Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply: The Ballad of a Rare American Slade Fan
Back in January 2011 I went to see Styx in West Wendover, NV. Right before Styx sang “Come Sail Away”, Lawrence Gowan, keyboardist and lead singer for Styx from 1999 onward, decided to give the audience a short quiz. He yelled out “Sweet Home Alabama” the audience shouted back “Lynyrd Skynrd”. Then he shouted out “Smoke on the Water” and the crowd shouted back “Deep Purple”. Then he shouted out “Cum On Feel the Noize” and the crowd shouted back “Quiet Riot”. Then Lawrence shouts back “Wrong! It’s Slade!” As much as I love Quiet Riot’s version of “Cum on Feel the Noize”, I yelled back “Hell Yes! Slade!” and Lawrence smiled back at me. I love the band Slade and I’m a huge fan which is exceptionally rare here in the United States.
My father discovered Slade via some exceptionally rare radio play in Salt Lake City back in 1972 back when FM was commercial free and played a lot of different and experimental music. He bought the album Slayed? and really enjoyed it, but by the time I was born he had not listened to it in years and it collected dust in his record collection…lying in wait for me to eventually uncover.
When my family got cable television for the very first time in 1986 I was watching MTV and they played the video for “Run Runaway” and I don’t know what it is, but the song just really blew me away. I had never heard anything like it in my life and Noddy Holder had by far one of the most unique voices to ever come out of rock and roll. Forgiving the fact that the music video is considered kind of cheesy by today’s standards, I thought “Run Runaway” was the coolest thing I had ever heard in my life and is Slade’s only top 20 hit in the United States (it literally peaked at #20) and at this point in time just seeing this music video on MTV was really rare. I wanted to buy a cassette of Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply (the American version of the album The Amazing Kamikaze Syndrome) really bad, but at least in Salt Lake County forgiving the fact that the album was still in print at that point, it was still really hard to find. In the meantime I used to call the request line for KRSP/Rock 103 every couple of months requesting “Run Runaway” and every once in a while I’d be lucky enough to hear it.
I was at the record store with my Dad in 1990 and I was looking through Slayer’s section and lo and behold there was a tape of Slade’s Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply mixed in with Slayer. I bought it immediately forgiving the fact that I only knew one song on the tape mainly because I knew if I did not buy it that day I would never see this tape again. I will never forget the first time I listened to this tape at 4:30am while throwing my paper route. It completely took me by surprise. The album opens with “Run Runaway” the full version (I had only heard the radio/video edit version) and a song I already thought was pretty cool became in cooler. The power ballad “My Oh My” was way cool as well. However, where the tape really won me over was on side 2 with the songs “Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply”, “Cheap and Nasty Luv”, and “Can’t Tame a Hurricane”. I know Slade did not intend these three songs as a suite, but I view them that way and they just kick serious butt. At age 13 I felt like I had discovered one of the greatest bands ever. Eventually, when I was going through by Dad’s records I discovered the album Slayed? which features “Mama Weer All Crazee Now” and “Gudbuy T’Jane” and I fell in love with that album as well (I copied it to cassette so I could listen to it on my paper route).
When I introduced my little brother to Slade he thought they were pretty cool as well and used to listen to Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply on his afternoon paper route. I was just nuts about this band and I wanted to share them with all of my friends. However, this experience was not a rewarding one. My pitch was always “this is the band that wrote and recorded the original “Cum On Feel the Noize”” which usually was enough to get my friends to give them a listen. I don’t know what it is, but every single time I played this band for one of my friends their reaction without exception was “hmmm” or “I don’t think they’re good” and none of my friends were impressed with Slade at all. I wanted to know more about what Slade was about, but before the glory of the internet this was exceptionally challenging. I eventually found the Encyclopedia of Popular Music at the University of Utah Marriott Library and read a brief history of Slade where I learned that outside of the United State they were one of the most popular bands in the world in the 70’s and early 80’s. In the UK alone Slade had 16 top 10 hits, 6 of which made it to #1. But for reasons I will never be able to pin point, Slade has simply never appealed to an American audience.
As time went on through middle school (1989 to 1992) I would eventually find the tapes of Slade’s Rogues Gallery and You Boyz Make Big Noize in reduced bins for less than $1.00 and I enjoyed these albums as well, but I wanted to hear the huge hits that make them a household name in the UK that I had read about, but none of their albums were in print in the United States and getting a record shop to import albums was very pricy. When I was 18 years old in 1995 I drove out to Starbound Records in West Valley City for the very first time and I saw an imported CD of Wall of Hits by Slade. The downside is this CD cost $40.00, which even I knew was a total and complete rip off. But this was back for the bliss which is online shopping and I further knew that I did not have a prayer to find this CD anywhere so I coughed up the $40.00. It was so worth it! For the very first time I heard “Get Down and Get With It”, “Cos I Love You”, “Cum on Feel the Noize”, “How Does It Feel”, “Merry Xmas Everybody”, and all of their other hits. Part of what made this experience so amazing is I literally only knew the names of these songs for many years and I when finally heard them for the first time I was not disappointed. I wanted to buy CD’s of Slade’s old albums, but they were unavailable in the United States and the imports were incredibly expensive. However, I was very fortunate to find a used cassette of Slade in Flame and an old vinyl LP of Slade Alive which I loved, but the bulk of their albums I had to wait another five years for eBay and Amazon.com to come into existence before I could finally buy some of their CD’s.
Slade, forgiving the fact that most Americans have either never heard of them or the few that have view them as a one hit wonder, they are one of the most influential bands in the history of Rock and Roll.
Slade was a huge influence for the band Kiss and to quote Gene Simmons "Slade was certainly our greatest influence; not only in the crafting of rock songs but also as performers. Before Slade, no one really knew @#$! about how to make an audience riot. We really got off on that. There would probably never have been us without them."
Ritchie Blackmore, former Deep Purple guitarist (and one of the best in rock history) said "They are a good group. I wanted to join them
They were also one of Joey Ramone’s (lead singer and founder of The Ramones) favorite bands, and he said "I spent most of the early 70s listening to Slade Alive! thinking to myself, "Wow - this is what I want to do. I want to make that kind of intensity for myself. A couple of years later I was at CBGB's doing my best Noddy Holder."
The one and only Alice Cooper once said "Slade was the coolest band in England. They were the kind of guys that would push your car out of a ditch."
John Lennon said “Noddy Holder's got the best voice in rock apart from me."
Robin Zander, lead singer of Cheap Trick shared this experience of attending a Slade concert "I almost got mugged going to see Slade one night. With Ten Years After at this bingo parlor. I probably blew my ears out because I saw the two loudest bands I’d ever heard in my life..... Slade was definitely more impressive. They were so cool live, I don’t even know how to explain it. They were a pop band, but they sounded so heavy to me. One of the reasons we’re called Cheap Trick is because there was a performance of Slade, and Tom [Petersson] looked at Rick [Nielsen] or Rick looked at Tom and said something like, “These guys use every cheap trick in the book.”
In addition, Nirvana, The Sex Pistols, Oasis, Smashing Pumpkins, Motley Crue, Def Leppard, Quiet Riot, Queen, and countless other bands were very much influenced by Slade. As much as Slade never had the success in the United States as they did elsewhere, their influence as a band was very clearly felt by many established and aspiring musicians in the United States and all over the world.
About ten years ago I was walking through Fashion Place mall in Murray, Utah doing some Christmas shopping and over the P.A. I heard Slade’s “Merry Xmas Everybody” and I sang with it out loud was I was shopping. Frankly, I was just thrilled to hear a Slade song on the radio. However, since this day 10 years ago once malls and Salt Lake City radio start to play Christmas music this song is always in the rotation. I think it is way awesome that at least during the holiday season in America even Americans are listening to a great Slade song.
On a personal note, when I grew up there were a lot of bands I loved that thankfully many of my friends were into as well, but I stood alone on Slade. In my opinion they are the perfect balance between full throttle, straight up heavy rock and roll and pop music styling’s. Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply was their brief moment of success in the United States, but thankfully this moment lasted long enough that I was able to discover and really enjoy Slade’s music. When I joined Facebook back in 2008 one of the first people to friend me was a good friend of mine from middle and high school and the very first thing he posted on my wall was “I heard Quiet Riot’s “Cum On Feel the Noize” the other day and I remembered how much you loved Slade” so I guess I rubbed off on my friends a little bit. Slade in my opinion should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but again because American audiences just did not embrace Slade at all I know it will never happen, but their contribution to Rock and Roll is very significant. I could not be happier to be one of the rare American Slade fans, but on the plus side based on the rock star quotes from earlier, I am in good company.
