This is fast becoming my favorite rock Christmas song second only to John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
This is a great Christmas song that was released in 1973 and ever since it re-enters the charts every December in the UK. The song never hit in America but it went to #1 in the UK Charts. I first heard it on a Doctor Who episode in the mid-2000s and have liked it ever since.
This was based on a psychedelic song, “My Rocking Chair,” which Noddy Holder wrote in 1967. In 1973 the Slade vocalist decided to convert it into a Christmas song after a night out drinking at a local pub.
He and the band’s bass player and co-writer Jimmy Lea camped out at Noddy’s mother’s house and got down to changing the lyrics to make them more Christmassy. Jimmy Lea incorporated into the verse parts of another song which he was then writing and Noddy re-wrote the words incorporating different aspects of the Christmas holiday season as they came to mind.
This went straight in at #1 in the UK, selling over 300,000 copies on the day of its release, making it at the time the fastest ever selling record in Britain. It eventually became Slade’s best-ever selling single in the UK, selling over a million copies.
In the UK this has become a standard, and it is usually reissued in its original form each Christmas. On several occasions, the song has re-entered the Top 40.
UK copyright collection society and performance rights organization PRS For Music estimated in 2009 that 42 percent of the earth’s population has heard this tune.
The song was written by Noddy Holder and Jim Lea of Slade. It was produced by Chas Chandler formerly of the Animals. The harmonium used on this is the same one that John Lennon used on his Mind Games album, which was being recorded at the studio next door.
Noddy Holder: “I wrote the original verse with the lyrics, ‘Buy me a rocking chair, I’ll watch the world go by. Bring me a mirror, I’ll look you in the eye,’ in 1967 in the aftermath of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper,” I was being psychedelic. Dave (Hill) wrote another part to the song but it didn’t work so we put it away. Then in 1973 he remembered my verse one day when we were trying to write a Christmas single. We changed the words to, ‘Are you hanging up your stocking on the wall?’ and the rest fell into place.”
Noddy Holder: “As a lad we used to knock sleds with old orange boxes and go tobogganing down this big old quarry in the snow at Christmas. It was the inspiration for the line ‘are you hoping that the snow will start to fall.’”
I want that hat he starts off with… in this video…very subtle.
Merry Christmas Everybody
Are you hanging up a stocking on your wall? It’s the time that every Santa has a ball Does he ride a red nosed reindeer? Does a ‘ton up’ on his sleigh Do the fairies keep him sober for a day?
Chorus: So here it is merry Christmas Everybody’s having fun Look to the future now It’s only just begun
Are you waiting for the family to arrive? Are you sure you got the room to spare inside? Does your granny always tell ya that the old are the best? Then she’s up and rock ‘n’ rollin’ with the rest
Chorus: So here it is merry Christmas Everybody’s having fun Look to the future now It’s only just begun
What will your daddy do When he sees your Mama kissin’ Santa Claus? Ah ah
Are you hanging up a stocking on your wall? Are you hoping that the snow will start to fall? Do you ride on down the hillside in a buggy you have made? When you land upon your head then you’ve been slayed
Chorus (4x) So here it is merry Christmas Everybody’s having fun Look to the future now It’s only just begun
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 Kaneof 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.
Far Far Away
I’ve seen the yellow lights go down the Mississippi I’ve seen the bridges of the world and they’re for real I’ve had a red light of the wrist Without me even gettin’ kissed It still seems so unreal
I’ve seen the morning in the mountains of Alaska I’ve seen the sunset in the east and in the west I’ve sang the glory that was Rome And passed the hound-dog singer’s home It still seems for the best
And I’m far, far away With my head up in the clouds And I’m far, far away With my feet down in the crowds Lettin’ loose around the world But the call of home is loud Still is loud
I’ve seen the Paris lights from high upon Montmartre And felt the silence hanging low in No-Man’s-Land And all those spanish nights were fine It wasn’t only from the wine It still seems all in hand
And I’m far, far away With my head up in the clouds And I’m far, far away With my feet down in the crowds Lettin’ loose around the world But the call of home is loud Still is loud
I’ve seen the yellow lights go down the Mississippi The grand Bahama island stories carry on And all those arigato smiles Stay in your memory for a while There still seems more to come
And I’m far, far away With my head up in the clouds And I’m far, far away With my feet down in the crowds Lettin’ loose around the world But the call of home is loud Still is loud
And I’m far, far away With my head up in the clouds And I’m far, far away With my feet down in the crowds And I’m far, far away But the sound of home is loud Still is loud
Merry Christmas Everybody… for all of the UK readers…I know I know…you are so tired of it. I’ve only heard it for the past three years or so. There are a few Christmas songs along with Alices Restaurant that I reblog every year…and this is one of them. I have this on our music list at Christmas and we love it.
This is fast becoming my favorite rock Christmas song second only to John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
This is a great Christmas song that was released in 1973 and ever since it re-enters the charts every December in the UK. The song never hit in America but it went to #1 in the UK Charts. I first heard it on a Doctor Who episode in the mid-2000s and have liked it ever since.
This was based on a psychedelic song, “My Rocking Chair,” which Noddy Holder wrote in 1967. In 1973 the Slade vocalist decided to convert it into a Christmas song after a night out drinking at a local pub.
He and the band’s bass player and co-writer Jimmy Lea camped out at Noddy’s mother’s house and got down to changing the lyrics to make them more Christmassy. Jimmy Lea incorporated into the verse parts of another song which he was then writing and Noddy re-wrote the words incorporating different aspects of the Christmas holiday season as they came to mind.
This went straight in at #1 in the UK, selling over 300,000 copies on the day of its release, making it at the time the fastest ever selling record in Britain. It eventually became Slade’s best-ever selling single in the UK, selling over a million copies.
In the UK this has become a standard, and it is usually reissued in its original form each Christmas. On several occasions, the song has re-entered the Top 40.
UK copyright collection society and performance rights organization PRS For Music estimated in 2009 that 42 percent of the earth’s population has heard this tune.
The song was written by Noddy Holder and Jim Lea of Slade. It was produced by Chas Chandler formerly of the Animals.
Noddy Holder: “I wrote the original verse with the lyrics, ‘Buy me a rocking chair, I’ll watch the world go by. Bring me a mirror, I’ll look you in the eye,’ in 1967 in the aftermath of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper,” I was being psychedelic. Dave (Hill) wrote another part to the song but it didn’t work so we put it away. Then in 1973 he remembered my verse one day when we were trying to write a Christmas single. We changed the words to, ‘Are you hanging up your stocking on the wall?’ and the rest fell into place.”
From Songfacts.
When Noddy Holder wrote the line “Look to the future now, it’s only just begun,” he had in mind the strikes that were blighting Britain at the time. He told the Daily Mail On Sunday November 10, 2007: “We’d decided to write a Christmas song and I wanted to make it reflect a British family Christmas. Economically, the country was up the creek. The miners had been on strike, along with the gravediggers, the bakers and almost everybody else. I think people wanted something to cheer them up – and so did I. That’s why I came up with the line.”
The harmonium used on this is the same one that John Lennon used on his Mind Games album, which was being recorded at the studio next door.
This was recorded at the Record Plant studios in New York while the band were on a tour of the States in the summer of 1973. When they recorded the vocals, they sang the chorus on the stairs in order to achieve the echo that they required. Guitarist Jimmy Lea recalled to Uncut magazine in 2012: “All these Americans were walking past in their suits thinking we were off our rockers singing about Christmas in the summer.”
Producer Chas Chandler opened the song with a howl recorded during some of Noddy Holder’s vocal exercises.
A few months before Slade recorded this song, drummer Don Powell was badly injured in a car crash. Though his physical recovery was quick, the mental scars took longer to heal. Noddy Holder explained to The Daily Mail December 18, 2009: “The doctors told us to get him playing drums again as soon as possible to boost his confidence. But he was suffering from short-term memory loss – he could remember our old songs, but not the new ones. So, instead of recording live, we built up Merry Xmas Everybody layer by layer. That gave it a more poignant, restrained sound. It was something new for us. But the fates were with us and it became our biggest hit.”
Noddy Holder’s earliest childhood memory served as inspiration for one of the song’s lines. He recalled to the Mail On Sunday’s Live magazine: “As a lad we used to knock sleds with old orange boxes and go tobogganing down this big old quarry in the snow at Christmas. It was the inspiration for the line ‘are you hoping that the snow will start to fall.’”
I want that hat he starts off with… in this video…very subtle.
Merry Christmas Everybody
Are you hanging up a stocking on your wall? It’s the time that every Santa has a ball Does he ride a red nosed reindeer? Does a ‘ton up’ on his sleigh Do the fairies keep him sober for a day?
Chorus: So here it is merry Christmas Everybody’s having fun Look to the future now It’s only just begun
Are you waiting for the family to arrive? Are you sure you got the room to spare inside? Does your granny always tell ya that the old are the best? Then she’s up and rock ‘n’ rollin’ with the rest
Chorus: So here it is merry Christmas Everybody’s having fun Look to the future now It’s only just begun
What will your daddy do When he sees your Mama kissin’ Santa Claus? Ah ah
Are you hanging up a stocking on your wall? Are you hoping that the snow will start to fall? Do you ride on down the hillside in a buggy you have made? When you land upon your head then you’ve been slayed
Chorus (4x) So here it is merry Christmas Everybody’s having fun Look to the future now It’s only just begun
Noddy’s voice in this song is a perfect example of why AC/DC supposedly asked him to replace Bon Scott in 1980.
When they decided to record it, at Olympic Studios, they did so with a live feel, setting up the microphones in the stairwell outside which gave the echo for hand clapping and stamping. Most DJs wouldn’t play it because they thought it was too rowdy, but a few did, including John Peel.
The song was written by Bobby Marchan and he released it in 1964. Little Richard covered it and released it in 1967. Slade heard the Little Richard version and based their recording off of his. Little Richard was given the writer’s credit, then they were sued by the real writer, Bobby Marchan. Slade’s record company, Polydor, sorted out the mess.
It peaked at #16 in the UK in 1971.
From Songfacts
Slade ended their live set with “Get Down And Get With It” for nearly two years; in his autobiography, band member Noddy Holder said it was a Little Richard cover in 12-bar format, but “had something magical about it”; the original was all piano and sax, but they did it with guitars.
It peaked at #16, and earned them an appearance on Top Of The Pops.
When the sheet music was published by Burlington Music at 20p, it was credited correctly to Marchan, copyright 1965 by Tree Publishing of Nashville. The full title was given as “GET DOWN AND GET WITH IT (GET DOWN WITH IT).”
Get Down and Get With It
All right everybody Let your head down I want to say everybody get on of your seat Clap your hand and step your feet *Get down and get with it I said* Do the turns Come on baby I’m going to watch everybody work I said come on baby Watch everybody do the dance (*repeat) It’s been a long long time Yeah,yeah,yeah I’m going to watch everybody go around I said (*repeat) baby Watch everybody make some time
(* repeat) It’s alright Yeah, yeah, yeah Ma ma ma ma….. Baby it’s alright Ma ma ma ma ma ma
Everybody raise both of your hand in the air Everybody, everybody I said clap your hands Everybody clap your hands Yeah,yeah,yeah Ma ma ma ma Everybody clap your hands ma ma ma… I want to see everybody get your boots on Everybody everywhere I said step your feet Come on and step Your feet Yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, Ma ma ma ma… Everybody step your feet Ma ma ma ma… I want to say everybody get above your seats Clap your hands and step your feet Make it
(* repeat) I said (*repeat) I said (*repeat) baby Yeah,yeah,yeah Ma ma ma ma I said come on baby, ma ma ma ma… I said step your feet and do the thing baby Yeah,yeah,yeah Ma ma ma ma… Everybody step your feet baby I said ma ma ma ma Yeah… I said (*repeat) now Yeah,yeah,yeah Ma….. (*repeat) baby Ma…..
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.
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..
Merry Christmas Everybody… for all of the UK readers…I know I know…you are so tired of it. I’ve only heard it for the past two years or so. One of the comments from the past … (NO not that song again!)… there are a few Christmas songs along with Alices Restaurant that I reblog every year…and this is one of them.
This is fast becoming my favorite rock Christmas song second only to John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
This is a great Christmas song that was released in 1973 and ever since it re-enters the charts every December in the UK. The song never hit in America but it went to #1 in the UK Charts. I first heard it on a Doctor Who episode in the mid-2000s and have liked it ever since.
This went straight in at #1 in the UK, selling over 300,000 copies on the day of its release, making it at the time the fastest ever selling record in Britain. It eventually became Slade’s best-ever selling single in the UK, selling over a million copies.
In the UK this has become a standard, and it is usually reissued in its original form each Christmas. On several occasions, the song has re-entered the Top 40.
UK copyright collection society and performance rights organization PRS For Music estimated in 2009 that 42 percent of the earth’s population has heard this tune.
The song was written by Noddy Holder and Jim Lea of Slade. It was produced by Chas Chandler formerly of the Animals.
From Songfacts.
This was based on a psychedelic song, “My Rocking Chair,” which Noddy Holder wrote in 1967. In 1973 the Slade vocalist decided to convert it into a Christmas song after a night out drinking at a local pub. He and the band’s bass player and co-writer Jimmy Lea camped out at Noddy’s mother’s house and got down to changing the lyrics to make them more Christmassy. Jimmy Lea incorporated into the verse parts of another song which he was then writing and Noddy re-wrote the words incorporating different aspects of the Christmas holiday season as they came to mind.
When Noddy Holder wrote the line “Look to the future now, it’s only just begun,” he had in mind the strikes that were blighting Britain at the time. He told the Daily Mail On Sunday November 10, 2007: “We’d decided to write a Christmas song and I wanted to make it reflect a British family Christmas. Economically, the country was up the creek. The miners had been on strike, along with the gravediggers, the bakers and almost everybody else. I think people wanted something to cheer them up – and so did I. That’s why I came up with the line.”
The harmonium used on this is the same one that John Lennon used on his Mind Games album, which was being recorded at the studio next door.
This was recorded at the Record Plant studios in New York while the band were on a tour of the States in the summer of 1973. When they recorded the vocals, they sang the chorus on the stairs in order to achieve the echo that they required. Guitarist Jimmy Lea recalled to Uncut magazine in 2012: “All these Americans were walking past in their suits thinking we were off our rockers singing about Christmas in the summer.”
Producer Chas Chandler opened the song with a howl recorded during some of Noddy Holder’s vocal exercises.
A few months before Slade recorded this song, drummer Don Powell was badly injured in a car crash. Though his physical recovery was quick, the mental scars took longer to heal. Noddy Holder explained to The Daily Mail December 18, 2009: “The doctors told us to get him playing drums again as soon as possible to boost his confidence. But he was suffering from short-term memory loss – he could remember our old songs, but not the new ones. So, instead of recording live, we built up Merry Xmas Everybody layer by layer. That gave it a more poignant, restrained sound. It was something new for us. But the fates were with us and it became our biggest hit.”
Noddy Holder explained to Q magazine January 2013 how the song was originally inspired by The Beatles: “I wrote the original verse with the lyrics, ‘Buy me a rocking chair, I’ll watch the world go by. Bring me a mirror, I’ll look you in the eye,’ in 1967 in the aftermath of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper,” he said. I was being psychedelic. Dave (Hill) wrote another part to the song but it didn’t work so we put it away. Then in 1973 he remembered my verse one day when we were trying to write a Christmas single. We changed the words to, ‘Are you hanging up your stocking on the wall?’ and the rest fell into place.”
Noddy Holder’s earliest childhood memory served as inspiration for one of the song’s lines. He recalled to the Mail On Sunday’s Live magazine: “As a lad we used to knock sleds with old orange boxes and go tobogganing down this big old quarry in the snow at Christmas. It was the inspiration for the line ‘are you hoping that the snow will start to fall.’”
I want that hat he starts off with… in this video…very subtle.
Merry Christmas Everybody
Are you hanging up a stocking on your wall? It’s the time that every Santa has a ball Does he ride a red nosed reindeer? Does a ‘ton up’ on his sleigh Do the fairies keep him sober for a day?
Chorus: So here it is merry Christmas Everybody’s having fun Look to the future now It’s only just begun
Are you waiting for the family to arrive? Are you sure you got the room to spare inside? Does your granny always tell ya that the old are the best? Then she’s up and rock ‘n’ rollin’ with the rest
Chorus: So here it is merry Christmas Everybody’s having fun Look to the future now It’s only just begun
What will your daddy do When he sees your Mama kissin’ Santa Claus? Ah ah
Are you hanging up a stocking on your wall? Are you hoping that the snow will start to fall? Do you ride on down the hillside in a buggy you have made? When you land upon your head then you’ve been slayed
Chorus (4x) So here it is merry Christmas Everybody’s having fun Look to the future now It’s only just begun
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 and Noddy Holder of Slade wrote this song, and it was produced by Chas Chandler, who managed Jimi Hendrix before working with Slade. The song entered the UK charts at #1, becoming the first to do so since The Beatles “Get Back” in 1969. It was Slade’s fourth UK #1.
This song peaked at #98 in the Billboard 100 and #1 in the UK in 1973.
Americans know this song and Slade’s Mama Weer All Crazee Now more by Quiet Riot in the 80s. I’ve grown to appreciate Slade’s glam rock and wonder why they weren’t more successful in America.
From Songfacts
This is a glam rock classic. Slade performed loud, anthemic songs in flamboyant costumes, often with lots of makeup and plenty of energy. Glam rock was big in the UK in the mid-’70s, and this was one of the genre’s first hits. Slade also hit #1 with similarly misspelled songs “Coz I Love You” and “Mama Weer All Crazee Now.”
Most Americans know this song from the Quiet Riot cover, which went to #5 in 1983 and helped their album Metal Health become the first metal album to hit #1 on the Billboard 200. It was the band’s producer, Spencer Proffer, who asked them to cover the song; lead singer Kevin DuBrow wanted nothing to do with it, since he wanted the band to write every song on the album. He and the band cooked up a plan to sabotage the song, but it failed.
In a Songfacts interview with Quiet Riot drummer Frankie Banali, he told the story: “We were supposed to rehearse the song and go in and record it. The producer kept calling the rehearsal studio, ‘Are you working on ‘Cum On Feel the Noize’?’ And we’d say, ‘Yeah. It sounds great.’ But we never played it.
So the day came when it was time to record the song, and I came in early and told the engineer what was going on. I was honest with him. I said, ‘You might just want to record this for laughs and giggles.’
We went in, there was no intro, no nothing at all. There was a little bit of arguing as to how it was going to start, and finally, when I knew the engineer was rolling tape, I just started playing what became the intro. Rudy [Sarzo, bass] joined in, and then Carlos [Cavazo, guitar] joined in. Kevin was sitting at the corner of the studio, just giggling, waiting for this massive train wreck, and the train wreck never happened.
I had already done so many sessions in LA – even before the Metal Health record – that I knew, ‘Vamp long, there’s no click track on it,’ and all of that. And then when we were done, the producer says, ‘That sounded great. I wish we had recorded it.’ And the engineer said, ‘Come on in.’
He went in to listen, and Kevin grabbed me by the arm and almost dislocated my shoulder. He says, ‘What the hell was that?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know man. I just started playing it!’ He says, ‘Well, what am I supposed to do now?’ And I said, ‘Well, you can always sing it s–tty, can’t you?’ He smiled a little, but he was really pissed off.
The thing is, when you listen to the original Slade version and you listen to our version, Slade begins at a different part of the song. Slade did not have an intro – it just goes right in. And because we weren’t familiar with the song – and I definitely wasn’t familiar with the song – I think I either left out a verse or a chorus in our arrangement. So if you play them side-by-side, they’re not going to match.
I will say that there is a lot of similarities between Kevin’s voice and Noddy Holder’s. It was good call on the producer’s part to do that. And I understand why he did it: Quiet Riot was a new band, doing music that nobody else was doing, and he just wanted to have a ‘safety song’ that was a hit everywhere except for the United States. I get it. And the reality is, if we had not done that song, you’d probably be interviewing the drummer from another band right now.”
Quiet Riot had been recording since 1975 without a hit. After finding success with “Cum On Feel The Noize,” they had a minor hit with their next single “Bang Your Head (Metal Health)” and recorded another Slade song, “Mama Weer All Crazee Now.” After Metal Health, they never caught on and failed to enjoy the success of similar bands like Mötley Crüe and Poison.
In 2007, Quiet Riot lead singer Kevin DuBrow died of a drug overdose at age 52. The band re-formed in 2010 with a number of vocalists going through the ranks. James Durbin, the fourth place finisher on American Idol in 2011, took over in 2017.
The Quiet Riot version took off thanks to a video that got lots of airplay on MTV. At the time, pop radio was dominated by Michael Jackson, The Police, Madonna and other acts that were chasms away from metal, but MTV had plenty of wiggle room in their playlist and was looking for American rock bands in particular. The “Cum On Feel The Noize” video was sweet nectar to the young male audience they were trying to attract; one of this species stars in the clip, undergoing a metal assault in his bedroom. Mark Rezyka, who did all of Quiet Riot’s early videos, was the director.
Though little known Stateside, Slade was enormously popular in the UK, where they had 18 songs reach the Top 5, seven of them #1s.
Much of their musical output was produced by Chas Chandler, famous for managing Jimi Hendrix and a talented rocker in his own right, playing bass as a founding member of the seminal British rock band The Animals. But Glam Rock was buried in Britain by the late 1970s and Slade slid into semi-obscurity in the US until the release of Quiet Riot’s cover, which helped boost their own sales a bit.
Cum On Feel The Noize
Baby baby baby!
Yow!
So you think I got an evil mind, well I’ll tell you honey And I don’t know why And I don’t know why So you think my singing’s out of time, well it makes me money And I don’t know why And I don’t know why Anymore Oh no
So come on, feel the noise Girls, grab your boys We get wild, wild, wild We get wild, wild, wild So come on, feel the noise Girls, grab your boys We get wild, wild, wild At your door
So you say I got a funny face, I ain’t got no worries And I don’t know why And I don’t know why Say I’m a scruff bag well it’s no disgrace, I ain’t in no hurry And I don’t know why I just don’t know why Anymore Oh no
So come on, feel the noise Girls, grab your boys We get wild, wild, wild We get wild, wild, wild So come on, feel the noise Girls, grab your boys We get wild, wild, wild At your door
Yow! So you think we have a lazy time, well you should know better And I don’t know why I just don’t know why And you say I got a dirty mind, well I’m a mean go-getter And I don’t know why And I don’t know why Anymore Oh no
So come on, feel the noise Girls, grab your boys We get wild, wild, wild We get wild, wild, wild So come on, feel the noise Girls, grab your boys We get wild, wild, wild At your door
So come on, feel the noise (come on, come on) Girls, grab your boys (grab your boys) We get wild, wild, wild (we get wild) We get wild, wild, wild (yeah) So come on, feel the noise (feel it, feel it) Girls, grab your boys (grab ’em, grab ’em) We get wild, wild, wild (we get wild) We get wild, wild, wild (we get wild)
Come on, feel the noise (can you feel it, can you feel it?) Girls, grab your boys (feel the noise) We get wild, wild, wild (come on, get wild) We get wild, wild, wild (get wild) So come on, feel the noise (come on, come on, come on) Girls, grab your boys (feel the noise) We get wild, wild, wild We get wild, wild, wild
This is another song I heard for the first time on the 2006 Britsih show Life On Mars. Slade never really broke America until the 80s with Run Runaway and Oh My My. Quiet Riot covered the Slade songs Cum On Feel The Noize and Mama, Weer All Crazee Now and had hits in the 1980s.
“Gudbuy T’Jane” was Slade’s follow up to their hit single “Mama Weer All Crazee Now.” In his autobiography Who’s Crazee Now?, guitarist and lead vocalist Noddy Holder explained the inspiration for the song.
Jane was the co-host of a TV chat show in San Francisco whom Slade met on their US tour. They wrote the song in about half an hour, “one of the easiest songs we ever recorded.” The line, “Got a kick from her ’40s trip boots” is a reference to her kicking Holder up the backside when the band was having a laugh at her expense.
Jane had bought a pair of platform shoes which she called her “’40s trip boots,” and somehow managed to lose them. “She thought they were original ’40s shoes and she told us that she had paid a fortune for them,” he said. “She was a real loony, a typical San Francisco hippy.”
The song peaked at #2 in the UK and #68 in the Billboard 100 in 1972.
From Songfacts
Jim Lee came up with the title; Holder wanted to call it “Hullo T’Jane,” which doesn’t have the same ring to it. They recorded it in two takes, and, backed by the typically misspelled “I Won’t Let It ‘Appen Agen,” it was released on Polydor and went on to become a monster hit. The single was produced by Chas Chandler.
There was a second track on the A-side: “Take Me Bak ‘Ome.” The sheet music credits “Gudbuy T’Jane”: “Words and Music by Neville Holder and James Lea.” >>
This was kept off the UK #1 spot by Chuck Berry’s live recording of “My Ding-a-Ling.” Coincidentally, Slade was present at the Coventry gig where Berry’s hit was recorded.
Jim Lea recalled the story of the song to Classic Rock magazine: “I’d been round to Nod’s house and played ‘Gudbuy T’Jane’ to him, lyrics and all. He said, ‘S’alright.’ He was always very phlegmatic, had dodgy adenoids.”
“We had some time left at the end of the recording, so we put it down very quickly. Nod said he’d done something with the words on the train down. He started singing, ‘Hello to Jane, hello to Jane.’ I was mortified. He told me he thought that was a bit more optimistic – f–king hell. But with all of them, I knew when we were writing a hit.”
Gudbuy T’Jane
Goodbye to Jane, goodbye to Jane She’s a dark horse see if she can Goodbye to Jane, goodbye to Jane Painted up like a fancy young man She’s a queen, Can’t you see what I mean, she’s a queen, See, see, she’s a queen And I know she’s alright, alright, alright, alright
I say you’re so young, you’re so young I say you’re so young, you’re so young I say you’re so young, you’re so young
I said goodbye to Jane, goodbye to Jane Get a kick from her forties tip boots Goodbye to Jane, goodbye to Jane Has them made to match up to her suits She’s a queen, Can’t you see what I mean, she’s a queen, See, see, she’s a queen And I know she’s alright, alright, alright, alright
I say you’re so young, you’re so young I say you’re so young, you’re so young I say you’re so young, you’re so young
I said goodbye to Jane, goodbye to Jane Like a dark horse see how she ran Goodbye to Jane, goodbye to Jane Spits on me ’cause she knows that she can She’s a queen, Can’t you see what I mean, she’s a queen, See, see, see, she’s a queen And I know she’s alright, alright, alright, alright
I say you’re so young, you’re so young I say you’re so young, you’re so young I say you’re so young, you’re so young I say you’re so young, she’s alright, alright, alright, alright I say she’s so young, so young, alright, alright I say you’re so young …
This is a reblog from last year but… history hasn’t changed. This is fast becoming my favorite rock Christmas song second only to John Lennon’s Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
This is one that I haven’t heard as much but if you live in the UK you probably have heard it MANY times. This is a great Christmas song that was released in 1973 and ever since it re-enters the charts every December in the UK. The song never hit in America but it went to #1 in the UK Charts. I first heard it on a Doctor Who episode in the mid-2000s and have liked it ever since.
This went straight in at #1 in the UK, selling over 300,000 copies on the day of its release, making it at the time the fastest ever selling record in Britain. It eventually became Slade’s best-ever selling single in the UK, selling over a million copies.
In the UK this has become a standard, and it is usually reissued in its original form each Christmas. On several occasions, the song has re-entered the Top 40.
UK copyright collection society and performance rights organization PRS For Music estimated in 2009 that 42 percent of the earth’s population has heard this tune.
The song was written by Noddy Holder and Jim Lea of Slade. It was produced by Chas Chandler formerly of the Animals.
From Songfacts.
This was based on a psychedelic song, “My Rocking Chair,” which Noddy Holder wrote in 1967. In 1973 the Slade vocalist decided to convert it into a Christmas song after a night out drinking at a local pub. He and the band’s bass player and co-writer Jimmy Lea camped out at Noddy’s mother’s house and got down to changing the lyrics to make them more Christmassy. Jimmy Lea incorporated into the verse parts of another song which he was then writing and Noddy re-wrote the words incorporating different aspects of the Christmas holiday season as they came to mind.
When Noddy Holder wrote the line “Look to the future now, it’s only just begun,” he had in mind the strikes that were blighting Britain at the time. He told the Daily Mail On Sunday November 10, 2007: “We’d decided to write a Christmas song and I wanted to make it reflect a British family Christmas. Economically, the country was up the creek. The miners had been on strike, along with the gravediggers, the bakers and almost everybody else. I think people wanted something to cheer them up – and so did I. That’s why I came up with the line.”
The harmonium used on this is the same one that John Lennon used on his Mind Games album, which was being recorded at the studio next door.
This was recorded at the Record Plant studios in New York while the band were on a tour of the States in the summer of 1973. When they recorded the vocals, they sang the chorus on the stairs in order to achieve the echo that they required. Guitarist Jimmy Lea recalled to Uncut magazine in 2012: “All these Americans were walking past in their suits thinking we were off our rockers singing about Christmas in the summer.”
Producer Chas Chandler opened the song with a howl recorded during some of Noddy Holder’s vocal exercises.
A few months before Slade recorded this song, drummer Don Powell was badly injured in a car crash. Though his physical recovery was quick, the mental scars took longer to heal. Noddy Holder explained to The Daily Mail December 18, 2009: “The doctors told us to get him playing drums again as soon as possible to boost his confidence. But he was suffering from short-term memory loss – he could remember our old songs, but not the new ones. So, instead of recording live, we built up Merry Xmas Everybody layer by layer. That gave it a more poignant, restrained sound. It was something new for us. But the fates were with us and it became our biggest hit.”
Noddy Holder explained to Q magazine January 2013 how the song was originally inspired by The Beatles: “I wrote the original verse with the lyrics, ‘Buy me a rocking chair, I’ll watch the world go by. Bring me a mirror, I’ll look you in the eye,’ in 1967 in the aftermath of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper,” he said. I was being psychedelic. Dave (Hill) wrote another part to the song but it didn’t work so we put it away. Then in 1973 he remembered my verse one day when we were trying to write a Christmas single. We changed the words to, ‘Are you hanging up your stocking on the wall?’ and the rest fell into place.”
Noddy Holder’s earliest childhood memory served as inspiration for one of the song’s lines. He recalled to the Mail On Sunday’s Live magazine: “As a lad we used to knock sleds with old orange boxes and go tobogganing down this big old quarry in the snow at Christmas. It was the inspiration for the line ‘are you hoping that the snow will start to fall.'”
I want that hat he starts off with… in this video…very subtle.
Merry Christmas Everybody
Are you hanging up a stocking on your wall? It’s the time that every Santa has a ball Does he ride a red nosed reindeer? Does a ‘ton up’ on his sleigh Do the fairies keep him sober for a day?
Chorus: So here it is merry Christmas Everybody’s having fun Look to the future now It’s only just begun
Are you waiting for the family to arrive? Are you sure you got the room to spare inside? Does your granny always tell ya that the old are the best? Then she’s up and rock ‘n’ rollin’ with the rest
Chorus: So here it is merry Christmas Everybody’s having fun Look to the future now It’s only just begun
What will your daddy do When he sees your Mama kissin’ Santa Claus? Ah ah
Are you hanging up a stocking on your wall? Are you hoping that the snow will start to fall? Do you ride on down the hillside in a buggy you have made? When you land upon your head then you’ve been slayed
Chorus (4x) So here it is merry Christmas Everybody’s having fun Look to the future now It’s only just begun
Slade was one of the UK’s biggest glam bands in the early to mid-seventies. They were huge in the UK but never hit in America until the 80s. This song was released in 1972 and peaked at #1 in the UK and #76 in the Billboard 100 in 1973.
Quiet Riot took two of their songs, Cum On Feel The Noize and this one and hit with them in the 80s. I’ll take Slade’s versions myself. It’s a fun rock and roll song.
Some trivia about Noddy Holder the lead singer… AC/DC asked him to sing for them after the death of Bon Scott but he turned them down because of loyalty to Slade.
This was originally the work of bassist Jim Lea; it was the first tune he wrote completely on his own. However, his writing partner Noddy Holder was responsible for the lyrics, standing on the stage after a typically boisterous London show and surveying the smashed seating left in the auditorium. “I thought everyone must have been crazy tonight,” he later said.
The song was originally titled “My My We’re All Crazy Now.” The title was changed by their manager Chas Chandler, and the intentional misspelling became a Slade trademark years before Prince adopted a similar convention. Some of their other hits were “Look wot You Dun,” “Cum On Feel The Noize” and “Skweeze Me Pleeze Me.”
In the UK Slade enjoyed 16 Top 10 hits including six #1s. They didn’t enjoy the same success in the US, where their biggest hit was “Run Runaway,” which peaked at #20 in 1984. They had just one other American Top 40: “My Oh My” (#37) also in 1984.
The American metal band Quiet Riot broke big with a cover of Slade’s “Cum On Feel The Noize” in 1983. For their next album, they did “Mama Weer All Crazee Now,” issuing it as the first single. It reached #51, marking their last Hot 100 appearance. “We were already getting the stigma of, ‘You had a hit with somebody else’s song,'” their drummer, Frankie Banali, said in a Songfacts interview. “I could see the writing on the wall coming on that one.”
Slade
I don’t want to drink my whisky like you do I don’t need to spend my money but still do Chorus Don’t stop now a c’mon another drop now c’mon I want to lot now so c’mon That’s right, that’s right I said Mama but we’re all crazy now I said Mama but we’re all crazy now I said Mama but we’re all crazy now A you told me fool fire water won’t hurt me A you tease me and all my ladies desert me Chorus don’t want to drink my whisky but still do I had enough to fill up “H” Hill’s left shoe Chorus Mama mama mama mama oh yeah…
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