Friday Nite Retro

Welcome once more to that esoteric collection that I like to call Friday Nite Retro! Tonight we're going to glam-rock out to the musical stylings of Slade; I have to confess up front that I was only aware of the two hits spawned by their attempt to crack the American music scene in the early 1980's.

Turns out that these guys were hugely successful across the pond during the 1970's. They nearly broke the record set in the 1960's, by the Beatles, most top-ten singles in one decade. The Beatles record held at 22, but Slade was able to rack up 17 top-tens from 1971 through 1976.

Ironically, one of their early hits in Britain was covered here by Quiet Riot about the same time that Slade was finally hitting our charts. Here's their original of that song:

Cum On Feel the Noize


While Slade's attempts at cracking the United States market were largely unsuccessful, they left their mark on a several US bands who cite Slade as an influence. Kiss bassist Gene Simmons readily admits that his band's early songwriting ethos and stage performance style was influenced by Slade. In his book "Kiss and Make-Up," Simmons writes, "the one we kept returning to was Slade," and "we liked the way they connected with the crowd, and the way they wrote anthems... we wanted that same energy, that same irresistible simplicity. but we wanted it American-style." Tom Petersson of Cheap Trick has said that his band went to see Slade perform, and that they used "every cheap trick in the book", thus inadvertently coining his group's name.

Merry Christmas Everybody


In August 1980, Ozzy Osbourne's Blizzard Of Ozz cancelled their set at the Reading Festival with very short notice. Slade, who had all but disbanded, were recommended to replace them. A demoralised Dave Hill had effectively left the band and initially refused to do the show when asked by the other band members, but manager Chas Chandler convinced Hill to play what could very well have been their last ever live show in front of a huge crowd rather than in a small club. To Hill's utter astonishment, the band were well-received at the festival, and quickly became darlings of the music press again — despite doing nothing different at Reading than they had done onstage in recent years.

A new run of chart success followed, though not on the large scale of their 1970s heights. Slade had another two UK top 10 hits in 1984, with the singles "Run Runaway" and "My Oh My" (#2 UK, #36 U.S.) "Run Runaway" reached #7, which would be their second top 40 hit in the U.S. — and their first since "Gudbuy T'Jane", which barely made the top 40 in 1972. Interestingly enough, these hits happened despite Slade not touring to support the releases.

My Oh My


Run Runaway


They later returned to the UK Singles Chart in 1991 with the song "Radio Wall of Sound":

Radio Wall of Sound


Not much to report on the boys after that effort. A few compilations were released here and there, that's about it. Stop by their official website to learn more about the band!