Slade - Get Down And Get With It

 

 

 Mr. Neville Holder MBE, a singer of some repute in his 70's heyday, relates the story in interviews, when asked, about when he lost his voice which, a bit surprisingly given his full-throated approach to the art, was only twice.

He is on tour, in Texas I think he says, and goes to see a voice therapist. While waiting outside, he can hear an operatic tenor going through some exercises and thinks, Chroist. I don't think it was on that occasion that he was asked if he wanted a kipper tie and replied, Yes, please, two sugars.

But when it's his turn to see the consultant, he's asked what the problem is and he explains that he's lost his voice. What is it that you do exactly, he's asked, so somehow (which is where the story falls down a bit) he does the opening of Get Down And Get With It.

 

And how often do you do that? asks the therapist.

Well, we're on tour so it's nearly every night actually.

And the therapist says, Get out. I can't help you.

 

Famously, in 1971, some twenty-odd years before the big Blur-Oasis chart showdown, in which I was on the wrong horse both for preference and who I thought would win when Blur did, one was supposed to be Slade or T. Rex. T. Rex were for the arty types and Slade were for those more laddish.

Quite honestly, at first, ex-skinheads Slade were far too threatening for me but their chart success and the encouragement of how much money was to be made from becoming more fun than bovver soon made Slade a mainstream act and Nod, with his grandad image, Dickensian whiskers and spelling that pretended that he hadn't been very good at skool became as acceptable as Gilbert O'Sullivan's similarly retro character and no more dangerous than Dave Bartram from Showaddywaddy.

And that is how a sense of humour, and some common sense, can save some people from themselves. By no means all of them, of course, because pop music has a high casualty rate but Nod became elderly with some grace and was inducted into that hall of 'national treasures'.