Inside Tracks #29: Slade, 1974, "When the Lights Are Out" by Noddy Holder, Jim Lea w/Covers by Cheap Trick, Bob Segarini, The Dummies
Usually loud, brash, and even silly, UK's Slade once released a stunning, melodic rocker that would have fit nicely into another British foursome's canon.
Ringing guitars, an instantly hummable melody, and harmonies. All that’s missing are hand-claps and la-las to make it more than power pop-worthy of the Raspberries or Cheap Trick. In fact, it does have hand-claps!
One of those bands actually covered “When the Lights Are Out,” a raver worth unearthing and digging 50 years since its initial release.
The Whelping of Slade
Slade, essentially born in 1966 as the N’Betweens out of land-locked Wolverhampton (somewhat midway between London to the SE and seaport Liverpool to the NW), turned into Ambrose Slade in 1969 before wearing “The Slade” for a year, and then wisely dropping not only the “The,” but attendant pretenses as well.
They eventually fit nicely into the burgeoning “glam rock” slot, occupied almost exclusively by UK-based artists from roughly 1971 to 1975, and spear-headed by the likes of T. Rex and David Bowie, but to varying degrees, included bands like Sweet, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople, Gary Glitter, Showaddywaddy, Alvin Stardust, and Mud. The latter three were deemed so decidedly British that they weren’t even offered licensing deals for their records in the States (with the notable exception of the odd domestic re-issue decades after the fact)!
The glam (and/or “glitter”) scene was mercifully less overt in the States, with acts like Alice Cooper and Lou Reed sort of tip-toeing around the sub-genre, however unwittingly. Nevertheless, some American acts, including Suzi Quatro, the New York Dolls, Sparks, Iggy Pop, and Jobriath, snuggled up to “glam,” with some even welcoming it with a full embrace (and sloppy mascara).
Related: More about the following can be read here, FRONT ROW & BACKSTAGE, either in deeper dives, or my personal accounts of my meetings and interactions: The New York Dolls, Sparks, Iggy Pop, Jobriath, and David Bowie:
Charting Noddy & the Gang
Slade was lead singer/rhythm guitarist Noddy Holder, guitarist Dave Hill, bassist Jim Lea, and drummer Don Powell. They were an overwhelming success in the early ‘70s in their native England, garnering 17 consecutive Top 20 hits, with six #1s on the British singles chart. The British Hit Singles & Albums reference book names Slade the most successful British group of the 1970s based on sales of singles.
They were the first act, in fact, to have three singles enter the charts at number one. Holder and Lea wrote most of their songs, including the six UK #1s by the group.
A Wider Shade of Slade or The Gaping Yawn
In the US, however, they were generally met with thunderous indifference. Polydor Records carried their first couple of stateside albums: Slade Alive! in spring of ‘72, and Slayed? later that winter. The latter LP, while managing to stay on the US charts for half-a-year, peaked meekly at #69, and ended up as their most successful state-side album.
One component of Slade’s recorded sound was becoming apparent and consistent: Their producer, Chas Chandler, the original bassist for The Animals, also managed Slade (1970-1981) after managing Jimi Hendrix’s career. Chandler, in fact, produced the first two 1967 Hendrix albums, Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold as Love, albums that were on Frank Sinatra’s own U.S. label, and shared Reprise catalog space with Slade!
Chandler shows up big in this piece, co-written with the man who mixed their 1983 Ark album,
of The Song’s the Thing:
With a move in the US from Polydor to Reprise Records (distributed by Warner Bros.), the band released Sladest (in 1973) a compilation featuring a vastly different track listing than its Polydor-issued UK version.
Its peak position at #129 on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart meant precious few American ears heard it, despite its ten tracks including eight of the band’s most popular UK sides. Meanwhile, virtually everything by Slade released in the UK seemed to be propelled by helium.
The Best Beatles Song They Never Recorded (Since 1966’s “Lies” by The Knickerbockers)!
Slade’s fourth studio album, Old New Borrowed and Blue, as it was known in the UK, was released by Reprise’s corporate “mother,” Warner Bros. in the States in February 1974 under the nom-de-tune, Stomp Your Hands, Clap Your Feet. A couple of the songs were piano-driven, as the band made a conscious effort (with Chas Chandler again at the console) to slightly alter, expand, and even soften (at least on a couple tracks), their trademark hard-rocking style. One can almost hear Warner prez, Mo Ostin: “Must…break’em……in….States!”
The second track on the album is “When the Lights Are Out,” and was released as a single only in the United States and Belgium, denting the charts in both countries not even a whit. Written by Holder and Lea, as many Slade hits were, it was the first song to feature a bandmate other than Noddy Holder as lead singer: Bassist Jim Lea, although Holder can be heard on the chorus harmonies.
“It's triple-tracked because my singing's so bad!”—Jim Lea
In an interview at the time, Holder commented with a sly grin: "There’s nothing like a good singer, and Jimmy’s nothing like a good singer.”
Speaking to New York Times music writer Ken Sharp in 1999, Lea recalled: “I’ve never considered myself to be a singer and was never considered by anyone in the band to be a singer. But it was Nod’s idea that I should sing that, ‘cause he said, ‘Look, why don’t you sing it?’ and some people said I sounded a little bit like John Lennon, you know, my hero. It’s triple-tracked because my singing’s so bad! I triple-tracked it to try and even the tuning out a little bit.”
Under the Covers and Over the Target
Cementing the song’s Beatley provenance, no less open and ardent fans of the Fab Four than Cheap Trick covered “When the Lights Are Out.” Lea also recorded a cover in 1979, but the first to cover the song was noted northern California native singer/songwriter, Bob Segarini, on his 1978 solo LP, Gotta Have Pop (never released in the States, but was available as a Canadian import to power pop-completists like myself, at the time).
Segarini, who became particularly huge in Canada in the early-‘70s as a member of the power pop-friendly Roxy, as well as The Wackers, also had a 1975 album released by Columbia Records in the U.S. as a member of The Dudes.
Here’s Segarini (with clear studio recording accompanying, somewhat out-of-synch, a concert performance video), taking full advantage of the available harmonies, filling them out, as well as making a Gibson Custom SG sound “ringingly” so much like a Rickenbacker, they may sue.
For my money, Segarini wrings out every ounce of pure pop profundity and sublimity the song could offer, and beats out even Slade and Cheap Trick for the quintessential version.
Here’s Jim Lea’s cover, with brother, Frank, and their side project, The Dummies, on the lads’ own Cheapskate Records (distributed by PYE in the UK and parts of EU).
Their 1979 cover sounds, to these ears, a tad faster, and they do some fun, new things to the chorus. “Rollicking” might be a way to describe their take:
And, finally, Cheap Trick ca. 2009. Leave it to a band as unabashedly proud and famously Beatles-fueled as Cheap Trick to yank all the possible Liverpool out of a suitable tune. Ringing guitars abound, of course, and Rick and Company even pull off an octave-higher twin harmony (ala Squeeze) in the verses. All that’s missing are birds tossing jelly babies:
What an ace article about an ace band. The covers are all great.
Been so slammed with projects I just was able to get to this, but I've been saving it for when I had time. Kudos to you for featuring Slade. I loved the band when they first showed up, and long assumed they were much bigger than they actually got--because they should have been huge! What a unique yet familiar sound. Saw you mentioned Suzi Q in your listing of glam-adjacent artists. For those who are interested, I wrote about her a year ago: https://medium.com/the-riff/kicking-the-doors-down-suzi-quatro-d3f74ffdeb14