Slade's Dave Hill

Ahead of this year’s Rewind Festival in Henley, Music-News.com caught up with Slade’s legendary guitarist Dave Hill for a hilarious and wonderfully entertaining chat packed with rock ‘n’ roll stories, laughter and plenty of surprises.

Warm, witty and every bit the glam rock icon, Dave reflected on the band’s extraordinary career — from achieving 17 consecutive Top 20 hits and six number one singles to releasing more than 30 albums, including three chart-toppers. But it was the behind-the-scenes tales that truly brought the conversation to life.

Among the highlights, Dave revealed how John Lennon reacted after hearing the demo of Slade’s timeless Christmas anthem, recalled meeting a then-unknown Freddie Mercury in a platform shoe shop before fame struck, and explained the origins of his famous “Superyob” nickname.

There were also stories of spectacular glam rock mishaps — including “busting” his ankle in platform boots — and memories of the band’s career-defining appearance at Reading Festival in 1980, a moment that helped reignite Slade’s success for a whole new generation.

Dave Hill’s Slade are taking to the stage on the Saturday at the Rewind Festival in Henley this August! What can we expect?
I might stick the Christmas song in the set, that’d be quite funny, because you can do things like that! When we did Merry Christmas Everybody at the Reading Festival in 1980, that gig actually brought us back in the charts.

Tell us about that pivotal Reading Festival appearance.
We went down a storm at Reading Festival in 1980, it was just a poignant time in Slade’s career. Towards the end of the 70s, we’d reached the point when we didn’t have a record deal anymore. It’s odd because sometimes the fans grow up and change their tastes. They still love you but they’ll move on to the next person. When we did Reading, it opened up a whole new ball game for us.

We went on because Ozzy Osbourne couldn’t do it. When the announcement was made that Ozzy wasn’t performing, that was hard for the crowd. They were disappointed that Ozzy wasn’t appearing. I went on stage and didn’t really know how it would go, but something worked in a big way for me. We did three songs, then there was a sort of roar and we’re all looking at each other thinking “I think they’re getting into it”. What happened after that was to write home about. The most dramatic part was the audience shouting “Christmas song!” and this was August. Noddy’s got this loud voice and he’s saying “We can’t do that, it’s not Christmas”. He said, “I tell you what, we’re not doing it, you sing it”, and the audience were all singing and swaying along to the song. Chas, our manager, was grinning his head off, we’re all gobsmacked. We could have stayed on forever, but we couldn’t stay on.

Will you be wearing your trademark costumes and platform boots at the Rewind Festival?
Let me tell you about when I broke my ankle on stage in platform boots! It was a big tour, we were at a big stadium in Liverpool and it was like Slade Mania. It got to the point where the frenzy became like The Beatles where they were going to go for the stage so it was really risky. So we had to run off stage but the problem is you can’t run in platform shoes! I was trying and then I felt click in my boots so I had to go hospital and they said I’d busted my ankle. They said it’s those silly bloody platforms. In the true spirit of a great performer like myself, my manger Chas said the tour had sold out, we’ve got to do it and you can still play your guitar. We’ll put a microphone near you but I’ll make you a throne, and you can play sitting on that!

The reason I got into platforms was I wanted to look slimmer and taller. The platforms raised me up. Guess who was working in the place I bought my platform shoes – Freddie Mercury! He was right by the guy making my platforms and I didn’t know him, but he was telling everyone in this marketplace in Kensington that he was going to be a big star. Well he was right about that!

Your famous nickname is Superyob. How did you get that?
It was a number plate on the back of my car! Before we made it, I’d got this Alpine and on the number plate was YOB1 which I hadn’t even noticed. I played this place in Solihull, which was posh and there were a couple at the venue who were shouting Yobby at me. I thought, that’s rude! But then they said, no your car is yobby. I really hadn’t noticed the number plate and thought not only was it funny, but that the plate’s worth a fortune. Then our publicist said that as everyone was a superstar or something like that, I should call myself Superyob. When I thought about it, I thought it was quite funny!

Didn’t you also have a Superyob guitar?
I also had Superyob costumes made and the guy who made my clothes said it would be great if I could have a Superyob guitar. The guitar has a long neck and it’s got metal on it, and it looks like a Ray-gun. It’s a dreadful guitar but it looked fantastic. I went on Top of the Pops with it. We sprayed it silver as the idea was to make a guitar to go with my silver clothes. I got rid of that guitar because it was crap and I sold it to a shop in Birmingham who put it in their window. Adam and the Ant’s guitar player Marco Pirroni ended up buying the original from that shop as he was mad on Slade.
I actually got the guitar re-made and you’ll see it at Rewind. We do a song called Mama We’re All Crazee Now. Towards the end of it, I disappear off stage and then I come back and I’ve got it on. I go quite bezerk for about 10 minutes. It’s a very good copy. It’s all silver but it has some lights up the neck now.

What’s the story behind the epic LP Slayed Cover, where you’re all holding up your fists?
The photographer said take your top off Dave because you’re muscly and do this fist so I looked like Mr Muscle. After that, people met me and said “I thought I was going to be scared of you, you look like you’re going to beat me up, looking at that picture”. They said “you’re really short.” Well, I’m 5ft 4ins. That’s the reason I wore the platforms!

What were your memories of Top of The Pops?
The first day I went onto it was for our first hit which was Get Down and Get With It. We’d just crept into the Top 30, which is what we needed to get on it. The big thing which really made a difference was that at the time, everyone watched TOTP in black and white so if you wore anything flashy, it didn’t matter because it didn’t show.
But if you wear silver, it does show. I had this costume, this long woman’s coat, and it’d got moons and all sorts of things, it was a bit cosmic. So what I did was I sprayed it on dad’s door to make it very silvery. What I didn’t think was that when I took it off, the shape of the costume was on the door! I think there were a few words later on from dad.

Tell us about Slade’s first number 1 single in 1971 - Coz I Luv you.
It’s a stamping song - great for platforms! Our manager Chas Chandler loved the song. It was a very happy, very commercial record and a rock song, but we made it sound a bit boyish with the boot stamping. Jim Lea was a great violinist, and then I played some lead parts to it and the chords were quite simple. The solo was great, People were listening to something completely original and different to anything else.

One of the main guys at Top of the Pops (TOTP) was quite fond of us and we were on TOTP a lot more than any other band in the 70s. They would get us on TOTP before they released it because they knew it would be a hit record. They got us on the week before so it maximised the sales when it got into the shops. My sister was sitting in her car on the Tuesday outside the office listening to the Top 40 and then DJ Alan Fluff Freeman goes through the whole chart and says, “Well there they are – Slade are number one!”. My sister freaks out and jumps out of the car and she’s shouting at people in their cars – “My brother’s number one!”. We were there for four weeks at number one. It was pretty hard work with costumes because it meant four appearances, so every time I went on there, I had to make sure everybody remembered me.

Happy 80th birthday for last month – how did you celebrate?
It was great. There’s one thing about having grandkids – you get presents you don’t expect (holding up a dancing cactus. It’s the joy of grandkids – they are beautiful. I’ve got five grandkids but none of them have seen me live yet but there is a plan that they may come down to Rewind Henley-on-Thames. We’re on the first day and it could be good, because they can all come down while I’m still doing it and see what it’s like when I’m standing on a stage in front of thousands.

How did Merry Christmas Everybody come about?
People don’t think about it as being just a Christmas song, they think about it being an amazing song. It’s the biggest Christmas song in the world because it’s a rock song as well. Nod’s lyrics were written down at his mum and dad’s house. He was having a few beers and he was thinking “I don’t want to write Jingle Bells, I don’t want to do any of that. I want it to be about what people do”. In the 70s Britain was on its knees at the time – three day weeks, the work wasn’t good, there were strikes and trouble with the unions.

Chas was mixing the song in New York, we sang the backing vocals and the nice thing was John Lennon gave us a week of his studio time to record the Christmas song because he was a friend of our manager. He then comes in when Chas was mixing it and was listening to Nod and he goes, “I like him, sounds like me.” Nod always had a powerful voice because he loved Little Richard.

Some times in life, and we all know this to be true; something so good can happen at the right time, with the right mood of the public. The truth about it was, it lifted a nation. The song had an ability to make people feel, sod it we’re gonna have a good time, we’re sick of it all. We’re not born to be miserable buggers, except that sometimes we are. There’s so much wonderful stuff William Wordsworth wrote, but there’s one thing he did say, and I’m going to use it in one of my songs, he said, “We are greater than we know”, and you have to know that. I decided what I wanted to do in life by following my heart.

*For tickets to Rewind Festival, visit www.rewindfestival.com