adding plenty more goodies for you to put in your basket – online or real, man – to help celebrate the time of the season.

Exhibit A is Swansea Sound’s belting Blue Aeroplanes meets Buzzcocks-tinged happy holiday song, ‘Santa Bail Me Out’, although at time of going to press – as us wizened old hacks don’t tend to say – there were only a few copies left of this rather marvellous three-track CD single (SKEPWAX018), which arrives housed within a special Christmas card.

It’s out tomorrow, December 8th, which is probably known in retail parlance as White Goods Friday, or something of that nature. Okay, I’m a bit late in sharing such news, seeing as the Bandcamp pre-purchase link was going live (the sort of thing the likes of Phillip Schofield, Sarah Greene, and the surname-less Trevor and Simon would know about, I guess) on 14th November, but it’s definitely worth seeking out among the usual dross of Christmas singles, and there are more details here.

The Christmas card was designed by Swansea Sound co-driver Catrin Saran James, and Skep Wax’s real-life shunner of Daniel Ek’s streaming service, Rob Pursey reckons it will ‘look wonderful on any mantelpiece, and sounds good too.’ And it bloody does, lead track ‘Santa Bail Me Out’ rightly described as an ‘upbeat, headlong, high tempo, singalong tune, celebrating the joys of the festive season when you’re up to your ears in debt.’

‘Hang your stocking on the wall, hope that Santa calls with a nice windfall;

Cos he’s the guy who sorts it out, in his jolly suit, snow-encrusted boots;

‘Oh Santa, bail me out.’

Then there’s the gorgeously wistful ‘Nadolig, Pwy a Wyr?’ and ‘The Life we Led’, different versions of the same song, the first sung in Welsh by the afore-mentioned Catrin, the second in English by Pooh Sticks legend Hue Williams and Talulah Gosh/Heavenly/Marine Research/Catenary Wires chanteuse Amelia Fletcher. As Rob puts it, it’s a ‘catchy, emotional pop song’ that contains ‘fond memories of Christmases past, and strives to uncover the magic and the meaning – to hang on to something significant in an anonymous digitised world.’ I’d add that it’s the kind of song you find on the flipside of a Go-Betweens single and get quietly obsessed by, feeling it’s your own little hip secret. And while over time you’ll realise a few more are in on your secret, you can still pretend it’s only you that knows the Welsh language version, which hits you like a hidden track on The Wicker Man soundtrack. There’s lovely. 

Sound Choices: Swansea Sound, spreading festive cheer and out and about down your way in 2024

The single is also available in all digital formats and (unusually for Swansea Sound) via streaming services. Apparently, Skep Wax Records plan to donate its streaming revenue from ‘Santa Bail Me Out’ to the 10 highest-earning artists on Spotify, Rob adding, ‘At this special time of the year it feels right to help Spotify in its mission to redistribute money to the rich. Happy Christmas.’ Oh, yes.

So, as Uncle Hue puts it, kids, ‘Sign your name right here, for some festive cheer.’

You should already know this, but Swansea Sound, in which Hue Williams (vocals), Amelia Fletcher (vocals), Catrin Saran James (vocals and artwork) and Rob Pursey (bass) are joined by Ian Button (drums) and Bob Collins (guitar), can be found on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter via @soundswansea. You could also do far worse than check out @skepwax while your dial-up t’internet is up and running.

And I shouldn’t need to tell you, although I clearly will, but Swansea Sound released the mighty Twentieth Century in September, one of my albums of the year (with a purchase link here), and marked the occasion later by recording a memorable live session for Marc Riley and Gideon Coe on BBC6 Music. There’s a link to my most recent Swansea Sound feature, celebrating Twentieth Century, here, that including links to past WriteWyattUK chats with Rob, Amelia and Hue. You can also find my words on Swansea Sound’s visit to the Talleyrand in Levenshulme, Manchester, in September, here.

I gather there’s also a ‘Santa Bail Me Out’ listening party this Saturday night (December 9th, 9pm), and the band have announced some more gigs for 2024, namely at Tunbridge Wells, Forum Basement,  January 19th, Folkestone, Twentieth Century Speedway, January 20th; Swansea, Bunkhouse, February 3rd; Birmingham, Rock & Roll Brewhouse, February 15th; Glasgow, Mono, February 16th, and Edinburgh, Leith Depot, February 17th. There will also be US East Coast dates in June, with details to follow.

Meanwhile, Skep Wax Records are for life, not just for Christmas, so here’s as good a place as any to give you a heads-up (albeit, again, a little later than I’d hoped, but I’m here now, so stop moaning) on Swansea Sound label-mates Heavenly, who have announced a vinyl reissue of their third album, 1994’s The Decline and Fall of Heavenly, a CD re-release of their ‘P.U.N.K. Girl’ single, and shows in Madrid and New York, to name but two magical destinations.

The reissued 13-track album (SKEPWAX019) is set for release on Friday, February 2nd, available on vinyl LP with a 7” square booklet, including all five tracks from ‘Atta Girl’ and ‘P.U.N.K Girl’, the 1993 7” singles that preceded the LP.

Heavenly featured Amelia Fletcher (guitar, vocals), her brother Mathew Fletcher (drums), Cathy Rogers (guitar, vocals), Rob Pursey (bass), and Peter Momtchiloff (guitar). And as Skep Wax’s mirrorball wizard Amelia put it, ‘These are the songs that earned Heavenly a whole new generation of fans: Tiktoks based on ‘P.U.N.K Girl’ have been liked by millions of teenagers and that song alone has accumulated over seven million Spotify streams. Heavenly’s renewed popularity also led to a recent Guardian feature on the band.’

And it just happens that Skep Wax are releasing a Bandcamp-only CD single of the very same, surf punk pop-flavoured ‘P.U.N.K. Girl’, Heavenly’s most celebrated tune, tomorrow (Friday, 8th December), coupled with the more guitar, bass and drum-driven dance delight ‘Atta Girl’ (a sparky number sharing a few hallmarks with Cinerama’s ‘Lollobrigida’, which landed seven years later), with t-shirt, badge and postcard bundles also available, with full details at www.heavenlyindie.bandcamp.com.

What’s more, there will be live appearances in 2024. Further announcements follow, but the band are set to play Madrid’s Galileo Galilei on January 27 (tickets) and New York’s Market Hotel on June 1st (tickets). Heavenly are also on for an acoustic performance at Rough Trade London on January 17th, in support of These Things Happen, a new book about Sarah Records by Jane Duffus. Meanwhile, the fourth and final Heavenly album, Operation Heavenly, is set to be re-released on vinyl later in 2024.

While Amelia and Rob play in The Catenary Wires and Swansea Sound these days, Peter features with The Would-Be-Goods and Tufthunter. To follow Heavenly on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, type in @heavenlyindie or search via @skepwax. You can also track them down via https://heavenlyindie.bandcamp.com and www.skepwax.com.

Heavenly Figures: As they were in the beginning, and as they are now back on the racks
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Milltown Brothers / Greenheart – Lancaster, Kanteena

Posted on November 28, 2023 by writewyattuk

‘There’s a lighthouse on the harbour blowing kisses to the moon;

There’s an aircraft flying over, and I swear it feels like June.

There’s a cool breeze blowing down, and she says she’s feeling fine. This is my time!’

My second visit to Kanteena, and for a further grand showing from visiting East Lancs folk heroes – a welcome helping of Blancmange this time last year followed by another wintry trip up the M6, with barely half a degree showing on the temperature gauge.

I did wonder how much the heating bills come to at this impressive arts space south of the Lune, a Beaver Moon just a couple of days away on a dam freezing evening, but with everything toasty inside.

Perhaps that was down to the guitar/didgeridoo blues of support Greenheart, bringing a little Outback heat to the occasion, James Fraser’s opening shift alongside Ian ‘Scotty’ Moorhouse – stripping down to a t-shirt as the micro-climate kicked in – setting a sunlit uplands scene.

It took me a while to realise the fella to the side of Christopher Eccleston-lookalike Scotty, a wraparound scarf suggesting his own Dr Who link, was the Milltown Brothers’ bass player. His quick change before the headline set was all it took to fool me, or maybe it was the main guests’ forever youthful vibe that made the difference.

Jim and Scotty certainly beamed us up and teleported the band’s appeal (OK, enough sci-fi puns), their easy blend of delta meets dreamtime blues (true blues, you could say) a warming influence, somewhere between Gomez and The Charlatans for these ears, with plenty of recordings out there via Bandcamp to discover more about a locally-based pairing making music since 2007 (which is far longer than it sounds in my head).

Then came the headliners, the original five-piece joined by pedal steel player Gary Thistlethwaite, on board since the Long Road LP. And if that name sounds far too Lancastrian to convey a country feel, think again – you clearly never visited Morecambe’s Frontierland.

Gary nested in neatly alongside the Nelson bros – Simon and Matt – while Jim, down to four strings, headed to my right to keep keyboard wizard Barney Williams company, the latter getting us up and running after the band walked on to Indian Vibes’ evocative ‘Mathar’, sitar giving rise to a gloriously reworked Farfisa organic intro on ‘Apple Green’, the years falling away like ripe fruit from the tree accordingly, our former Colne highland babies carrying on from where they left off –  I’m reliably informed – on a late summer raid across the Yorkshire border at Hebden Bridge’s Trades Centre.

Throughout, Nian Brindle kept things tight from the rear, adding that ol’ time last century influence, taking us back to Britpop days of yore. And it’s an odd thing to say when their frontman looked so youthful when we first clapped eyes on him as the ‘80s breezed into the ‘90s, but the band seem younger than in the publicity shots that came my way when I finally caught up with them again in 2015. Come to think of it, Matt must have a rare Lowry portrait tucked away in his attic.

An opening Slinky salvo continued with the glorious Byrds meets The La’s ‘Something Cheap’ and ‘Sally Ann’ before we stepped two years on to 1993’s Valve for the dynamic ‘Cool Breeze’, something of a resolute statement here as Matt revealed, ‘This is my time’, the band renewing their vows before a loving audience, the old dance moves from The Sugarhouse coming back to all and sundry around me, the main set having followed a few DJ-spun blasts from the past that set the scene, from The La’s to the Mary Chain, the Roses and beyond. And the headliners were certainly having the time of their life, returning to the starting theme for an extremely baggy yet similarly guitar-drenched ‘Nationality’.

‘Don’t Go Crying was next, the heart-wrenching first of two prime cuts from Long Road, the title track following, Gary T in his element on both, another three-part debut LP showing following with the wondrous ‘Here I Stand’, the very of its time organ-driven ‘Seems to Me’ and building LP finale ‘Real’, the latter segued into the more frenetic ‘Here I Stand’ B-side, ‘Jack Lemmon’ before they briefly slipped away.

If there was a little disappointment from the football results, the glass of Claret half empty, there was certainly no late cave-in here for the visiting Burnley fans in the band and the crowd. When they returned, Matt seemed to seek forgiveness for indulging us in a little Harvest homage, but there really was no need to apologise, Neil Young’s ‘Out on the Weekend’ wonderfully dealt with and neatly conveyed, as much of the Nelson DNA, I’d guess, as Teenage Fanclub would be to ‘F.I.L.A.’ from Stockholm, another recent number proving without doubt this is still a band that can pen a cracking song. And there was still time for the band to go back to their roots, so to speak, with the mighty ‘Roses’ from the Coming from the Mill EP, the splendid Lowry-esque figure on the backdrop overseeing all, the set then climaxing, somewhat inevitably, with the indie pop exclamation mark of ’Which Way Should I Jump?’, this particular love crowd enjoying every (single) moment.

‘Weather is in disarray, like all the things I’ve seen today.

Come on, take me away!’

In short, we’re talking a night of nostalgia with added kick that further proves this band’s return was anything but misguided. All that’s followed their second coming suggests they have much more in the tank, the newer songs proving they were never one-album wonders. I also get the impression that they have plenty of pencilled-in plans for 2024, and that’s quite some prospect on this showing.

All photographs copyright of Michael Porter, with links to his fine work via his website, Facebook, and Instagram.

For this website’s May 2015 feature/interview with Matt Nelson, head here. And for the WriteWyattUK verdict on Long Road back then, head here.

For all the latest from the Milltown Brothers, keep in touch with the band via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And for more about Greenheart, their releases so far, and forthcoming live shows, head here.

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Bass Notes: Life and Times on the Road with Stone Foundation – back in conversation with Neil Sheasby

Posted on November 24, 2023 by writewyattuk

Neil Sheasby was at home in Atherstone when I caught up with him earlier this week, having a breather between live commitments with Stone Foundation, the Midlands soul band he co-founded with namesake Neil Jones a quarter of a century ago.

Sheas was back with family before the first of the acclaimed outfit’s final three shows of another busy year, set to return to the capital for a two-night stint at Islington’s Assembly Hall this weekend (Friday, November 24th, and Saturday, November 25th), before what’s become something of an end of year knees-up closer to his roots, playing Nuneaton’s Queen’s Hall (Saturday, December 9th).

But on this occasion, we talked music books too, him saying kind things about my Slade biography, and me reciprocating about his latest publication, the entertaining and insightful Bass Notes: Life and Times on the Road with Stone Foundation, an abridged collection of diary entries from Sheas’ popular online column of the same name.

In Horace Panter’s foreword for Bass Notes, the Specials legend suggests his bass-playing compadre captures ‘not just the glamour and the mundanity of touring as a band, but the friendships and the things that forge those friendships; the shared frustrations and passions that can make eight grown men rise from their beds before dawn to sit in a cramped van and drive halfway across Europe to perform on a stage not much bigger than the surface area of a baby grand piano at a small club in an unpronounceable town 50km south-west of Heidelberg. And then travel all the way home again. Not only that, but over again the following weekend.’

The 2 Tone stalwart, aka (to coin a phrase) Sir Horace Gentleman, goes back a fair bit with Stone Foundation, supplying cover art for the To Find the Spirit and A Life Unlimited LPs in 2014 and 2015 respectively, a link going back to a support slot for Sheas and co. in late 2011 on a memorable Specials reunion tour. And Horace sees Neil’s collection of diary notes as a ‘story of righteous toil’, one portraying Stone Foundation ‘from the ground up, warts and all.’

I was a little late to the Stone Foundation party. It was only when Paul Weller started recording with them in 2017 that I properly sat up and took notice. I think the gorgeous ‘Your Balloon is Rising’ was the key moment that made me seek out their back catalogue and move forward with them from there. Somehow, that earlier Specials link passed me by. I always loved the headliners, but… well, put it down to the fact that having a young family kept me out of the loop for a while. I would dearly have loved to catch Terry Hall and all back then, but the opportunity never arose.

In that sense, Bass Notes gives me the chance to fill in a few gaps. I’d soon grow to love Sheas’ social media despatches from the SF frontline, admiring today’s interviewee’s honest, colourful, sometimes funny, often refreshingly matter of fact accounts of life on the road. And here we have edited highlights from the period from late 2011 to the end of 2022, just over 11 years of the band’s 25-year odyssey but also their most successful stint, a chance meeting with Specials drummer John Bradbury having provided a springboard to a latter-years success story.

With Stone Foundation it always seems to have been about 100 per cent commitment and plenty of grit, toil and determination. But we all need that lucky break taking us to that next level. And what seemed at the time to be a wrong turn at the Fiddler’s Elbow, Camden, in 2011 proved to be the portal to the next phase of an amazing journey.

Cover Versions: Neil Sheasby and Neil Jones display Horace Panter’s cover art for Stone Foundation

From the glamour of supporting Paul Weller at the Royal Albert Hall (not a million miles from the Albert Hall, Long Street, Atherstone, where Sheas’ contemporaries queued for their dole money back in the day, and where the band held their Small Town Soul LP launch in 2008) to playing on a staircase in a Spanish hotel, he’s experienced more than his fair share of peaks and troughs with Stone Foundation. And Bass Notes documents all the fun and the fear of a hard grafting touring band, those factors growing with each album. 

The book covers more than 120 shows, up and down England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and around mainland Europe too, mostly Spain and Germany, and even Japan on four separate trips between 2014 and 2017. And each entry provides (as his publisher points out) ‘a window into the humour, love, a wistfulness and an honesty of Neil’s days in a splitter van, travelling with his band of brothers.’

Along the way, we also get to understand a little more about those bandmates too, and get a feeling of the people they meet – famous and not so famous – and the all that unfolds outside those stage times, from budget hotel stays to the monotony of the road and service station visits, spare hours thumbing through record racks or meeting old and new friends, and an insider’s view of regarding all those treasured venues that provide the fabric of our live experiences, but aren’t always what they seem to be, while sampling the good and potentially bad and ugly nights, and the band’s sense of achievement at keeping it all together or pulling it off in the face of adversity, despite stinking colds, general fatigue, and what have you.  

And for all those experiences, there are still the occasional butterflies, endearing me more to the band, those occasional down to earth shared fears resonating. And then you can factor in the unwinding in pubs and clubs, that primary love of this chosen career coming over throughout.

Starting with those career-changing three weeks with The Specials, we get on to the link with the afore-mentioned Weller – a chance to record at his Black Barn studio in early 2016 leading to so much more – and the likes of Doctor Robert, Graham Parker, Mick Talbot, Steve White, Melba Moore, Carleen Anderson, Shirley Jones, Kathryn Williams, Hamish Stuart, Bettye LaVette, William Bell, the now departed Nolan Porter, and many other musical luminaries (even Peter Capaldi), in a compelling read… just like those original Facebook notes that turned so many of us deeper into this band’s on stage, in the studio, and behind the scenes existence, ultimately shedding light on what life really is like on the road in the modern era.

When we caught up this week, Sheas had just had his first weekend off in a couple of months, after various UK and mainland European dates in another winning year.

“It’s been great. I’ve really loved it. And that’s not always the case. I enjoy the gigs but it’s everything that comes with it, you know – the travelling and all that, being three to a room or whatever. That can be a ball ache, but I’ve got to say it’s been brilliant, I’ve loved this tour.”

That’s something that comes over in Bass Notes, in this format and in the Facebook version we’ve come to know and love. And sometimes it’s those bonding experiences with bandmates that make you, like when you were all in the same room in a hostel at the time of appearing in Brighton, supporting The Specials in late 2011. Could you go back to all that again?

“God almighty. I’d go back to the gigs, but not the hostel! Dear me, it was grim. But needs must, sometimes. If you want to make it work, if you want to carry a big band, you’ve got to budget yourselves, especially back then when we weren’t getting so much money. You have to cut your cloth accordingly.”

Bak ‘Ome: Neil Sheasby in Atherstone, with his copy of Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade

Those are surely the moments that bring you together as a band, a proper collective. Those grim shared experiences where you really find out if this is what you want to do with your life.

“Sure, yeah. A bit like us in Japan, where you look around and think, ‘We make that noise and people come here, people on the other side of the world are interested. It’s crazy.’ That can spur you forwards.”

Talking of ‘pinch me’ moments, what would the 13-year-old Neil Sheasby who caught The Specials live in the summer of 1981 (an anti-racism show at the Butts Stadium in Coventry, also featuring Hazel O’Connor and The Bureau) make of Horace Panter – who also happens to have designed a couple of your records – writing a foreword for your second book, a dozen years after a chance encounter with John Bradbury saw him take you under his wing, providing you with that big break?

I’m guessing you’ll mention that 100% effort, drive and determination – as your record label name suggests – but we still need an element of luck or fate. And that’s what you had at a key moment in Camden, getting to meet John.

“Good luck, fortune, yeah, and that night particularly it was. These were the early days of the Internet and he was just searching, under the pretence it was going to be a Northern Soul night he was starting in London. And he probably did have that in mind. But he walked in, and it was just fortune that the night he had off – and he lived up the road from the Fiddler’s Elbow – we were playing and were the first thing that came up on his search. And in his mind what he really wanted was one of the choices for the support for the tour. He wanted a soul band rather than a ska band. And there we were.

“As I say in the book, my default setting was JB’s Allstars, rather than The Specials, so I was asking how Bill Hurley and Drew Barfield were and what they were up to. He was like, ‘Fucking hell, you remember all that?’ We just kind of bonded, y’know.”

I’ve found, interviewing musical heroes, a bit of added research, seeking out rare nuggets to ask about rather than the same mundane questions most regional journalists might ask, can be the difference that inspires a brilliant interview, sometimes with the toughest of customers and people bored with the whole notion of interviews. And it seems you took a similar approach.

“Yeah, common ground. Absolutely, and thankfully we did our thing and he got it. It all unfolded and transpired that this was what he wanted to do, take us out, and that did change everything. For example, we’d never really played Scotland before, yet there we were at the SECC, and then we could go back to Glasgow and sell something like King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut when we went back.

Staples’ Brothers: Sheas and Stone Foundation have an audience with the legendary Mavis Staples

“All of a sudden, 10% to 20% of that crowd is going to get what you do, so we’re forever thankful for that. Everyone focuses on the Weller thing now, but that was a big, big full circle for me as well, from being a kid. Lynval {Golding} came into the dressing room, we were talking, and I told him I was at the Rock against Racism gig they played with The Bureau at the Butts. He said, ‘God, man, we done it for the kids like you!’ It steers your path, really – your consciousness of racism or political stance. It influences you. That was 2011, but even at the time was, ‘Bloody hell, that’s mad!”

Seeing as you mention steadily climbing percentages, in March 2012 you talk about playing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Blackpool’s ska and soul festival, and meeting a fella from Skelmersdale who tells you he’s coming back with 20 or so of his family for a show at The Cavern in a few months.

“Yeah, and I was in Liverpool last weekend, and they were still there, that same group, still bringing more people. It’s mad!”

Word-of-mouth publicity clearly still counts for something. But it must be hard to keep motivated, all these years on. Like me, you’re a family man. It must be bloody hard saying goodbye to your better half, heading off for weeks at a time on tour.

“Yeah, on the flip side of that coin, I am under their feet for about six months, not gigging, so they’re equally keen to get rid of me, probably! But yeah, it can be. Funnily enough, we just got the tour dates for next year. We’ve been thrashing that out with the promoter. I’ve just put them in my diary, and the first thing I think, when I look, is, ‘I’m missing Sonny’s game there, when he’s playing that week. Then there’s the chance to see Lowell or Mason {his other lads}, but you’ve got to get out there and do it, because if you don’t go out and gig, you’re not really a full-blown musician.

“I don’t think it would suit us to just be a recording band. Our thing is that live arena, and I like touring at this time of year. People are ready to come out again, we’ve seen that on the last tour. Post-lockdown, people have now got past that, and it’s been really good, man. But it is a balance. Every year, we ask, ‘Shall we press the pause button?’ But there’s always something that makes me think there’s still gas in the tank.”

Reaching that 25-year milestone must have made you wonder what’s next. You need those moments that drag you back out there again, to carry on upwards and onwards.

“Yeah, new songs really. I probably wouldn’t do it if it’s just nostalgia, churning out everything you’ve done, reflecting. It’s more like, ‘We’ve got loads of new songs, we’ve got another album here!’ I’m excited by that, so it’s, ‘Let’s get that done, then gig them!’ As long as that keeps happening, I feel relevant, we’ve got an audience, and people are interested in what we’re doing, it sails on.”

Weller’s Fellas: Stone Foundation line up with Paul Weller, at Halifax’s Piece Hall

And this from a band that… well, in the early stages of Bass Notes you refer to the band as ‘not so young soul rebels.’ And that was a dozen years ago. Those of us brought up on John Peel and all that know age is largely irrelevant – it’s whatever floats your boat and inspires you. But there must be times when you see younger bands coming through and question your relevance to a scene.

“I don’t think the age thing is as bad as it used to be. If I look back to when we were growing up, it’s like, ‘Fuck me, I couldn’t imagine being in a band at 56.’ It’d be horrendous! No way. But we started Stone Foundation when I was 30. So even then, I felt old. But I don’t now. That doesn’t really come into play. As long as we’ve got something to say, we’re still ‘aving it. It’s good, it’s keeping me interested, so I’ll do it. And I think the last album, Outside Looking In, was my favourite. I thought that was really good.”

From where Bass Notes starts in late 2011, it’s not just you and Neil Jones still there. There’s Phil Ford and Ian Arnold too. Four of the original seven.

“Just changing brass sections, really. That’s what that was. If you look back 25 years, there’s only me and Neil left, although Phil was in my previous bands. Yeah, it’s nice. I loathe to use the word comfortable, because it shouldn’t be comfortable, but they feel like the right people to get our ideas and be around us.”

These published diaries start in 2011. Were you keeping good notes before?

“Not band-wise. I kept a personal diary for a few years before. After I lost Hammy, getting back to the Boys Dreaming Soul subject… when I lost him, I was trying to process it, and I was struggling for about six months or so after that. It was down to Zoe actually, the Pinnacle rep that used to come in the record shop I was working in. She’d lost her brother in a motorcycle accident. She said, ‘You writer quite well, you want to keep a diary. If you’re feeling down and you’re grieving, write things down, day by day, it really just comes out of you. It will be therapeutic.

“So I did. I decided to keep a diary, just mundane bollocks, writing down what the day had done. It could be the most boring thing, but I just kept them privately, getting into the flow, and I was enjoying it. It worked for me, and that coincided with John coming in and putting us on The Specials’ tour, and I thought, ‘This is never going to happen again. This is it. This is really unique. So I’m going to write a diary of this and publish them on Facebook.’ Just for myself and the band, day by day, writing in the moment. And of course, everyone loved them, and I never stopped doing them for the next 15 years or however long it’s been now.”

For those yet to read Boys Dreaming Soul, I should explain that Paul Hanlon, aka Hammy, who died after a long battle with cancer in late 2001, aged just 34, was an integral part of Sheas’ formative years, featuring in his first two bands, The in Crowd and Dance Stance. In his words, the pair were ‘an instant mash, a team, a partnership right from the off, a formidable double act,’ describing his friend as ‘an archetypal Boy About Town, the local Face.’

You can be blatantly, often refreshingly honest about people you come across in this music business and around the industry, I ventured. For instance, you talk about the relative merits of writer Paolo Hewitt, a good friend of yours, and influential director Shane Meadows, before a slating of the actor, Neil Morrissey. It’s clear at times you’ve not tried to tone these entries down since.

“Not really. Some things I probably keep to myself, but… I’m writing in the moment, and that’s what happened that night. That was the headline news, and it did change the atmosphere. But I thought it was funny as well.”

While there are plenty of poignant and deeper moments, and appreciations of the music you love, there’s also attention to detail and lots of laughs, including the sort of road tales I imagine the band will still be talking about down the pub a few years down the line, reflecting on this or that tour. I wonder though, if you look back at that rehearsal room 12 years ago, on the eve of the Specials tour, do you still recognise yourself as a band? Are you still the same people, the core of you in that band?

“Yeah, pretty much. I think so. We were prepared for the opportunity. That’s what I always say. That’s what we did back then, and that’s what we do now. You never know what’s around the corner. We always kept ourselves on our toes and made sure we put the work in, and if anything like that – the opportunity with that tour or when Paul {Weller} came knocking and whatever else transpires with the band – we’re always ready. And I recognise that in 2011 as much as I do in 2023.”

Talking of those early days, I hadn’t realised you were playing Porthtowan’s Mount Pleasant Eco Park as early as 2012. There’s no mention of Haircut One Hundred guitarist Graham Jones at that point (there is later), despite his long link with that part of the world, and the fact he’s been a fan for many moons, as you are of his band.

“I didn’t have contact with him then. I’d always talked to Les (Nemes, bass}, but with Graham that was probably a few years later. I didn’t realise he was living there then. And they were completely quiet then. I think they got together just after that for a gig at Cadogan Hall that I went to in London. And it was lovely to see them {playing live recently} again.”

You also mention it was in Porthtowan that Wendy May came down to see you. Another fan, as it turns out, with a further full circle element as you were a regular at her dance nights back in the day.

“Yes, once we got talking, I realised, ‘Oh, you’re Wendy from the Locomotion!’ I went to loads of them nights at the Town and Country Club. That was again an instant match, and we’ve stayed friends ever since.”

There’s one, in particular, I recall. Usually, we’d have been back away across London to the South-East, getting on for 40 miles, but I stuck around after a James Taylor Quartet gig at that venue (now The Forum) for the Locomotion, having read about her love of good soul and being a fan of her band, the Boothill Foot-Tappers, back in the day.

“It’s quite possible I’d have been at that. But 40 miles? I was in the bloody Midlands. Miles away!”

Fair point. And I’d be surprised if our paths hadn’t crossed, not least as we were born 11 days apart and had fairly similar musical influences and inspirations, despite 125 miles or so between us. And on that front, I’m sad to say that when you talk about losing your Dad in late October 1988, that turns out to have been on my 21st birthday. I can only imagine how devastating that was, losing him at such a key time in your life.

That led to Sheas deflecting my question, understandably, instead remarking on a photo I’d just shared on social media – me with my Dad (now 11 years gone), Easter ’76, taken in the front garden of our rural Surrey council house when I was eight, us sat on the front lawn, him holding my orange football, me in an orange top that I felt made me as good a player as Johan Cruyff (my geography was always good, not least because of football, but I came unstuck in thinking Barcelona was part of Holland, as Cruyff played for them both back then). And my Dad – 42 then – is chewing on his pipe, Condor Long Cut in the bowl, just as it was for my Grandad. And that rekindles a memory from Neil.

“I used to go to the football with my Dad, We’d go to lots of matches, every Saturday, wherever that may be. I always remember blokes smoking pipes then, the smell of pipe smoke always in the ground. I used to love that, but it just disappeared over the next decade, after that generation.

“And that ball he’s holding, I’m assuming it’s one of those old orange plastic balls, like Woolworth’s used to sell. They were the best, weighted perfectly. Not too heavy or the light ones that would just blow away. They were perfect. I love all that.”

Back to now, and you’ve mentioned these final dates of the year, and are clearly working on something for 2024. Are there new songs on the way?

“We’ve been writing quite a bit, but we’ve only just done demos, so we’re going to go in the studio and start recording in, I think, February. We’re going back to our rehearsal space first, in January, to whip through all the ideas we’ve got, then start recording properly, which means it may come out at the end of 2024, maybe even 2025. But it’s happening.

Street Rituals: Neil Sheasby and co-founder Neil Jones, up close and personal with Stone Foundation

“There’s going to be a new record for sure, and we’ll see where it takes us. Then we’ve a few dates starting to be announced for Spring. Then we’ll be into May and June and the festival season, doing a few things around then. And it seems every year it’s October, November, December, working on a big tour.

“We’re very keen to get back to forward facing, playing new music. We’ll try a few things out on the road this year, as well as keeping the old ones ticking over. It’s a good time for us. I’m really enjoying it, I feel optimistic, ready to go again, and I’m really excited about it.”

I mentioned The Specials and Paul Weller, then Paolo Hewitt, the boys from Haircut One Hundred, Wendy May, and so on, and there are plenty of kindred spirits out there, ones you’ve sought out that you didn’t know personally at the start of this amazing journey, including Stone Foundation documentary filmmakers Mark Baxter and Lee Cogswell.

“I don’t know about having sought them out. I think they’ve gravitated towards us! People came to us and got into our thing. And we just feel like, you know, we have common ground. Just like mates. The same interests, I suppose.”

I was surprised that Lee – who first crossed paths with Mark Baxter on the set of a promo video for ‘To Find the Spirit’ – was filming you as early as late 2011. I guess you’d known him a while by then.

“I didn’t, but he was just around the corner in town – Atherstone. It was Richard Atkins filming for us then. He was doing a bit for Rich. He’s younger than us, but we just got on, then thought it was handy, him being local, as Rich was in Bristol. So we thought we’d use Lee for a few things, and our friendship blossomed.”

And when did you last catch up with Paul Weller?

“We saw him in Milan, supporting him on the tour. And he was in good spirits, out on the road. He’s got a new record coming next year and seems really excited and buoyed by that. I think he may be turning up next week. You can never say for sure, but… Then we’re back in the {Black} Barn early next year. Whether he’s around or not, I don’t know. But…”

He’s probably got a dulcimer or something he feels needs playing on some track or other.

“I’m sure he’ll be involved. Yeah, he’s great.”

And finishing where we started, with The Specials, you clearly had a good working relationship and forged a friendship with John Bradbury. You also mentioned Lynval Golding, and there’s plenty in the book about Roddy Byers. How about Terry Hall? In light of his departure just before Christmas last year, did you ever feel you got to know him?

“Not really. He kept himself to himself. He was the most private one of the lot. And you respect that. When you’re on tour with people, you don’t want to be in their faces. If they want to talk to you, they’ll come to you. You knew the ones who would be really open… like Lynval and John.

“I think they were having their own little dramas as well, that was a bit weird, but Terry was a funny guy, and we did have those moments when he’d speak to us. He was lovely, but yeah, he was quite guarded, kept himself to himself. Mainly we spoke about football. As a massive Man U fan, there was a connection he had with Jonesy. Once he found out I was Leeds, he’d give me a bit of all that!”

It’s odd to think Roddy was still part of the band then. Clearly there were more fallouts to come.

“Yeah, and you felt like banging their heads together, because the sum was obviously bigger than the parts. Each one of them would take turns to come into the dressing room, having the craic with us. And you just wanted them to get on together. But on stage, the chemistry and magic was there, and that tension probably added to the great spectacle on that tour.”

And with that, Sheas was away, albeit not without a further book recommendation, having started the conversation praising Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade (Spenwood Books, 2023), ending it by mentioning Kevin Armstrong’s Absolute Beginner (Jawbone, 2023), covering the journeyman London guitarist’s years as a sideman with the likes of David Bowie and Iggy Pop, Sheas revelling in its ‘great stories of rock ‘n’ roll excesses.’ Just like a night out with Stone Foundation, eh.

Specials Inspiration: Terry Hall is fondly remembered by Neil Sheasby

For this website’s April 2022 interview with Neil Sheasby, head here. For our 2017 feature/interview with Sheas, head here. And for our 2020 feature/interview with Stone Foundation’s Neil Jones, try here. 

WriteWyattUK’s impression of Stone Foundation supported by Steve Brookes at Guildford’s Boileroom in late 2021 is here. And this site’s take on Stone Foundation at Gorilla in Manchester in late 2019 is here.

Bass Notes: Life and Times on the Road with Stone Foundation by Neil Sheasby is available now from Soul DeepBooks via www.souldeep.co.uk and all good bookshops. And for ticket details for all Stone Foundation shows and more about the band and their releases, head here.

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Vinny Peculiar / Common Hall / John Denton – Castle Hotel, Manchester

Posted on November 18, 2023 by writewyattuk
Peculiar Practice: Vinny Peculiar in action at the Castle Hotel, Manchester. Photo: Malcolm Wyatt

A return to Manchester’s Northern Quarter, and somehow my first visit to the Castle Hotel, and something of a showcase for three happening singer-songwriters at different stages in their… well, I’ll say careers, because they all deserve them.

It’s a venue I’ve noted on the circuit many times but had never previously frequented. Another winner too. And at the risk of repeating myself, an intimate one at that.

I’m not known for turning up before the first act plugs in, but when I stepped into the back room of the Castle, opening act John Denton was already raring to get up there, among barely half a dozen punters lurking near the back at that point. He’s 13 years old, so arguably shouldn’t have even been in this pub venue. If ever a Salford Lads club t-shirt was more apt. And yet the confidence of youth spoke volumes.

He’s mainly all about his own songs, but there were a few choice covers, Arctic Monkeys’ ‘Mardy Bum’ something of a pointer towards his Northern primary influences, while The Smiths’ ‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’ and ‘Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want’ were coolly dealt with and neatly tackled, as you might expect from the recipient of 2023’s Salford Foundation Trust Johnny Marr Award (with photographic evidence online, including John getting fretboard pointers from Johnny).

Salford Lad: John Denton in live action at the Castle Hotel, Manchester. Photo: Malcolm Wyatt

He leads his own band too, three-piece The Height. And while I begrudge plugging owt that further lines Daniel Ek’s pockets, there are a fair few of his quality songs on Spotify. Cracking voice, faultless playing, big future. John talked at 110mph between songs, nervously buzzing, but what a talent. At that age I felt further advanced than most of my contemporaries, with three gigs ‘in the crowd’ under my elastic snake belt. But performing live? Get out of here. Oh, for his confidence then… and yet there’s no hint of arrogance. I went to have a word, pass on my best, but he was off upstairs and presumably soon away on a school night, an appreciative audience having increased by the song.

Next up was Common Hall, aka Robert Williams, for a first show in 15 or so years, I understand. Originally from Clitheroe, Lancashire – and a Milltown Brothers fan as a lad, I’m told – Robert’s an award-winning, acclaimed author beyond the day job, and in this case a gifted singer-songwriter nudged out of self-imposed performing retirement (he’s 10 years younger than me, I might add) by the headliner, another fan.

Again, a great set. And while I felt I was a bit ‘in his face’ in that audience, up front and central (rather than hanging on to the wall, as I was for the opening act), he later told me I was ‘a reassuring presence’. I’ll take that. Opening number ‘We Were There’ gave off a Robert Forster vibe, but I soon changed my mind and felt within a few songs he was closer to his namesake’s Go-Betweens accomplice, Grant McLennan. Either way, there was an understated yet sharp story song element, highlights including ‘My Town on TV’ and ‘As Broken as you Think’, first delivered with past act The Library Trust, while ‘The Meeting’ and ‘Golden Island’ – the latter more barbed wire folk – were maybe more where he’s at now, seemingly fragile yet increasingly acerbic, his songs stripped to the bare bones. Prime examples were the bitter yet measured ‘Hope This Hurts’ and ‘They Don’t Sing for Me’. 

There’s someone else there I can’t quite place, a little ‘60s rootsy perhaps, but Stephen Jones (Babybird), John Bramwell (I Am Kloot) and Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy) spring to mind. Maybe even an in-key Dan Treacy (Television Personalities), and Robert can certainly hold a tune. Entice him out again, get him to step into the wind and release more songs, then judge for yourself.    

Common Hall: A welcome return for Robert Williams at the Castle Hotel, Manchester. Photo: Malcolm Wyatt

With the first two performers it was just them and guitars, but then came a five-piece led by Alan Wilkes, aka Vinny Peculiar, in full band LP launch get-up to celebrate How I Learned to Love the Freaks, one of my 2023 albums of the year. And despite his Worcestershire roots, this was something of a Manchester homecoming for an artiste who cut his performing teeth in these parts, not least in past side-projects alongside Paul ‘Bonehead’ Arthurs, Craig Gannon, Mike Joyce, and the sadly departed Andy Rourke.

Vinny had tackled this one-step cramped stage a few times before. Could a five-piece fit on there? Would it end up like an early Elvis Presley TV appearance, the band unable to swivel hips, in fear of knocking each other off, so to speak? Well, it worked, Viiny’s combo the third act to capture the Castle, although my admittedly not great photos largely lacked evidence of the presence of keyboard player (and backing vocalist) Rob Steadman and drummer Paul Tsanos, tucked away respectively behind guitarists Adam Webb and Vinny.

They were certainly a sight to see, even if – as Vinny pointed out – there was a marked lack of dressing up in his decreed flower power theme, the lead singer – resplendent in beads and trademark straggly hair – looking to Rob and Adam. That said, I got the feeling the others hadn’t delved that deep into their wardrobes, this being something of their standard stage gear – Vinny, Paul and bass player Jim Gee looking the part on a more natural basis.

They started with the opening three songs of the new LP, a scene-setting ‘Death of the Counterculture’ and ‘Going to San Francisco’ followed by Vinny repeating the last line of that second song, over-explaining (rather charmingly) how it had indeed ‘all got out of hand, man,’ labouring the point of how the ‘hippies made love to strangers’ and the dream was soon over.

Freak Power: Vinny Peculiar into his stride at the Castle Hotel, Manchester. Photo: Malcolm Wyatt

With that, they moved on to the more reflective ‘Peace and Love’ and the LP’s work of art title track, before giving us four songs by way of a potted history of past VP endeavours, starting with the rather splendid Go-Betweens-like ‘Everyone Has Something to Say’ from the (sadly) lesser known Silver Meadows (Fables from the Institution) album followed by ‘Malvern Winter Gardener’ from nostalgic coming-of-age collection Return of the Native. They then reached further back for ‘Jesus Stole My Girlfriend’ from 2002’s Ironing the Soul before ‘I Only Stole What I Needed’ added further food for thought from 2015’s Down the Bright Stream, the quality of songwriting there for all to hear and witness.

The band rocked out again with super-catchy glam stomper, ‘Hippy Kids’, threats of audience clap-along participation coming to nowt, bass player Jim’s half-beat suggestion deemed too complicated by the frontman, with no alternative put forward, us making do with the odd impassioned ‘hey!’ instead.

The evening was already running away from us, a befitting ‘Man Out of Time’ from pre-pandemic long player While You Still Can taking us to the finish line. Well, kind of. The pantomime of rock ‘n’ roll encores seems increasingly exposed as ludicrous as years roll on, Vinny having none of it, suggesting they might just stick around just in case. Inevitably, fully deserved applause followed, and we were royally rewarded, our headliners launching into an impassioned take on Talking Heads’ ‘Life During Wartime’.

Our leading light sang, ‘This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no fooling around. No time for dancing, or lovey-dovey, I ain’t got time for that now.’ But he wasn’t fooling anyone, the floor certainly moving. How could it not be? Vinny suggested their version was more shambolic each time they played it. Not from where I was grooving, it wasn’t. That said, shambolic works for me. Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit? Heard about Manchester M4, more like. Glorious.

Jim Gee. Photo: Malcolm Wyatt
Adam Webb. Photo: Malcolm Wyatt

There was time for one more, our Love Freaks quintet bringing the ‘Ashram Curtains’ down on a grand night out. There are still a couple of Vinny Peculiar duo dates in the diary this year, and a few full band shows lined up for May 2024. Hopefully I’ll catch this five-piece line-up again soon enough. Maybe even back in Manchester. And if that’s the case, as the man himself put it on the finale, ‘I’ll be waiting right here.’

For this website’s feature-interviews with Vinny Peculiar from November 2019 and January 2022, a July 2019 review of Vinny supporting The Wedding Present in Blackpool, and the WriteWyattUK consensus on How I Learned to Love the Freaks, follow the highlighted links.

Vinny Peculiar appears (alongside Rob Steadman) at Kitchen Garden Café, Kings Heath, Birmingham on Thursday, November 23rd, and Green Note, Parkway, Camden, London NW1 on Friday, November 24th. For more details and tickets, plus information about Vinny’s releases and 2024 band dates, head here.

Set Up: Vinny Peculiar have it all to do at the Castle Hotel, Manchester. Photo: Malcolm Wyatt

For more about Common Hall, head here. You can also check out Robert Williams’ website and find him on Twitter. And for details of John Denton and his band, The Height, check out his Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages.

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‘He paints with light!’ Talking Slade with influential rock ‘n’ roll photographer Gered Mankowitz

Posted on November 17, 2023 by writewyattuk

In which Malcolm Wyatt publishes further excerpts from Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade, in this case the full-length version of his late April 2023 feature/interview with esteemed South East Cornwall-based photographer Gered Mankowitz

Light Painter: Gered today. Photograph copyright of Gered Mankowitz / Iconic Images Ltd. 2023

In Gered Mankowitz: Rock and Roll Photography (Goodman, 2016), the legendary photographer wrote, ‘I loved Slade! They were always fun to work with and I ended up shooting over 35 sessions with them throughout their long and distinguished career. I shot almost every album cover they did, and many other sessions as well. They were hugely talented and made an endless stream of brilliant, raucous pop hits, throughout the Seventies. I considered them to be good mates and am still in contact with Noddy Holder, and recently had tea with Dave Hill and Don Powell when they played a local gig.’

That was all I needed by way of an excuse to track down the man himself to his South Cornwall home studio on the lead up to publishing Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade (Spenwood Books, 2023), Gered, now 77, apparently inspired to take up photography by comedian Peter Sellers, opening his first studio in 1963, going on to work with Slade from the turn of the Seventies.

Finding himself at the centre of Swinging London in the early Sixties, Gered worked solidly for the next five decades, his many iconic images – from ABC and AC/DC to Wings and The Yardbirds – also including those of Duran Duran, George Harrison, The Jam, Jimi Hendrix, Kate Bush, Led Zeppelin, Madness, Marianne Faithfull, Oasis, the Rolling Stones, Small Faces, Status Quo, and Wham!

But how did Gered end up working so closely with Chas Chandler’s Slade, at such a key time in their development, building such a creative, successful working relationship?

“I started working for Chas in ‘67 when I photographed the Jimi Hendrix sessions. I did two with Jimi and the Experience. I was trying to remember how I got to know Chas, because I never photographed The Animals, so there was no obvious link. I think it was because I was doing work for Rik and John Gunnell. They managed bands and I’m sure Chas was involved in some way. He asked me to photograph Hendrix, and we remained in touch.

“I photographed other artists for him, and then he approached me to photograph Ambrose Slade, in, I guess, ‘69. I don’t know the exact chronology, but as far as I know it was their first session since moving to town.”

I get the impression that past experiences with photographers and record label types, through their earlier label, Fontana, helped them wise up, as suggested by ‘Pouk Hill’ on 1970’s Play It Loud, written about their experience of a Black Country photo-shoot with Richard Stirling for sole Ambrose Slade LP, Beginnings, the previous year.

“I don’t know that story, but they were quite independent in their thinking, even then. And Dave {Hill} was very opinionated, very full of himself. But I enjoyed their company from the outset, and I think they enjoyed mine. And it was the beginning of a long-lasting, very productive, lovely relationship. I mean, I loved them dearly, and consider them really good friends.”

I guess 30-plus sessions together tells its own story.

“I think there were over 40. They were fun to be with, extremely creative, and it was always a very positive experience being with them. They were never moody or difficult, and they had a real sense of their identity. It was always a very enjoyable working relationship. We had fun. We were always giggling, and they were great piss-takers.

“Gosh, they used to tease me, based on a character in a famous Tony Hancock episode {The Publicity Photograph}, very funny, where Kenneth Williams played the photographer. For the life of me, I’ve forgotten what he was called, but they’d call me that. ‘He paints with light!’ Yes, it was a very friendly, very enjoyable, productive time.”

Hilary St Clair was that character, by the way. And of all the Slade record sleeves Gered shot, does one stick out above all others? Several certainly became iconic images.

“I was going to say Nobody’s Fools. Not because of the sleeve, but because of the session. I didn’t like the sleeve. Between them, Polydor and Chas messed that up. I wanted the black and white version with coloured red noses, which I thought was a vastly superior photograph. I think it would have worked really well. But record companies wanted colour for some reason, and they did a horrible thing to the picture.

“I liked the session very much, and thought the band were looking extremely polished at that point in their identities, their images visually really refined. I’ve always loved the black and white pictures from that session. That stands up, and Play It Loud, because that was quite a breakthrough picture at the time. It wasn’t a sort of natural cover image. I was very proud of that and enjoyed most of my sessions with them.”

One that strikes me from those earliest sessions is where you’ve got them sat with boots forward, in skinhead garb. And in at least a couple of cases, they look anything but hard.

“I know! Again, the exact chronology escapes me, but Chas rang and said, quite soon after I’d done either the first or second Ambrose Slade session, ‘You better get back here… quick,’ so I did, and we did the skinhead session. The thing is, they were so sweet looking… Don was possibly the hardest looking, but they just look sweet. And Dave, I mean, he looked like a baby!”

Not really the image Chas envisaged, I’m sure.

“They certainly didn’t look hard, but I guess with the music and the boots and stomping around on stage, it tapped into that skinhead vibe.”

It seems that some of that skinhead crowd of the time stuck with them too, long after the hair grew back.

“With the beat, the raucousness, and the quality of the band, they were something to watch. And they were a major band, awfully good. Maybe it’s something to do with the Seventies as a decade, but Slade were an incredibly important powerful band and a huge influence, yet they’ve never been a band whose merit has not been truly assessed.”

I’ve found time and again – perhaps chiefly because the musicians in my contacts book are mostly drawn from the punk and new wave era rather than the heavy metal followers that latched on to them after the 1980 Reading Festival – there was a year zero approach to what came before 1976 and all that. A lot of emerging acts kept it quiet that Slade were an influence, from early sightings on Top of the Pops onwards.

“I think that’s true, and very interesting. I’m not a music historian, so I don’t really think about it in terms of when things happened. I just know they happened, and Slade were a great band… and important.

“I’m always singing the praises of Slade, whenever I get the opportunity. Whenever anybody asks who my favourite bands were, I always include them, and enjoy talking about them. And everybody at the studio loved them. When we had the studio in Great Windmill Street {Soho, London W1}, pretty much throughout the Seventies, they’d come several times a year.

“We’d have a big Christmas party there. I’d cook a turkey and a ton of sausages, and we’d make a huge punch, famous for being an absolute killer punch. You had absolutely great sounds, and we invited people from all walks of life, and we’d invite Slade and their roadies, particularly Swinn {Graham Swinnerton}. They arrived, one year, were almost the first there, and I’m at the door welcoming people, saying, ‘Great to see you, go right through, there’s food over there.’

“After about 20 minutes, I managed to escape the door, went inside, and the turkey had gone, the sausages had gone, and Slade and the roadies were just sitting around. ‘Great grub!’ They cleaned us out in 20 minutes!”

I’m proud to say the forewords for Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade are from two of your other past subjects, Suzi Quatro and Sweet’s Andy Scott.

“Yes, two other friends, and I’m still in touch with both. I adore Suzi, working with her throughout the Seventies, up until relatively recently. She’s somebody I like enormously. And I did the pictures for the band Suzi, Andy and Don Powell formed {QSP}.”

Having spoken to Suzi, I had to have a quiet word with my 10-year-old self, the young lad who’d be in awe of her stage appeal for five years by then, from Top of the Pops appearances but also those record covers and so many of your iconic shots.

“That’s nice to know. The thing is, certainly back in the Sixties and Seventies, seeing bands wasn’t as easy as perhaps it is today with social media and everything, so those pictures were very important. And that first vision of the artist is very important.

“In the early Sixties, you’d listen to bands on Radio Luxembourg and have absolutely no idea what they looked like and didn’t even know what colour they were or how many of them were in the band. You just listened to the music and thought it was great. But image became increasingly important, and those primary images become iconic images if you’re lucky.”

Buttons Pusher: Photograph copyright of Gered Mankowitz / Iconic Images Ltd. 2023

They’d had an amazing run, so arguably it had to end at some point, Slade out of popular favour on their return from the States, maybe part of the reason Nobody’s Fools is only getting kudos now.

“Well, the band didn’t stop being good. I can understand anybody saying it was a mistake trying to crack America, but they really had to do it. Chas was very much of the management school where if you didn’t make it in America, you hadn’t really made it. And the interesting thing is that they were incredibly important influences on several American bands.”

That’s something that happens time and again. The Rolling Stones, another of the bands you famously shot, recognised, to some extent replicated, and reinvented the sounds of the bluesmen of America, then took that music to new generations stateside, and some of those ended up in bands that influenced others on this side of the Atlantic. And so on down the years.

“Absolutely, talk about coals to Newcastle. But it needed an incredibly enthusiastic young band. I think it was much more of a tribute. They loved that music, Brian Jones in particular a real aficionado of that music. He really understood and loved it. I don’t think he wanted to do anything else. I think the blues was the bedrock of their success, and maybe the Stones had to have ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, a global hit, to consolidate their career and success. And perhaps Chas tried to emulate that with Slade.

“The other problem is that you can get out of step very quickly, especially if you’re an important part of a previous step – and they were, for the best part of a decade. It’s very difficult when the mantle has been passed, to get back in. So that was a misstep, I guess.”

“But Slade were the complete package. Not only did they write the material, they looked the business and outperformed anybody else on the bill. They weren’t trendy. They were just there, and they were in your face. They were sort of unique.”

Those Black Country working-class roots and attitudes helped too. They were never pretentious.

“Yes, and I’ve just recalled another great night with them. I can’t remember the name of the pub, but I went to Wolverhampton with them to shoot some live stuff…”

Was it The Trumpet in Bilston?

“Yes, oh my God! We had such a great night. What struck me was that they were regulars and were truly treated as such, not as anything special. They loved that and were 100 per cent at home. Everybody loved them, nobody hassled them, it was a wonderful night. I’m not a big pub person, but I really loved that because the vibe was simply glorious, like being with a huge family.

“I haven’t seen Jimmy for years and years, but I’ve seen Nod, who sends me a shouty Christmas message and came to a couple of my openings at a gallery in Manchester. And I saw Dave and Don together when they were doing the rounds with {their version of} Slade at the Hall for Cornwall in Truro, having tea with them, which was great fun. And it was another incredible show, even though it’s not the band it was. I also had a nice time hanging out with Don when we did the QSP session. My feelings towards them haven’t changed. Nor has my sense of affection and admiration for them.”

You also did the publicity shots for Slade in Flame. What did you make of that film first time around, not least bearing in mind your own film background.

“I thought it was a very good film, one that tried to capture the music scene in an honest way. I don’t think I’d seen it by the time we did the pictures, but I enjoyed that session. It was very challenging, technically. We used a system called front projection. The suits we had made were very uncomfortable, difficult for the band to wear. We had to get the flattest surface to take the projection cleanly – if it increased, it gave you horrible grey lines. It was complicated.

“They had to be very disciplined, and I had to be very disciplined. But it was very successful, the pictures memorable… and they worked. I’d quite like to see the film again, if I could find it.”

Every time I see it, with the passage of time, I think it gets better and better. It really stands up, not least the opening scenes.

“Funnily enough, I was so close to Chas and the boys at that time, I had an idea for a television series, based a bit on The Monkees. I wrote up a brief script and discussed it with Chas, but he thought it was a bit too juvenile for Slade.”

Dave Hill has suggested to me before that he would have loved to have gone down that road. I get the impression he wanted a take on A Hard Day’s Night.

“I think everybody would have liked that. The idea of a television series built around a band seemed a really good idea. I know The Monkees had done it, but there seemed to be room to do it again, differently.”

Well, I guess Reeves and Mortimer went on to give us Slade in Residence. And do you still play the records, and if so, what songs jump out at you all these years on?

“Honestly, I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you. I like some of the slower ones. I always thought they were fantastic songwriters, the Lennon/McCartney of the day.”

A love of The Beatles often shone through, and I realise I’m talking to someone who enjoyed a good working relationship with George Harrison.

“They had to be. You had to be cut off from the world not to be influenced by and admire The Beatles. You might not have necessarily liked them in terms of image, but we were all in awe of and full of admiration.”

All LP cover images above shot by Gered Mankowitz and copyright of Gered Mankowitz / Iconic Images Ltd. 2023. For more about Gered, head to his website via this link. You can also follow Gered via social media on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Nobody’s Fools: The LP shot Gered preferred. Photograph by Gered Mankowitz / Iconic Images Ltd. 2023

And to order a copy of Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade by Malcolm Wyatt (Spenwood Books, 2023), follow this publisher’s link, taking advantage of a 25% discount offer across all titles when using the code 2KQUCX7Q at the checkout. The publisher also has various other music publications up for grabs, including Rolling Stones, Cream, Faces, The Who, Pink Floyd, Queen, Thin Lizzy, Fairport Convention, and Wedding Present titles.

You can also order the book via Amazon, ordering through your local bookseller, or trying before you buy via your nearest library.

Posted in Books Films, TV & Radio, Music | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Going Full Circle with The Sweet – back in touch with Andy Scott

Posted on November 14, 2023 by writewyattuk
New Deal: Andy Scott, third from the left, with his 2023 Sweet tourmates, all set to head your way

The Sweet are all set to go Full Circle, the 1970s glam-rock hitmakers all set for a 13-date December UK tour.

Guitarist/vocalist cum national treasure and glam rock royalty, Andy Scott, the golden thread linking the band’s past to present – over six happening decades – acknowledges that the long tours can’t carry on indefinitely and is looking to ‘wind down’ some of his live commitments… but he insists it’s not the end for the band.

“This could be our last tour, but that doesn’t mean we’re not going to do any more gigs, just that we might not be doing 15 to 20 dates strung together. Then again, we might!”

Having scored 15 top-40 hits in the ‘70s, eight of those going top-five – including 1973’s classic UK No.1 ‘Blockbuster’ – it’s fair to say that The Sweet perfected the art of making memorable records in a highly-competitive era.

And as well as the fire and steel shown in the recording studio and the glamour and excitement they transmitted onto our TV screens, there was always plenty of live passion too, something that his current bandmates Paul Manzi (vocals), Bruce Bisland (drums, vocals), Lee Small (bass, vocals) and Tom Cory (guitar, keyboards) know only too well, as you can find out for yourself on the Full Circle tour, which opens in Wrexham, where Andy made his debut in a church hall youth club 60 years ago, at the age of 14, and ending in Frome, Somerset, close to his West Country base of the last 30-plus years.

From 1971 breakthrough ‘Co-Co’ to 1978’s ‘Love is like Oxygen’, and all points between and beyond, The Sweet’s song catalogue also includes ‘The Ballroom Blitz’, ‘Fox on the Run’, ‘Hellraiser’, ‘Little Willy’, ‘Teenage Rampage’, ‘Action’, and ‘Wig-Wam Bam’.

And their most recent single, ‘Changes’, with its chugging guitar riff and catchy chorus, suggests Andy is still enjoying making music to this day. Is he still fired up on the songwriting front? And are these songs still coming to him regularly?  

“The older you get, as a record producer… Well, I’m such a bad editor. When I say bad, I mean… if I don’t think an idea is anywhere near where it should be, it gets ditched straight away. So you have these moments where you spring up in the middle of the night and you write down some lyrics or you patter down to the studio area – which is on a gallery, because I live in a barn – and I pick up an acoustic guitar and hopefully record it on the phone before it goes completely.”

Guitar Man: Andy Scott of The Sweet back home in the West Country. Photo: Dick Barnatt

I’ll bet you’ve lost a few songs in the past, though, haven’t you?

“Yes! Of course, in your dreams, the song’s magnificent. ‘Fox on the Run’ was one of those. It was my friend Kevin who found the original demo. He goes through my cassettes and stuff, where I’m almost whispering and just chunking the acoustic guitar. I wrote that one when living in a house near Heathrow Airport. I woke up in the middle of the night and didn’t want to wake my fairly new-born son and first wife, so I’m going {Andy whispers}, ‘I – I – I don’t want to know your name…’”

Iconic. And talking of ‘70s legends, I see your good pal Suzi Quatro’s doing the rounds again too, putting on a few dates in mid-November. Meanwhile, fellow QSP bandmate and Slade drumming legend Don Powell is keeping busy with a number of projects, while his former bandmate Dave Hill’s doing his own thing with his version of Slade, Jim Lea has been exceptionally busy in the studio this year, and Noddy Holder’s guested on a few live dates. And all of them despite – like Andy – a few major health issues in recent years. What is it about you lot that keeps you out there, performing, all these years on?

“Well, I did speak to Don, and said, ‘Do you ever envisage yourself going back on the road?’ Especially after the fallout between him and Dave. And he basically said, ‘No, but I don’t mind doing the odd gig.’ When he comes back, he’s got a pile of mates and they’re going to do a gig somewhere. And he’s got a band he can step up with in Denmark. But he said, ‘I don’t want to start having the Don Powell Band doing what you do.’ And I can see that. He doesn’t need to do it, but when he’s doing it, he enjoys it.”

Well, you do it big time when you’re out there.

“Yeah. But like me, his recovery rate… it’s going to take some time, you know.”

My conversations with Andy always tend to include some discussion or other about his old chart rivals and good friends, Slade. We talked in our previous interview – five years ago, in December 2018 (linked here) about how he was also ‘schooled’ in the ‘60s on that pub and club circuit at home and overseas. And as he pointed out when he was good enough to write me a foreword for Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade – following Suzi Quatro’s lead – his early days included a mid-‘60s spell in The Elastic Band, who just happened to be playing a Grand Bahama club residency at the same time as The ‘N Betweens, the band that morphed into Slade, who were playing another nightspot on the island.

What’s more, by late ‘71 they’d both tasted UK chart success – Andy by then with The Sweet. Far greater success was to follow, but there was already a sense of accomplishment.

Time Out: QSP, Andy Scott’s 2017 album project with Suzi Quatro and Don Powell

“Absolutely. And I was a bit of a fan of Slade. When I got back from the Bahamas and The Elastic Band imploded, I remember going to see them somewhere. I think that was when they were doing some of the skinhead stuff. I remember being in the dressing room, chuckling a little bit, and Noddy looked at me and kind of went, ‘Just leave it, alright!’”

As he knows full well, a couple of them looked the part, but for the others it just didn’t work, look-wise. They didn’t look so hard, really. The music could be though, and it made people sit up and take notice, which was Chas Chandler’s intention. So that certainly worked. It was an inspired idea, and it made them stand out from the crowd. And I’m guessing that Andy probably learned from that experience as well.

“Well, I remember dragging Mick {Tucker} when I first joined The Sweet, down to the Boathouse at Kew. We walked in, went into the dressing room, and you could see they were getting ready to go on. I said, ‘Nice to see you,’ they went on, and we stood at the back somewhere. And it was like being in a war zone, the sound. They had that huge WEM PA system, which was like, I suppose, a good quality transistor radio turned up very loud. There wasn’t a hell of a lot of frequency differences. But the band themselves… I remember Mick and I both going, ‘Well, you know, that is full on energy!’”

Records suggest that Kew Bridge show was on December 29th in 1971, when ‘Slade’s ‘Coz I Luv You’ had just spent its 10th week in the UK top-40 (after four weeks at the top),with The Sweet’s ‘Alexander Graham Bell’ having just finished its UK top-40 run, their third charting single that, their transition from bubblegum pop to a harder glam sound still some way ahead of them.

And talking of 1971, does he recognise himself now on Top of the Pops footage for the band’s first No.2 hit, ‘Co-Co’, kept off the summit for two weeks that July by Middle of the Road’s dreadful ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’? Is he back in the moment remembering that appearance?

“With ‘Co-Co and ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’ that summer, in Europe one or other was No.1 in the charts everywhere, for about two or three months. You couldn’t go anywhere. I remember doing a TV show in Spain, and the hotel where we were staying were playing both. You just couldn’t get away from it!

“But to answer your question, I don’t think any of us would remember the first appearance on Top of the Pops. We were probably like rabbits in headlights, and a little bit stiff-legged. How can I put it… when the camera comes round, catches you, you put a little cheesy smile on. But Brian (Connolly, lead singer} was magnificent in those days.”

He was a great frontman. Did that kind of take the pressure off you a bit, In a sense?

“Well, I think you’re all just happy to be on Top of the Pops, aren’t you. Regardless of whether you’re fully into the material. It’s a hit, so you do the best that you can. Yeah. And then you set about trying to manoeuvre things. And Mike Chapman {co-producer, co-writer} grabbed the shield and sword and was going into battle for us, saying, ‘The band needs to play on these records. It’s all very well having ‘Co-Co’, with a bunch of Latin-Americans and all that stuff. But the band has to start…’ And he started to write these songs.

Hits Catalogue: Andy Scott, still out there, still the main man, still after a piece of the action

“When he came to see us, he realised that we were big Who fans, as we were doing a big Who medley. So when he wrote ‘Little Willie’, the first thing Mick {Tucker, drums} and I noticed when he played it to us, it’s like the start of a Who song.”

Well, now you mention it.

“We were a pop band emulating, shall we say, a Who riff. And then ‘Wig-Wam Bam’ was probably a ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll song.”

There was a lot of those influences in that era, from the Electric Light Orchestra to Mott the Hoople, and I guess David Essex, Mud, Showaddywaddy… rock ‘n’ roll with an early ‘70s treatment.

“Yeah, and T-Rex were all a bit Chuck Berry. Cheesy, but with easy guitar, you know.”

And then came 1973 and ‘Blockbuster’, 50 years ago. Does he recall where he was when it overtook Little Jimmy Osmond at No.1?

“Well, I remember – and I’ve seen the photographic evidence – being at Top of the Pops when we were at No.1, and there were magnums of champagne in our dressing room. I’m not even sure whether we were allowed to have alcohol in the dressing room in those days.”

You had five weeks at the top with that, eight weeks in the top 10, 12 weeks in the top 40. That’s not so bad, is it. You kept contemporary competition like David Bowie, (whisper it) Gary Glitter and Elton John off the top. And then The Strawbs, before finally giving way to Slade’s ‘Cum on Feel the Noize’ in a momentous year for them.

“Yeah, and now I’m told, if we could sell all our vinyl on tour, when we have a 2,500 run, if you could make sure they were bought in advance so they could go in with some downloads and others, you would go in the charts with 2,000 to 3,000 sales. And yet that wouldn’t even have covered our daily sales back then.”

The Sweet are now seen first and foremost as a singles band, and the albums were not nearly as successful, chart-wise. But I saw somewhere that you’ve sold around 55 million albums.

“I think that’s been exaggerated. It’s 55 million units sold. We haven’t sold 55 million albums. Otherwise I would be a very rich man and living the life! And the truth of that is, I would still be doing what I’m doing. But when you total it all up, probably there were more singles sold than albums. Because every one of those singles from ‘Blockbuster’ and ‘Hellraiser’ to ‘Ballroom Blitz’, ‘Teenage Rampage’, ‘Fox on the Run’ and ‘Love Is Like Oxygen’, they all sold more than a million units. And I think ‘Co-Co’ did as well.”

You had a run of other No.2s as well, and were also kept off the top by Dawn’s awful ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon’, plus Wizzard’s amazing ‘See My Baby Jive’ and ‘Angel Fingers’. Even the Simon Park Orchestra’s ‘Eye Level’, the theme tune from Van der Valk. With a couple of those, I guess it was more a case of those rare moments when the older generation went out and bought a single. But was there a real sense of competition between yourselves, Slade, Wizzard, Glitter, and so on?

“I think we all knew when the others were going to be releasing things. There was an unwritten rule that you didn’t have a Slade, a Wizzard, David Bowie or Sweet single coming out at the same time. You tried to stagger them.”

By time you were back there with ‘Teenage Rampage’ (perhaps my favourite Sweet moment), it was ‘Tiger Feet’ keeping you off the top. Did you have a good relationship with Mud?

“Oh, yeah. I liked the lads in Mud. I’ll never forget Mick Tucker’s words to Nicky, when we ended up with the No’s 1, 2 and 3 in January ‘74. There was Mud at No.1 with ‘Tiger Feet’, then us with ‘Teenage Rampage’, and Suzi {Quatro} with ‘Devil Gate Drive’.

“We were expecting, after a couple of weeks, that we would go to No.1. But what happened? We stayed at No.2, and Suzi went to No.1 for one week. And Mick’s word to Nicky Chinn was, ‘Judas!’ In other words, if anybody should have been No.1, it should have been us, because we were the ones that kickstarted you with all these other bands! But it just made me roar with laughter.”

By 1975, The Sweet had stalled again at No.2 with ‘Fox on the Run’, with the Bay City Rollers at No.1 with ‘Bye Bye Baby’ this time. Had the fickle world of pop music already moved on?

“Well, it certainly wasn’t our immediate goal to have another No.1 single. I think you’re absolutely right. And by that time, we’d also moved on from Phil Wainman as producer, and Nicky {Chinn} and Mike {Chapman}as the writers. Because the album that we were then making for RCA was the heavy metal album, in Germany. We’d moved on and we were starting to play arenas, on the same circuit as Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, and a few of the other bands in Germany.

“And not a lot of people realise that by 1975, we’d stopped playing in the UK. We didn’t play here between the end of ’74 and the beginning of ‘78.”

By which time you were into the ‘Love is Like Oxygen’ era.

“Yeah, I can’t remember the last gig in ’74, but the first gig we did in ‘78 was at the Hammersmith Odeon.”

And did you find you still had the numbers turning out then?

“Oh, if our agent had been a little bit quicker off the mark, we’d have done two or three nights at Hammersmith Odeon. It sold out so quickly. When he went in there, there wasn’t another date for at least 10 days. I said, ‘Well, let’s do another two weeks afterwards then,’ but, you know, the moment had gone.”

We mentioned album sales. Do you look at one particular album and think, ‘That’s where we properly got it together’? I’m thinking, Sweet Fanny Adams or Desolation Boulevard. Do you think either of those LPs truly told the tale of you at those particular moments in time?

“I definitely think that regarding working with Phil, without interference from Nicky and Mike, on Sweet Fanny Adams – because they were in America. The fact that there was no single on the album, it was just album tracks and we had written the majority of them… And for the next album, Desolation Boulevard, the American version is basically Sweet Fanny Adams with a couple of tracks – like ‘The Six Teens’ – from the European Desolation Boulevard. That’s a good album, but they cherry-picked the best of two albums.”

“But quite frankly, I still like, Level Headed.”

Do you think that (1978 LP) gets enough kudos?

“Well, the only song they would immediately know on that is ‘Love is Like Oxygen’. And of course, it takes up space on the vinyl. There are only four tracks on that side, because it’s nearly seven minutes long.”

Returning to the modern day, Andy remains fiercely protective of the band’s legacy, today as ever. But I note that he’s being a little careful regarding his description of this forthcoming tour. Not least with regard to saying whether this is the last Sweet tour. However, I get the impression he’s looking forward to these dates, and having a bit of a party out there.

“Yeah. As I’ve said, UK dates might be a little easier, but I don’t want to start going away for four or five weeks, like we have done, going from Switzerland to Austria to Germany to the Netherlands, or Denmark or Sweden. I don’t mind going abroad and doing a couple of shows, as long as the distances are not outrageous. As long as we’re not going from Hamburg to Munich. And we’ve got a couple of guys out in Germany who are looking after us properly.

“I’ve also cut my own cloth accordingly. If I’m going to be doing this, it’s not about the money for me. It’s got to be about having the right band, making sure that they’re happy as well. I don’t need to have a figure in my mind as to what I need to earn for everything. And I’ve got an agent who realises that. I’d rather stay in the best hotel, have a car pick me up and drive me everywhere and travel business class everywhere, rather than come home with an extra few hundred quid. It’s not about that for me.”

Of the classic line-up, there’s just Andy now, but we are after all talking about a legendary mainstay of a band that has managed a colossal 53 years of hit singles, shifted millions of albums, and amassed 34 No.1s. And it’s a group that has clearly stood the test of time. What’s more, it all starts off in Andy’s former neck of the woods, in Wrexham on December 1st, although I see he’ll be struggling to get in a home game at the Racecourse Ground this time around, with the fixtures not exactly in his favour (although his beloved football team host Morecambe in League Two on November 25th, then Yeovil Town in the FA Cup second round on December 3rd).

“I don’t get to the football as often as I should, but it will be 60 years since I did my first show, with my school band in a youth club in a church hall in Wrexham, so this will be virtually 60 years on, because it was November/December 1963, when I was 14.”

So it’s proper Full Circle, as the tour title suggests.

“Exactly!”

And will there be post-tour celebrations in the West Country at the end?

“Well, I’ve been told that I might be kidnapped by some guys who don’t see me enough down my local. As I come off stage, someone says, ‘We’re gonna put a bag over your head and drag you to our local.’ But I’m trying to look after myself, and going down the pub like I used to – early doors – having a couple of pints, isn’t part of the agenda anymore.”

It seems that Andy might do well to heed the advice of that immortal line, “You better beware, you better take care …”

Andy Scott and Suzi Quatro have provided forewords for Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade (Spenwood Books, 2023), which you can order via the publisher’s link or through Amazon or your local bookseller. You can also try before you buy via your nearest library.

The Sweet’s Full Circle tour takes place this December, with dates at William Aston Hall, Wrexham, Friday 1st; The Wulfrun, Wolverhampton; Saturday 2nd; Picturedrome, Holmfirth, Friday 8th; Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow, Saturday 9th; Fire Station, Sunderland, Sunday 10th; Apex, Bury St Edmunds, Thursday 14th; Academy, Manchester, Friday 15th; Lowther Pavilion, Lytham St Anne’s, Saturday 16th; Tramshed, Cardiff, Sunday 17th; Rock City, Nottingham, Wednesday 20th; Islington Assembly Hall, London, Thursday 21st; Lighthouse, Poole, Friday 22nd; Cheese & Grain, Frome, Saturday 23rd. Tickets are available via this link.

For further information, check out the band’s website and keep in touch via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. You can also check out the band’s YouTube channel.  

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