13 December 2023 , 13:23
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Slade frontman Noddy Holder revealed the "real" inspiration behind the band's timeless Christmas number one.
Merry Xmas Everybody was released back in 1973 and has soundtracked every winter since. The single still generates about £500,000 every year, but it actually started out as "hippy-trippy thing" that was far from the festive offering that went on to be released. Noddy, who was given all the clear after being diagnosed with oesophageal cancer in 2018, said he wrote the track in just a couple of hours, while sitting drinking in his childhood bedroom.
Noddy, 77, said the song was written years before it was released, before but was re-written into a Christmas track.
The popular Christmas song has soundtracked every winter since it was released in 1973Noddy told the Mirror "The song that became Merry Xmas Everybody was written in 1967. It was a hippy-trippy thing and the chorus went: 'So won't you buy me a rocking chair to watch the world go by / Buy me a looking glass to look me in the eye-eye-eye.'"
He added that he rewrote the earlier song in two hours after getting the whiskey out, saying he used the same music for the chorus, but amended the words and added the verses in.
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Noddy revealed the song was a challenge to his co-writer Jim Lea, who had been given a challenge by his mother-in-law the year before to write a Christmas song. About six years before, he'd written a song called Buy Me A Rocking Chair - which had "gone straight in the bin".
While he was staying at his mum and dad's in Walsall, he rewrote the song in his childhood bedroom. Noddy explained to officialcharts.com : "I got it done in two or three hours; I just thought about everything that was to do with Christmas, a family Christmas. That brought back all the memories I had when I was a kid. All the lyrics were done in that one night, the middle eight and everything!"
He said he wanted to conjure up images of a proper "working class Christmas" with the track. When it was released by Polydor, it debuted at number one in the charts on December 15 and stayed there for five weeks. It's re-entered the top 100 yearly since 2006. Although Holder and Lea left the band in 1992, the two remaining members, Dave Hill and Don Powell continued to perform as Slade with other members.
But after he recovered from breaking tendons in his knees, he claimed Hill, his former friend who he met in 1963, sacked him via email in 2020. Hill denies the claims, but a statement on Powell's website read: "Dave has sent Don a cold email to inform him that his services are no longer required, after working together and being friends since 1963.
"The great news is that Don is now fully fit to play drums again. He is coming back with his band who will be called Don Powell’s Slade."
Speaking of the band's ongoing feuds, in 2015 Holder told the Daily Mail: "It saddens me that the four guys who were in Slade can't get together and sit round the dinner table. Five years ago I got the four of us together to air our grievances, but it was too painful."