'Slade and Christmas is like mince pies and Christmas': Black Country rocker Dave Hill ready for festive tour

The purveyor of glittered foreheads, mirrored hats and ladies blouses that looked like men’s shirts, Hill was the life and soul of the Black Country’s finest ever band: Slade.

Try this thing. Hook up your laptop. Google the words Dave Hill. Click on the button that says Images. And then try not to smile. See. It’s impossible.

Funny hats and impossible make-up. Weird haircuts and feathers. Yes, feathers. Beards and suits that looked as though they were made of Bacofoil.

In the remarkable, never-to-be-repeated era that was the 1970s, Slade guitarist Dave Hill was the most flamboyant and remarkable rock star of the lot.

Forget Marc Bolan and Roy Wood, don’t trouble yourself with Elton John and Sweet. Dave Hill was the 1970s rock icon with great heart and humour.

The Superyob left the mean streets of Penn to become a global rock star. His legacy is remarkable. As Noel Gallagher – whose band, Oasis, were the obvious successors to Slade – famously said: “No Slade = No Oasis. It’s as devastating and as simple as that.”

In an interview with Weekend Towers a couple of years ago, Gallagher added: “Dave Hill? He was keeping it casual during the Glam Wars on Top of the Pops and he had a gold Rolls Royce! What’s not to love?”

Today, Hill is coming down from Planet H. He’s just returned from Greenland, where he’s been playing Slade songs to a bunch of Eskimos. As you do.

The band that he and original drummer Don Powell formed and continue to play in are looking forward to a Christmas tour that reaches Birmingham’s O2 Institute on December 22. The date has sold out, of course. And, yes, they’ll be playing that Christmas tune of theirs.

Dave is on good form. “Greenland is an amazing place. The Eskimos were great. I’m looking forward to a lot of things at the moment. There are Christmas dates, including the one in the Midlands, plus shows in London and Glasgow. It’s not crazy-busy, it’s just enough to round the year off. We are getting near the airplay situation too, which will be cropping up soon.”

Ah yes, the ‘airplay situation’. Dave is, of course, referring to Merry Xmas Everybody, which has been played 78 quintillion times on the radio since its release in 1973.

“Slade and Christmas is like mince pies and Christmas,” he says. “Except Slade is for life, not just Christmas.

“The Christmas song will always satisfy even the granny that turns up. But considering it was only a brief idea that we had in the band to make a record about Christmas that wasn’t jingle bells, it’s done alright. In the days in the 70s when Don had a bad accident and wasn’t in a good place, we were in New York. Maybe there’s something in life when something happens that is undeniably right and it comes out at the right time for the right people. England was in a big low at that time, it was worse than Brexit, and that song lifted the nation – especially when Nod screams It’s Christmas at the end.”

Describing the song as lifting the nation is an understatement. The single was certified UK Platinum by BPI in December 1980. Since 2007 and the advent of downloads counting towards the UK Singles Chart, it has re-entered the charts each December. As of December 2012, it has sold 1.21 million copies in the UK. According to the Slade Fan Club Newsletter for January and February 1974, the song was rewarded a silver disc for pre-order sales. Within the first week of release, the single had sold 500,000 copies. Also, according to the same newsletter, Merry Xmas Everybody was in such big demand that Polydor records had to make special arrangements to have 250,000 discs sent from Los Angeles, as well as 30,000 copies a day they were receiving from Germany.

Dave says that song merely adds to the band’s enduring popularity.

“Most people like Slade. We are the natural working rocking band and we had a loyalty towards the live situation. I’m still doing it because unlike Nod, who decided to retire, which is fine, I’ve wanted to carry on. Since 1992 I’ve played to more people than I played to when Nod was in the band. I see him occasionally and it’s great because we made magic together and you have to respect everyone in the band for creating that magic. I feel the same on stage now as when I was doing it back in the day. Age is a number. Jagger and Keith Richards would say that’s true. It’s not the money that draws me in. It’s the magic.”

The band usually play Bilston’s Robin 2 at this time of year – their spiritual home – but this year’s shindig will be in the Second City. “It’s sold out, which is always great. And we’ve got a new singer in, which is also great. The chap who was doing it before (he’s referring to Mal McNulty, who sang from 2005-2019) retired, I could tell he’d had enough. Changes can be for the better when you get through them. This one has been. This new guy (Russell Keefe) plays piano, which is great. With him on piano and singing, the songs sound much much better and that gives us a bit of space. It’s crisper and stronger and it’s just better.”

Dave has plenty of stuff outside the band to keep him busy. The man who famously drove a Rolls Royce with the numberplate Yob 1 has always been a rock’n’roller. He married his wife, Jan, in Mexico City in the 1970s and they raised their children in Staffordshire. He recovered from a stroke that he suffered in 2010, during a concert in Germany, and also came back from a broken elbow, after being knocked down in Brighton by a cyclist.

His autobiography, So Here It Is, was remarkable not only because of its rock’n’roll stories and afterword from Noel Gallagher but also because it showed another side to the showman’s character. Hill revealed the downs as well as the ups in that memorable volume, showing that the life of a rock’n’roller is far from plain sailing.

And as he looks to the future, he’s planning to satisfy his own creative talents more and more.

“I’m hoping to work with somebody in January on a solo album for myself. Next year I want to do something for me personally, to show the other side of me. I don’t know when that would come out. But I feel as if I say it now I’ll make sure I do it. I’ve never worked on my own, so my direction has always come from working with the other guys in the band.

“I’m at the point of life now where if I don’t do this, I would regret not doing it. It will be different to Slade – it won’t be Cum On Feel The Noize. I want to maybe talk about things that have gone on in the past, reflecting like Lennon did. I think it’ll have a classical edge, with plenty of acoustic guitar, as opposed to rock stuff. I might do an audio version of my book, too. We looked into getting an actor to read it, but they all sounded too posh. They didn’t have that Black Country accent. You know, I’ve played to millions of people in my career and now it’s time to step out of the box and do something new.”

Fortyodd years after Merry Xmas Everybody, he still gets stopped in the street. And he’s proud that he was part of the band that put a smile on the nation’s face. He never tires of hearing what the band mean to people.

“I met Jerry Lee Lewis’s sister and her husband once and it was magic. I told them how much influence Jerry had on us. She said she loved people talking about him. The impact of American music was great. And here in Britain we learned from all of that then took it back to the USA with The Beatles and The Stones.”

While Slade didn’t do particularly well in the USA, they cleaned up in Australia where horse racing courses were needed to house them – so big did they become.

“Australia was incredible, it was race courses and arenas. Everything was stadium-sized. We went out there not knowing what we were going to see. When we did our first gig, there was 40,000 pepole there. We had number 1, 2 and 3 in the chart. The Slade Alive album, which we did as a watershed album, sold more than Sgt Pepper Down Under. That’s a fact. When you meet Aussies, it’s not about Cum on Feel The Noize – it’s about Slade Alive.”

Funny to think that Hill used to be shy. When he was at school, he was one of the least confident kids in the class. While his pals showed off their skills on the football field and were adept at bagging the girls, Hill was left behind. “I was a bit of a loner. I was an individual that didn’t fit into the system of education. When I left, my mom got me a job in her office. It wasn’t successful but it was a job. In the meantime, I met Don Powell and we formed a band, later adding in Noddy and Jim.

“I went to mom and dad and told them I wanted to turn professional. They gave me a chance by telling me I ought to give it a go. I wanted to go on the road, travel in a van, grow my hair like George Harrison and attract all the girls.” So he did.

His clothes were part of the act.

“I went into a woman’s clothes shop because I’d seen a yellow satin blouse in the window. I decided that would look really good on stage. I remember the lads telling me I couldn’t wear it.

“But I told them I would wear it on the stage and the audience loved it. I remember people telling me they loved my shirt, even though it was a ladies’ blouse.

“So then I started to do some clothes creation at home. I got this long woman’s coat and these women’s boots that you lace up at the front. So I got some silver car spray and I sprayed the jacket on a door inside a council house. When I pulled the jacket away there was the outline of the jacket on the door. I put some moons on it and I wore it on stage, which was great. Nobody had anything like it because there was nothing else like it. So I started that wave of fashion.

“At the same time, going back to 1973, I remember being in a Top of the Pops dressing room. I came up with this thing that was like a pile of mirrors on a dress with an Egyptian head-dress. The manager, Chas Chandler, and Nod were laughing. Jim was saying I couldn’t wear that but Chas thought it was amazing. He thought I was crazy.” Mama Mama, We’re All Crazee…..

“They started calling me the metal man. A lot of it was because I was shy, but when I found something gave me a feeling of presence or charisma, I loved it. Marc Bolan was in the charts and wearing slightly glitzy things, so I decided to put some glitter on my forehead. So I was fiddling around with that and all the girls started doing it. So I remember sitting with girls in the dressing room and I was putting it on their foreheads. Ever since those days, I feel a great confidence in things.”

Great confidence, great hits and great personality. Dave Hill is one of rock’n’roll’s great one-offs. And as we head towards December 25, it’s time for his band to holler: It’s Christmasssssss.