Noddy Holder, lead singer of Slade, recalls a rock 'n' roll life
Written: Mar 16 '03 (Updated Mar 26 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Funny, touching memories of rock personalities such as Slade,The Beatles and Ozzy Osbourne.
Cons: None.
The Bottom Line: Very enjoyable, humorous autobiography. The author scored 16 Top 20 hits as a member of the rock group Slade, while meeting such personalities as John Lennon and Ozzy Osbourne.
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| Don_Krider's Full Review: Noddy Holder Who's Crazee Now: The Former British ... |
Noddy Holder --- now there's a name for a book author!
But can he spell? Well, he calls his autobiography "Who's Crazee Now?" (his spelling, not mine).
The author
Noddy Holder was born Neville John Holder in June 1946 in Walsall, West Midlands, England. In Europe, and to a cult following in the United States, he's quite the celebrity.
With the rock group Slade, he sold millions of albums and singles worldwide in the 1970s and 1980s. His songs have been recorded by such acts as Oasis, Quiet Riot and The Runaways (featuring Joan Jett). The band made numerous television appearances on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean and made a feature film, "Slade In Flame."
Outside the group, he has received the Member of the British Empire award for his services to music from the Prince Of Wales in March, 2000 (the MBE has been given for outstanding service to the British Empire to citizens as diverse as The Beatles and to the nation's war heroes).
He currently is a popular radio host on British radio and has been a video deejay for Britain's MTV. He also was a cast member of the popular British comedy TV series, "The Grimleys."
The rock 'n' roller
As a singer-songwriter-guitarist for the British band Slade in the 1960s-80s, Holder led the band to 16 Top 20 British chart hits, including six singles that reached # 1 in England.
The band was praised by "Time" magazine, among others, for its "glam rock" (early David Bowie, The Sweet, T.Rex, Gary Glitter and The Move were identified with the sound), in-your-face-with-a-sense-of-humor style, which included wearing tartan clothes, mirrored hats, ankle-length ties, shoes with high platform heels and glittered hair. They were also famous for slaughtering the proper spelling of their song titles.
At the risk of causing a meltdown in my spell-checker, Slade's hit singles (these are actual titles, folks, as spelled by Holder and bandmate-songwriting partner Jimmy Lea) included "Mama Weer All Crazee Now," "Coz I Luv You," "Take Me Bak 'Ome," "Gudbuy T' Jane," "Skweeze Me Pleeze Me" and "Cum On Feel The Noize."
They could also coin a phrase in their time, such as telling audiences to "clap your feet and stomp your hands."
The band peaked in England in 1974 with their last # 1 single, "Merry Xmas Everybody," a novelty Christmas tune that sold 500,000 copies before it was released, entered the British charts at # 1 (where it stayed for a month) when released and which has sold millions of copies since its release.
Quiet Riot carried a couple of the band's tunes ("Mama Weer All Crazee Now" and "Cum On Feel The Noize") to the U. S. Top 40 in the 1980s. Though Holder and Slade had scored minor Hot 100 hits in the U. S., the American market was one the band couldn't crack until the 1980s.
In the mid-1980s, Slade finally cracked the American market with the hit album, "Keep Your Hands Off My Power Supply" which hit # 33 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. It produced a pair of Top 20 singles in the U. S. with "Run Runaway" and "My Oh My" in 1985 (both propelled by popular videos shown by MTV in the U. S.).
The subject
Holder's "Who's Crazee Now? My Autobiography" presents a behind-the-scenes look at the rock 'n' roll life of a '70s superstar.
In Slade's 1970s' glory days, they were managed by Chas Chandler, bass player of the Animals and former manager of Jimi Hendrix. In the 1980s, they were managed by Sharon Osbourne, wife of singer Ozzy Osbourne (yes, "The Osbournes" of current MTV fame).
Holder details his musical life here, from personal success to tales of rock legends he called friends.
The writing style
Holder's writing style is like a friend at a bar sharing memories of good times from the past. He tells his life story with a wonderful sense of humor and a no-holds-barred honesty. His tale gives us a look at both the rock lifestyle and at some of the legends of rock music he encountered.
You're there when he sings before an audience for the first time, at the age of seven in his hometown in a local club, doing a rendition of Frankie Laine's "I Believe."
He tells you of this youth's early years, fondly saying (with British spellings, of course) of being an only child:
"My dad came from a big family and my mum had a sister, so there were lots of aunts and uncles and cousins. We were always at one anothers' houses. It was the same with neighbours - loads of kids to play with, so even though I had no brothers or sisters, I was never bored. But the absence of siblings did help turn me towards my own talents at an early age."
He writes of creating "fantasies and stories in my head." Unlike so many rock stars, Noddy Holder tells us, "My memory of my childhood is a totally happy one. We were a typical working-class family, where parents simply can't afford to spoil their kids."
He takes us in the first couple of chapters through that youth, describing England (which he reminds us endured rationing of supplies through 1954, nine years after the end of World War II) as it was in the 1950s, from children running "amok" in the streets, to teachers who administered "a good whacking as often as they liked" if you misbehaved.
He tells us of his first radio, or "wireless" as it was called then. Of his first "radiogram," a combination record player and radio, "a huge piece of furniture driven by valves," brought home to him by his father. He remembers a time when families sat around and listened to radio shows together.
Then he discovered Bill Haley & The Comets singing "Rock Around the Clock" and "it blew my mind," he says. "From that day on, anything with a rock 'n' roll soundtrack was good as far as I was concerned."
Noddy tells us of his love for the early rockers such as Little Richard, Bill Haley and British superstar Cliff Richard ("I wanted to learn all his songs," he says). By age 11, he had settled on a music career and was strumming his first guitar.
He tells of trying to form bands. Then along came four mop-top haired guys from Liverpool, The Beatles. Holder was like most British teenagers, totally captured by Beatlemania, noting, "To us, they seemed so fresh compared to the artists who had been hogging the charts for years."
He tells of seeing The Beatles perform live, long before they became worldwide stars, "all wearing leathers, which was unheard of at the time, and they all had messy bowl haircuts. It was as though they had stepped straight off the street."
Years later, while they were recording in a studio next to ex-Beatle John Lennon, Lennon asked their manager about Noddy Holder, saying, "Who is this? I love the bloke's voice. He sounds just like me." That compliment sent Holder "over the moon," he admits.
Holder details his 1960s' bands, including recording acts such as The Phantoms, The Memphis Cutouts, Steve Brett & The Mavericks and The 'N' Betweens. These are tales of first recording contracts (recording three singles with The Phantoms for Columbia Records in 1965), management problems and leaving your home country to tour overseas (in this case, performing in Frankfurt, Germany, where "Germans loved seeing English bands wearing leather because it reminded them of The Beatles," he says).
He tells tales of other 1960s' encounters as opening act for bands such as Cream (featuring Eric Clapton) and The Moody Blues.
He offers insight into other pop stars, such as meeting a clothing salesman named Freddie Bulsara, who told the members of Slade (fresh from a # 1 single and having just appeared on "Top Of The Pops"), "I'm going to be a famous pop star one day. I'm going to be bigger than you guys."
The man Holder describes as selling mainly "flowery hippy shirts" in that 1972 meeting, whom the band considered "a poser," later changed his name to Freddie Mercury and formed the band Queen, which did become more successful than Slade.
Imitation is said to be the sincerest form of flattery, and Holder notes with pride that his clothing style was copied by another group of teen idols in Britain, saying, "The Bay City Rollers admitted they pinched their look from me - the cut-offs and the tartan."
The rock and roll life had its bad moments, too, such as when drummer Don Powell was nearly killed in a 1973 car crash (his girlfriend died in the accident). Holder reveals a gentle side when talking about seeing his bandmate in the hospital ("I burst into tears," he says) and then details Powell's amazing recovery to rejoin the band.
To his credit, Holder never considered replacing Powell in the band, "No Don meant no Slade - end of story," he says.
Years later, he details the band's final conquest of the U. S. charts in 1985, only to have bassist Jim Lea become ill as the band prepared to tour the U. S. in support of a Top 40 album as opening act for Ozzy Osbourne. Holder refused to tour without his bandmate, of course, even though it meant that Slade quickly lost their new-found American audience as a result. To this "bloke," friends and family are what matters.
He talks at length about his fans (Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of Kiss have cited Slade as one of their biggest inspirations) and friends, such as Ozzy Osbourne ("Ozzy's taken every drink and drug known to man," he says).
He talks of having a bit too much to drink with Ozzy, for instance, then Ozzy renting them both ballerina costumes to wear and Ozzy buying a German war helmet to wear to a concert by the rock group Iron Maiden.
But Holder never judges anyone too harshly in his memories (of Ozzy, he says, "He was a real madman, a real nutcase, but a lovely bloke."). His memories of Chas Chandler, bassist for The Animals, his original Slade manager and friend who died in 1996, are touching.
He details also his life as a husband (through marriage and divorce), father (there's a very touching photo of him, mouth wide open, holding his infant son, who also has his mouth wide open, as he prepares to feed a spoonful of food into the child's mouth), actor, producer (of bands such as Girlschool) and all-around nice guy.
Holder's popularity in England led to an appearance in 1996 on England's version of the TV series "This Is Your Life". He tells a lovely tale of being totally surprised --- thinking he was appearing on one TV show only find himself "gobsmacked" before a live audience, while voices from his past (folks including his former bandmates, Roy Wood of ELO and The Move, Brian May of Queen, Gary Glitter and Suzi Quatro appeared --- "Ozzy was supposed to come, but he missed his plane from LA," he notes).
The details
The 1999 hardcover includes 231 pages and 16 pages of black and white photographs. There is no index (for his comments on partying with Alice Cooper or the members of Three Dog Night, for instance, you'll have to read the book) or bibliography (it is, after all, an autobiography).
The book was a best-seller in England and has since been released in paperback with an additional chapter.
Recommendation
I've been a fan of Slade's since 1973. Seeing them on "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert" in a performance taped live in England before 10,000 hysterical fans singing their # 1 British hit "Skweeze Me Pleeze Me" sent me to the record store to buy their U. S. album "Sladest" and I've loved that fun, happy, hard rock with a pop edge sound ever since.
The book will certainly appeal to fans of the band, but Holder's everyman writing style should have a broad appeal to music fans. He comes across not as better than the rest of us, but as an average guy who just happened to have some success.
To be sure, his many memories (far more than detailed here, I assure you) of artists ranging from The Beatles to Ozzy Osbourne are from a man who personally lived those memories --- they are frank, vivid, compelling and, very often, quite amusing.
In a world where "telling it like it is" once meant something, this is a fresh and welcome addition to the library of any rock music fan who loved the music of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
On the web
"Beginnings/Play It Loud" combines two early Slade LPs onto a single CD with bonus tracks. The 26 tracks have a total running time of over 77 minutes: http://www.epinions.com/content_338701356676
Slade's 2004 U. S. CD release, "Get Yer Boots On: The Best Of Slade": http://www.epinions.com/content_136564870788
"The Genesis Of Slade," an hour-long CD featuring the four bands that eveolved into Slade: http://www.epinions.com/content_168815332996
Slade's 2004 DVD U. S. release, "Slade In Flame," their classic 1974 film: http://www.epinions.com/content_136061881988
Slade's 20track British greatest hits release, "Wall Of Hits": http://www.epinions.com/content_115527356036
BBC News story on Noddy Holder's MBE award (features a photo of Noddy holding his young son): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/696059.stm
BBC "Top Of The Pops" Star Site for Slade: http://www.bbc.co.uk/totp2/artists/s/slade/index.shtml (includes videos of some of the band's performances)
Unofficial Slade site: http://www.slade-weerallcrazee.co.uk/ (features videos and numerous links to fan sites in England, Russia, Belgium and elsewhere)
Recommended:
Yes
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Don_Krider
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Member: Don Krider
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About Me:
Fan of power pop (Raspberries, Badfinger, Cheap Trick, The Knack, Romantics, Slade,Sweet...) --- "Play On"!!!
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