Slade – Coz I Luv You

Long before Prince started to mess with titles to songs…Slade was doing it in the early seventies. When I think of glam rock…I don’t think of this band but they were indeed considered glam rock.

Slade was very successful in the UK with 6 number ones, 16 top ten, and 24 top 40 singles. They could not duplicate their success in America where they only had two top forty singles…Run, Runaway, and My, Oh My both in the 80s. Quiet Riot covered Slade’s songs Cum On Feel The Noize and Mama, Weer All Crazee Now, and had hits in the 1980s.

This 1971 song was Slade’s first number-one single and solidified their status as one of glam rock’s biggest bands in the UK. Chas Chandler (formerly Jimi Hendrix’s manager and Animals bassist) encouraged them to write their own songs and they ended up writing a lot of hits.

The song was written by lead singer Noddy Holder and bassist Jim Lea. They wrote it during a rehearsal they used to tune Lea’s violin. The song grew from there.

Slade was not like The Small Faces who never toured the US. They toured extensively with bands like Humble Pie, ZZ Top, J Geils Band, Black Sabbath, Santana, and Aerosmith opened for them in a few places until Toys in the Attic hit…and then they reversed it.

They even did a movie called  Slade In Flame that came out in 1975. It was what went on behind the scenes in rock at the time. It wasn’t a spoof because Holder fought against that.

Noddy Holder: “We thought ‘Because I Love You’ was a wet title for a song and so we used the spelling that would be on toilet walls in the Midlands and that made it more hard-hitting.”

Noddy Holder: “We didn’t like how the title would look on vinyl: ‘Because I Love You.’ It didn’t fit Slade’s image. In the studio, I had the lyric sheet written out phonetically in Black Country dialect which is how we used to write on bog walls. Chas Chandler, our manager, saw the lyric sheet, and said, ‘Why don’t we use that?’ It caught on and had such an impact.”

“Of course, you got Prince doing it in the ’80s, then all the hip-hop artists later on, so we started something. The education authorities got onto us for influencing the youth for bad spelling.”

Noddy Holder: “He (Chas Chandler) told us to write a hit song, just like that, and that’s not very easy to do. Jimmy and me wrote ‘Coz I Luv You’ in 20 minutes and Chaz was raving about it. We felt that it wasn’t rocky enough for Slade so we added all the handclapping and boot-stomping, which made it much more commercial and became our trademark.”

Jim Lea: “Our first hit, Get Down And Get With It,’ was a cover. Chas kept ringing up saying we needed a follow up, fast. We’d started trying to write in pairs – Don [Powell] and I, Noddy and Dave [Hill] , but the other two weren’t coming up with anything. Bolan was big at the time and all his songs were slinky and sexy. That seemed to be what it took to get a hit, so I had an idea to do something softer. At the time Nod and I used to jam along to [’30s French jazz violinist] Stéphane Grappelli and [Belgian jazz guitarist] Django Reinhardt, so I went over to his folks’ house to work something up with him. I’d already got the structure and 20 minutes later we had ‘Coz I Luv You.’ It romped to #1. I had to turn round to Don and say, ‘Look, we’re going to have to keep this going.'”

Cuz I Love You

I won’t laugh at you when you boo-hoo-hoo
Coz I luv you
I can turn my back on the things you lack
Coz I luv you

(Chorus):
I just like the things you do mm
Don’t you change the things you do mm

You get me in a spot and smile the smile you got
And I luv you
You make me out a clown then you put me down
I still luv you

(Chorus)

I just like the things you do mm
Don’t you change the things you do mm

Yeah

When you bite your lip you’re gonna flip your flip
But I luv you
When we’re miles apart you still reach my heart
How I love you

(Chorus)

I just like the things you do mm
Don’t you change the things you do mm

Only time can tell if we get on well
Coz I luv you
All that’s passed us by we can only sigh hi-hi
Coz I luv you

(Chorus)

I just like the things you do mm
Don’t you change the things you do mm

No, no, no.

(Repeat to fade)
la la laa la la laa, laa, laa..

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

55 thoughts on “Slade – Coz I Luv You”

  3. Pretty good song , that electric violin is really cool (puts me in mind of Eddie Jobson on Roxy Music’s ‘country Life’ album). I used to think Slade were more heavy metal but obviously that’s not so much the case. This was a likable, simple song that could have been a North American hit, I would have guessed. Perhaps it was a problem with contract and distribution over here, something like that?

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    1. Well I found out something else…it’s coming tomorrow on a certain band who had a guess on why the crossover didn’t happen. What he says makes sense but who knows?

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      2. Yes it’s him…On not getting US management to represent them while they were not touring here…which makes sense.

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      3. If you’re thinking of doing Mott The Hoople, remember that half of their Mott The Hoople Live 1974 album came from one of the shows they played at The Uris Theater on Broadway, so, they had a certain amount of (possibly) Bowie-generated US popularity.

        Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel would be a better call.

        I have to say it is most interesting reading US/Canadian discussions about bands like Slade, T. Rex and The Jam whose history/material I have known back to front for much of my life. It’s the same when you guys talk about reggae.

        I checked this site a few weeks ago when Steve Harley died as I was totally devastated and wanted to add a comment but nobody was talking about him!

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      4. I should have done Mott The Hoople…if I have time I may replace The Small Faces….

        Yea I didn’t didn’t know Harley as well…so that is on me for not listening to him enough.
        Lately I’ve been into Texas songwriters that I knew nothing about. I like finding new/old artists to go into…..

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  4. The odd thing about Slade was that while their singles were full-on glam stompers, their album tracks were often dense, bluesy affairs and included covers on Janis Joplin, The Lovin’ Spoonful, Steppenwolf and Ten Years After.

    Check out their albums Slayed?, Play It Loud, Beginnings and Old New Borrowed And Blue, along with their live album, Slade Alive!

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    1. Thanks man…I will. I only know their hits. I was wondering how the rest were. Plus…yea I’m going to see that movie.

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  6. I can’t remember exactly, but this would have been @ 4th or 5th 7″ single I ever bought. They had a bit of a reputation as in their time as ‘Ambrose Slade’ they adopted the Skinhead look which was at that time associated with football hooliganism. That, and their spelling of the song titles really wound up all our parents! (I’d have been 13 years old in 1971.)

    I was never allowed to gio see them, but I’d p[re-order their singles and eagerly wait by the radio to hear the charts to see where they’d reached. I remember being SO excited when I heard ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’ went in at #1!

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    1. It was on the cover of Play It Loud that they went skinhead-ish. That album was credited just to Slade. On Ambrose Slade’s Beginnings they still have relatively long hair.

      I met Dave Hill once in the eighties while buying a Chinese takeaway in Wolverhampton. I also saw Noddy Holder standing on the platform at Macclesfield station while I was on a train passing through. I waved at him through the window,. He smiled and nodded (appropriately) back.

      Noddy also sat right behind me at a Gary Glitter concert in Wolverhampton in the early eighties. I said hello but he was more interested in talking to my girlfriend (maybe because they were both “yam-yams” – natives of The Black Country). “Orroite Nod” she said, “orroite bab” he replied, and so on…..

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      1. Great anecdotes! they weren’t living the reclusive Elvis Graceland life, standing in line for a takeaway in Wolverhampton, or stood on the platform at glamorous Macclesfield station, I can only assume in the pissing rain?

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  7. You’re right on the album cover. That’s one I recall from school and had in my head was Ambrose Slade for some reason. I have a US re-issue of the ‘Beginnings’ LP – but under the name ‘Ballzy’ .

    Whatever – the raucous nature of their songs and (even if short term) association with the Skinhead fashion certainly got them noticed.

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    1. Skinhead-related music was big in 1971, wasn’t it? Skinhead reggae was hugely successful.

      Remember skinhead girls? They had funny bits of long hair hanging down at either side of their close-cropped heads – they looked a bit like Hasidic Jews.

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      1. Thanks guys to the both of you…this is what I was hoping for when I posted these bands this week…some cool info from the both of you.

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      2. Talking of fashions – I am guilty of wearing (at certain times in my life you must understand) – Doc Marten boots, Ben Sherman shirts, Fred Perry shirts, a Harrington jacket (black with red tartan lining), a crombie coat, a pork pie hat, hippy-style Paisley shirts with big collars, loon pants with sewn-in paisley bits to make the flares bigger, a Saturday Night fever-style suit with big lapel open-neck shirts, platform shoes, a Starsky and Hutch belted cardigan, a knee-length blue denim coat with big sheepskin collars, West Side story-style suit with skinny tie (the Willy De Ville look), pointed shoes, Ramones-style leather jacket, covered with punk badges with drainpipe jeans, Northern soul t-shirts with collars and two colour vests (fans will know what I mean), trousers with six buttons on the big waistband and huge side pockets and turn-ups, Style Council-inspired pure white denim jacket and trousers, pure white deck shoes, with pastel shirts or stripey Matelot-style t-shirt, Ray-bans, blonde streaks in what was my dark hair, Aviator leather jacket and shades, Springsteen-inspired jeans, shirt and black leather waistcoat combo…..

        that’s enough!

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      3. You pretty much ran the gamut of styles. I did the vest and skinny tie look in the mid to late 80s but the jeans and t-shirts…have always been my fall back. I was not a parachute pants or one glove guy in the 80s.

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    2. O remember reading the books on Scout camp, smuggling them back into our house in my rucksack and stashing it under my mattress.

      (I think we’ve all been there in the fashion sense. Like I say – In presently rocking the Docs and polo shirt to go with the shirt mohawk haircut under my pork pie hats

      Maybe now I’m nearly 66 I should finally grow up?!😂

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  10. I certainly recall the band but as was mentioned by Punk Panther and Cee Tee, they just weren’t a big deal here in Canada. I have a still have a group of close friends from back in the day and one of them is a pretty big Slade guy. He’s also the only guitar player out of the five of us so that maybe says something.

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      3. There are US artists that just didn’t make it big in the UK too – lots and lots of country artists for example, some of them you post about I literally have never heard of. Also, someone like Jimmy Buffett. I know nothing about him save a vague link to sailing and Florida maybe. I have never heard any of his songs, yet I guess most North Americans know who he was. I know he died because I read it on here.

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      4. I agree…the ones I think of are the heartland rockers…Tom Petty and John Mellencamp…now they are known there but nothing compared to here.
        Yea Buffett was pop-country with a sense of humor.

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  12. A real ‘70s classic and, if I recall it correctly, the first Slade song I ever heard – either that one or “Cum On Feel the Noize”, though I think I heard the Quiet Riot cover before I heard the original. Another way of saying my memories are nebulous or it may be I’m really tired or both!😂

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  13. Yeah, all the others up above have said it. I’ll only add that the skinhead image did put me off, fey little late blooming flower power neo hippy that I was. And my English and Art teachers WERE appalled by their street dickshun. Sorry ‘diction.’

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    1. I’ve read about that period in their career. I’ve only known them as they were when they were popular. I’m sure teachers everywhere frowned on their alternative spelling.

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  14. I remember Run, Runaway and My, Oh My. Those were the first two songs I ever heard from the band (I’d only heard QR’s version of other songs at this point. That lead me to eventually back track and found their 70’s stuff was so dang good. Why they never made it over here, I’ll never know.

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    1. Most say it was because of glam rock…but I don’t get that. I can see why AC/DC would approach Noddy Holder about being their lead singer…his voice would have fit them.

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  15. Lotsa good info on Slade. I like their style of dress and their energy. This song is new to me. The only other song of theirs I remember is the Christmas one. Nice to learn where that funky spelling started. Nowadays we all use in our texting (well I do anyway 😉 )

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    1. Oh you know two other songs probably…Quiet Riot covered Mama Weeeer All Crazy Now and Cum On Feel The Noize….although I like Slades versions more…

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  16. I love the idea that the authorities would blame Slade for leading the youth into bad spelling habits…! This is a great tune, and a bit different to their other more guitar-based songs. The electric violin really works. Also, I see why you wouldn’t think of Slade as glam, as they didn’t really go for the make-up, and and the androgyny of Bowie, or Bolan. It was either Slade or The Sweet that someone described as construction workers in eye-shadow.

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  18. my fave Slade record, it was a “wow” moment when it came out, a stomping record that sounded like nothing before or since. It would be another 12 years before they came this close to my heart again – on a singalong ballad My Oh My that almost grabbed them another number one…

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