How Slade split left Noddy Holder worth £20million… but two other members playing at Butlin’s to make ends meet
THEY were the glam rockers who sold 500million records – but unlike many ’70s bands, Slade never chucked a TV out of a window while on tour.
In fact the group — who The Sun revealed yesterday have finally split after 50 years — were more likely to fix things in their hotel than leave a trail of destruction.
Frontman Noddy Holder recalled: “I always carried a screwdriver, and later a full tool kit. So if I had an hour before the gig, I’d fix things. It was quicker than calling down to reception, and that way you can have it all nice for the next person.”
Now the least rock ’n’ roll band on the planet, whose 1973 festive hit Merry Xmas Everybody is the world’s most-heard song, are finally no more. Guitarist Dave Hill, 73, axed drummer Don Powell, the only other original member of the group, by email this week.
Noddy and bassist Jim Lea, the two other original members, left in the early Nineties but earn £250,000 a year from the band’s classic Christmas single and Cum On Feel The Noize — both of which the pair wrote.
While Noddy and Jim, 70, have been living in luxury, Dave and Don, 73, have been performing at Butlin’s and the festival circuit to make ends meet. The unglamorous venues are a far cry from the stages the rock icons graced in their heyday.
Notching up six No1 singles, Slade were such a big deal they regarded the Top Of The Pops studio as their second home and in their early days recorded in the Abbey Road studios at the same time as the Beatles. But these four ordinary blokes from Wolverhampton didn’t let the success go to their heads and shied away from the debauchery their peers enjoyed.
There were no scandals or tragic accidents and they rarely touched drugs — but they were proud of their ability to outdrink their rivals. Noddy explained: “I tend to get pretty plastered but I’ve got an amazing constitution. All the different bands have tried to outdrink me and spike my drinks.
“Ozzy Osbourne had all sorts of tricks. I was the only one who could keep up with him, though he was much more into drugs than me. But I’ve never passed out. Never even had a proper memory blackout. Or been sick”.
They were never short of women either, even though Noddy admitted Slade were “a bit uglier and heavier than most of the other bands”. He said: “Marc Bolan got all the screamers, but we got our fair share.”
In Slade’s world, a sexual conquest would be followed with a home cooked meal. Noddy says: “The best bit was always when they’d ask us all round to their parents’ house for Sunday lunch.”
And they were pretty careful, it seems, with how much they put it about. Noddy — married for 16 years to his second wife, television executive Suzan — explains: “I used to have loads of people claiming I’d fathered them. They’d write to the office — sometimes nice letters, often not. They all tried it on. You just had to ignore it.”
They were also known for their fashion as much as their music, with Dave the most likely to don an outrageous stage outfit. But Noddy’s famous mirrored hat — an idea he got from seeing Lulu in a sparkling dress — became part of rock ’n’ roll folklore.
He said: “It had its own flight case. I got the hat off a guy in Kensington Market called Freddie. He said: ‘One day I’m gonna be a big pop star like you.’ I said: ‘F*** off, Freddie.’ He became Freddie Mercury.”
Despite a reputation for partying, Slade always knew when it was time to call it a night — and the fans of classic British comedy had a tactic to rid themselves of unwanted guests.
“We’d put on Hancock’s Half Hour,” says Noddy. “The Yanks couldn’t understand it, but we’d fall about laughing and they’d get bored and go home — and we’d go to bed.”
Slade’s achievements were extraordinary. They were the first band group to have three singles enter the charts at No1, recorded 20 albums, and 23 of their hits made the Top 30. The band toured the world, with mates from Walsall working as their roadies.
Slade could never have predicted such success when they played their first gigs in Wolverhampton in the late ’60s under their original name The ’N Betweens. Noddy explained: “We were four blokes from the Black Country playing in all these weird places, like Japan.
“It was all on top of us in one fell swoop. We didn’t have time to catch our breath. We didn’t realise what was happening. We could only gauge it by going to No1 or getting in and out of gigs in the back of police vans. Kids would jump on the top of our cars and bend the cars in to get at us.
“One night in Glasgow we sat on the side of the river, the Clyde, eating fish and chips with the coppers because we couldn’t get into our hotel. They had to protect us. That was our life. We were four Black Country blokes having a bloody good time.”
Slade’s success looked to be fizzling out towards the end of the Seventies — but when they filled in for Ozzy at Reading Festival in 1980, the performance sparked a renaissance. Their set was particularly memorable as they bowed down to demands from the crowd to perform their festive classic at the height of summer.
But in 1991 Noddy quit the band having grown tired of touring the world, choosing to become a TV entertainer. Noddy also maintained some fun marketing gigs on the side. He was nicknamed the King of Sizzle when he became an ambassador for British bangers and travelled around the UK in a sausagemobile.
Jim, who wrote the hits alongside Noddy, quit shortly afterwards and took a break from the limelight to study psychotherapy for 20 years. He beat prostate cancer and nursed his father and an elder brother through dementia. But he has maintained a career in music, recording four solo albums.
Both Noddy and Jim turned down the chance to reform the band countless times as Dave and Don continued under the name Slade II. In 2014, Noddy admitted he had no intention of ever seeing his former bandmates perform.
He said: “It’d make me feel funny to watch. I’d feel strange watching half the band doing the songs that the other half wrote. I didn’t really want them to carry on using the name, but it wasn’t worth going to court for, was it? Life’s too short for all that s***.”
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Jim feels the same, although he admits Noddy would struggle hitting those screeching “It’s Christmaaaaas!” at the 73 years of age.
He said in 2018: “Nod’s voice would be a problem — I don’t see how he could do it again. That would be like expecting Mo Farah to run a marathon at 60. He could probably finish one, but it would take quite a while.”
Now the band have finally reached the end of the road.
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