The 20th of February 1974
Official U.K. Albums Chart results from Sunday the 17th to Saturday the 23rd of February 1974
Cut-off for sales figures was up to the end of Saturday the 16th of February
Results counted from Sunday the 17th,
and published on Wednesday the 20th of February 1974.
Slade
Sladest
At No.20, on the “The Top 50 U.K. Albums Chart”, the week of my 2nd Birthday, are Slade with Sladest.
An unintentional,..
…but given the circumstances at the time, quite necessary compilation from the UK’s rock royalty of the era, who I’d previously encountered while their last album had occupied the chart on my previous birthday.
Released to fill the void…
…in which the band themselves were on a forced hiatus due to the horrific crash Don had been involved in back in early July last summer, which had instantly taken the life of his 20-year-old beloved fiancée Angela, and left himself precariously at the edge of his own life as well. In fact if it wasn’t for two nurses who just happened to be there during the early hours, and managed to keep him in this mortal world while an ambulance got there, he would no doubt have followed Angela to the angels himself.
Don somehow managed to hold on, but just barely. Along with his physical injuries (5 ribs, both ankles, and several teeth broken), he’d submerged into a coma from also sustaining a fractured skull, of which, when he arrived at the operating table, the surgeons had to drill into his head to relieve the pressure due to the swelling of his brain.
For a whole week,..
…Don’s life, along with the fate of the band, hung in the balance. The report of the crash exploded across the front pages on the UK’s most popular national papers within the next 36 hours.
Could this be the end of Slade?! Noddy himself has stated since, that if Don didn’t pull through, then that would have been the end of the band. As simple as that.
If that scenario had indeed happened, then the band would have gone out at the very top of their game.
They’d just held one of their biggest headline performances, a few nights before, at a packed Earls Court, and their latest single “Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me” had blasted into the UK chart at No.1 in its first week of entry a couple of days before that.
The public kept rushing out to buy that latest single, and the band easily retained that top spot for another week.
When the world stops like that,..
…the whole of time can stretch into a different level. Minutes seem like hours, hours feel like days; this was almost a whole week.
Eventually though, around the 9th or 10th, Don started to come back, and that’s when the real recovery began, and his waking into this new dawn meant that his life going forwards would never be the same.
With no recollection at all of the events, to then wake into a nightmare where you have no idea of where or why or how he came to be there must have been the deepest shock to the system, but to then be told that a memorial service was being held for Angela must have made him want to dive back to where he’d just emerged, instead of this new found restless nightmare.
As the news…
…filtered out to the group’s legion of fans, so their single racked up yet another week at the top. Hope still glimmered for them that there may be a future.
For the band themselves, it was a case of standing vigilantly by their drummer, supporting him in any way they could, and hope that he could even recognise a drum kit, let alone play one.
It was miraculous…
…how quickly he seemingly recovered from this point.
Just a few weeks later, with now permanent short term memory loss and sense of taste and smell all shot to pieces, Don was eventually able to be discharged from the hospital to begin rebuilding his life again. By August, and with much assistance, he managed to sit once again behind his drum kit and keep rhythm.
Anything from Slade at this point was going to be a slow process, and so the decision was made to compile a retrospective of their past, featuring all their hits and others they’d released on their journey to get there.
With Don back on the drumstool,..
…there was hopeful anticipation back in the air, and the band could well continue. With a new single just released, which would be included on their next planned album, and with another single recorded, scheduled for the next couple of months, to also be set loose during the upcoming festive period, the future was starting to look a little brighter once again.
Due to the timing…
…of its release, it goes down as the first UK compilation by the band, that doesn’t feature THAT Christmas song, which in a way is most probably a relief for quite a few.
With every year that passes since the festive song infiltrated the UK population’s consciousness, it gets increasingly more difficult with every passing year, that there was once a time before the song even existed, and this album proves it; released before they’d had even released that composition, which wouldn’t happen for another couple of months that year. Those memes, messages and GIFs that now begin appearing from every October saying that Slade are not just for Christmas, this compilation absolutely proves it with solid assurance and clarity.
From the moment Noddy’s tonsils start to waggle, this album makes you want to stick your thumbs in your belt loops and swing your elbows in wild abandon. It’s solid unequivocal proof that the boys from the Black Country are in a league of their own, and had been for quite a while.
The album…
…had shot straight to the top of the charts upon entry last autumn on the last day of September 1973, and had stayed there for three triumphant weeks, until stepping back a little, but not going too far, until it claimed the top spot once again in the middle of January in this new year of 1974.
The next few weeks had seen it fluctuate a little until it lands on the edge of the Top 20 this week.
From here,..
…it will actually fall out of the Top 50 for a week, before re-entering in early March for a fortnight before leaving once again by the middle of that month.
Returning just for one further week during the latter half of April, by then the album will have totted up just two weeks shy of half a year of chart presence.
Side 1
Side 2
Many thanks go to the following YouTube Channels for providing the chance to hear these tracks, so that together we can experience both sides of this album release, as it was intended, once again.
Please show your appreciation by visiting their channel:
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