SLADE – "Take Me Bak 'Ome"

You’re right, Tom, this is the least impressive of Slade’s six number ones, and if you asked anyone to name all of them this would probably be sixth out of most people’s memory banks. After they became big this was perhaps the closest they got to the basic-ness of “Get Down and Get With It”. Sophistication could wait.

As I still haven’t been born yet, my knowledge of Slade is dependant on what I’ve heard since, which in turn depends on posterity’s view of them, and for that reason I don’t think I’ve ever heard this all the way through. I even looked up a sound clip online to check whether it sounded familiar and it doesn’t, beyond the fact that it sounds *exactly* like Slade.

If this had been ‘Far Far Away’ or ‘Radio Wall Of Sound’ I’d be more helpful, sorry.

Only number one for a week so that week must have been a pretty slow one.

Hello again, Tom. I had a horrible feeling that it would be “starry starry night” forever. As John Sebastian would say, Welcome Back.

Yes, this was Slade’s runt of the litter unquestionably. An unremarkable piece, which deserved Number One much less than the brilliant Goodbye to Jane, which was kept off the top by “Ding a Ling” later on in the year. The supreme irony of this was that Berry recorded this live in Coventry of all places, and in the crowd (and thus participating in the recording) was one Noddy Holder.

I bet Rosie knew that!

Erithian – Yep. Both true. I cannot substantiate Blackburn picking “School’s Out” other than a personal memory. I was particualerly astonished as Tony usually only ever went for black artistes, mostly Mowtown. Alice Cooper couldn’t have been more different, even if he did hail from Detroit…

As for Noddy, I heard this snippet form the great man himself on a radio interview a couple of years ago. Good one, isn’t it!

The song that started my life-long love affair with Slade. I still love listening to it on the Slade Live Anthology album to this day. Slade are the loudest band I ever saw (4 times) and they really entertained the crowd.

Noddy Jim Dave and Don – well done lads.
Keep on Rockin’

After “Baby Jump”, could this be the second least memorable Number One of the 1970s? I loved Slade, but I’m still struggling to remember what this sounded like.

I think most number ones, at least prior to the mid-90s, have a certain inevitability about them, but Always Yours felt like a no.3 or 4 even at the time!

Any of the first four GG hits (Rock n Roll, I Didn’t Know I Loved You, Hello Hello I’m Back Again, Do You Wanna Touch Me) would have been harder to contest and all fell short. I seem to be one of the few people left who can still separate the man with the Fritzl eyebrows from his music, which I’m quite happy about.

Likewise, Gudbuy T’ Jane shoulda made it, but I’ll take it as a trade-off for My Oh My stopping one place shy.

Agreed, on the whole, but I think the period when records would flash in and out of the top spot before the public could get a grip on them for posterity led to some which lacked that inevitability. Of course, I’m barred from mentioning them by name but one that became the very first to enter at 1 and drop the second week (and was entirely forgettable) marked a sea change.

R n R must have outsold Always Yours, yes. And I reckon the biggest seller this summer could be Gabriella Cilmi’s Sweet About Me which has yet to break the Top 5. The current no.1 is the kind of thing that I would NEVER have expected to reach the top here. So grim. Some consolation – I’ll lay good money on it staying there as long as Always Yours, as there’s one of those 100% inevitabilty no.1s waiting in the wings…

In historical terms it would probably be something like “Lady Madonna” – only two weeks at the top, eight weeks on the chart in total, straight up and straight down and out again pretty quickly, and obviously for fans only.

There’s also one very clear example – well, three of them – of this happening in the early eighties but hey hey.

And of course there’s also (as far as the eighties and beyond are concerned):
d) Good cause singles (though these are tangentially related to both B and C): Buy it to SHOW YOU CARE.

Listening to Slade now I can imagine them carving out a career similar to AC/DC in different circumstances. As well as the primitive stomp of the Glam beat there are some crunchy riffs, syncopated bass and Noddy’s yowling vocal. All of that is undercut by Dave Hill’s huge Panto tendencies however and that desire to appeal to a wider audience perhaps prevented the more ‘credible’ career