Tag: Jim Lea

Slade – Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me

I bet English teachers hated this band! This is such a fun band and it’s too bad they were not heard in America until the 1980s. 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.

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.

Jim Lea was at a pub watching a pianist named Reg Kierle perform and it inspired him to write this song. He got with Noddy Holder to finish it. They were the primary songwriters for Slade, responsible for many of their hits. Noddy’s voice is the key to Slade…only a few can sound like he does.

The song peaked at #1 in the UK and high in other countries besides America and Canada.

It was produced by former Animals bass player Chas Chandler, who had been instrumental in shaping Slade’s sound and had previously worked with Jimi Hendrix. Chandler’s production emphasized the raw energy and the fun that characterized Slade’s music.

Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me

You know how to squeeze me(Woah, oh)You know how to please me(Woah, oh)You’re learnin’ it easy(Woah, oh)

And I thought you might like to knowWhen a girl’s meaning “Yes”, she says, “No”

You got rude talkYou got one walkAll your jokes are blueYou’ve got long nailsYou tell tall talesSome you think are true

And there’s nowhere to go, you won’t goIf there’s nowhere to run, you go slowIf you move up to me, then I’ll showYou the wayThen you’ll know

How to squeeze me(Woah, oh)You know how to please me(Woah, oh)You’re learnin’ it easy(Woah, oh, oooh)

And I thought you might like to knowHow to squeeze me(Woah, oh)You know how to please me(Woah, oh)You’re learnin’ it easy(Woah, oh, ooh)

And I thought you might like to knowWhen a girl’s meaning “Yes”, she says, “No”

You got a sweet tongueYou sing love songsCan’t you learn to spell?Take me back homeYou got it all wrong‘Cause we sing that as well

And there’s nowhere to go, you won’t goIf there’s nowhere to run, you go slowIf you move up to me, then I’ll showYou the wayThen you’ll know

How to squeeze me(Woah, oh)You know how to please me(Woah, oh)You’re learnin’ it easy(Woah, oh, ooh)

And I thought you might like to knowHow to squeeze me(Woah, oh)You know how to please me(Woah, oh)You’re learnin’ it easy(Woah, oh, ooh)

And I thought you might like to knowWhen a girl’s meaning “Yes”, she says, “No”

Oh, you know how to squeeze me(Woah, oh)You know how to please me(Woah, oh)You’re learnin’ it easy(Woah, oh, oooh)

And I thought you might like to knowHow to squeeze me(Woah, oh)You know how to please me(Woah, oh)You’re learnin’ it easy(Woah, oh, ooh)

And I thought you might like to knowWhen a girl’s meaning “Yes”, she says, “No”

You know how to squeeze me(Woah, oh)You know how to please me(Woah, oh)You’re learnin’ it easy(Woah, oh, yeah)

And I thought you might like to know nowHow to squeeze me(Woah, oh)You know how to please me(Woah, oh)You’re learnin’ it easy(Woah, oh, yeah, you do)

And I thought you might like to know nowHow to squeeze me(Woah, oh)You know how to please me(Woah, oh)You’re learnin’ it easy(Woah, oh, ooh, ooh)

And I thought you might like to (na, na, na, na, na, na, na) knowHow to squeeze me(Woah, oh)You know how to please me(Woah, oh)You’re learnin’ it easy(Woah, oh, ooh)

I thought you might like to knowHow to squeeze me(Woah, oh)You know you please me (woah, oh)Oh, oh, yes(Woah, oh)Yes, yes, you knowHow to squeeze me(Woah, oh)You know how to please me(Woah, oh)

…

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..

Slade – Far Far Away

I’ve become a fan of this band. I only heard them second-hand through Quiet Riot in the 80s until they finally had a couple of hits in the 1980s with Runaway and My Oh My. This song was a bit of a departure from the high-octane songs they had been releasing. They veered off the formula on purpose with this song.

I love watching old Slade videos on youtube. They were a lot of fun to listen to and watch. Slade was a hard-rocking glam band that somehow never made it in America until the 1980s. Their golden period was in the early to mid-seventies in the UK. Noddy’s voice is extremely strong and the melodic structure of their songs is very catchy but not in a bad way.

Slade was at the height of its success and their manager Chas Chandler suggested they make a movie. So they made a movie called Slade In Flame. The movie itself got good reviews and so did the soundtrack. BBC film critic Mark Kermode called it the “Citizen Kane of rock musicals.” I’ve never watched this film but I am going to now.

This was the first single to be taken from the soundtrack. The movie follows the history of a fictitious group in the early 1970s called Flame who were played by the members of Slade.

Singer Noddy Holder wrote the song after a long period of touring when he was thinking of home. He was looking out of a hotel window overlooking the Mississippi river with Slade’s manager Chas Chandler. The singer was thinking how far the band had come when a big paddle riverboat came down the river, all lit up. Holder had mentioned to Chandler that he saw the yellow lights go down the Mississippi …Chandler seeing the inspiration asked him to write something about it and he wrote Far Far Away with bass player Jim Lea.

The song peaked at #2 in the UK in 1974.

I found this description about the movie. A pretty gritty story of the formation of Flame, a fictional band played by the four members of Slade. In the movie, Flame were to hit the big time quickly, only to be hit by violence, and off-stage legal and financial battles, eventually leading them to split. It’s a hard-hitting look at the less glamorous side of the music biz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7rS_h5NQzI&ab_channel=drrock57Steward

Far Far Away

I’ve seen the yellow lights go down the MississippiI’ve seen the bridges of the world and they’re for realI’ve had a red light of the wristWithout me even gettin’ kissedIt still seems so unreal

I’ve seen the morning in the mountains of AlaskaI’ve seen the sunset in the east and in the westI’ve sang the glory that was RomeAnd passed the hound-dog singer’s homeIt still seems for the best

And I’m far, far awayWith my head up in the cloudsAnd I’m far, far awayWith my feet down in the crowdsLettin’ loose around the worldBut the call of home is loudStill is loud

I’ve seen the Paris lights from high upon MontmartreAnd felt the silence hanging low in No-Man’s-LandAnd all those spanish nights were fineIt wasn’t only from the wineIt still seems all in hand

And I’m far, far awayWith my head up in the cloudsAnd I’m far, far awayWith my feet down in the crowdsLettin’ loose around the worldBut the call of home is loudStill is loud

I’ve seen the yellow lights go down the MississippiThe grand Bahama island stories carry onAnd all those arigato smilesStay in your memory for a whileThere still seems more to come

And I’m far, far awayWith my head up in the cloudsAnd I’m far, far awayWith my feet down in the crowdsLettin’ loose around the worldBut the call of home is loudStill is loud

And I’m far, far awayWith my head up in the cloudsAnd I’m far, far awayWith my feet down in the crowdsAnd I’m far, far awayBut the sound of home is loudStill is loud

Slade – Take Me Bak ‘Ome

I love watching old Slade videos on youtube. They were a lot of fun to listen to and watch. They were a hard rocking glam band that somehow never made it in America. Some of their songs did a decade later covered by Quiet Riot. Slade did have a couple of hits in the 80s in America but their golden period was in the early to mid seventies. 

They weren’t the only UK band not to hit big in America. They are joined by T. Rex, The Small Faces, Oasis, and The Jam just to name a few. 

This song peaked at #1 in the UK and #97 in the Billboard 100 in 1972. The song was written by band members Noddy Holder and Jim Lea. 

Jim Lea said he had been working on the song for a few years… he stole a phrase or two from The Beatles Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey and nobody ever noticed.

Their next single Mama Weer All Crazee Now  peaked at #1 in the UK.

Take Me Bak ‘Ome

Came up to you one night noticed the look in your eye,
I saw you was on your own, and it was alright, yeh it was alright.
They said I could call you Sidney, oh I couldn’t make out why,
standing here on your own an’ it was alright, yeh it was alright.

[Chorus]
So won’t you take me back home, a take me back home,
and if we can find plenty to do and that will be alright
yeh it will be alright

O you and your bottle of brandy, both of you smell the same,
you’re still on your feet, still standing so it was alright,
yeh it was alright.
The superman comes to meet you, looks twice the size of me,
I didn’t stay round to say goodnight so it was alright,
yeh it was alright.

[Chorus]

So won’t you take me back home my baby, ah won’t you take me back home yeh
I said take me, take me take, take me back home,
take me take me take, take me back home oh won’t you..