Slade - Say Their Goodbyes One Last Time In Manchester

Back in 1974, when the country was under the effect of the electrical blackouts with the three-day week imposed due to an industrial dispute with the miners, over on Top of the Pops on BBC1, Noddy Holder and the rest of Slade were igniting the nation with their brand of commercial pop – that is, if you had electricity in the first place to watch the programme.

While Noddy and Jim Lea, who wrote most of Slade's songs, have long left the group along with drummer Don Powell, guitarist Dave Hill is the only remaining member from the original line-up. Even Hill has decided that it is time to hang up his platform boots during this final tour, which arrived at the Ritz ballroom in Manchester for one last hurrah.

Besides Hill, the current line-up includes John Berry on vocals, bass and violin, Russell Keefe on vocals and keyboard and Alex Bines on drums. From opening up with Take Me Back ‘Ome, it became clear that this was never going to be just a tribute to the Slade songbook; the faithful and strong renditions were delivered with energy, enthusiasm and aplomb.

With his eightieth birthday next April, Hill showed no sign of slowing down. With his flamboyant style still intact and his joy in playing live, it was hard to imagine him retiring – which, in a way, he isn’t; he will still play the occasional live show and maybe go out on a spoken word tour with a huge catalogue of stories to tell.

“We were the biggest band in the world in 1973,” he maintained, which Slade indeed was. The band rode a crest of a wave; it was only the ill-fated decision of trying to crack America and then returning back to Britain to find punk all the rage when they arrived that made them realise that the band had fallen out of fashion, before a second coming in the early eighties saw them back in the charts.

Everyday and Far Far Away showcased a different side to the band – the melodic ballads might not be played now as much on the radio as their other hits, though that does not mean the two songs are inferior.

The band always had English schoolteachers raising their hands in fury with song titles wrongly spelt, such as Gudbuy T’Jane and Mama Weer All Crazee Now, but their teenage pupils didn’t care a bit.

Cum On Feel the Noize was as riotous as ever, though it was Merry Xmas Everybody that brought the Christmas spirit home. The band had all donned their red Christmas hats. Berry and Keefe might not have had the same rawness as Noddy Holder in his prime; however, when the tunes are as good as this, no one seems to care.

If this was to be the last full tour Slade undertook, tonight the band went out in style, still as crazy as ever and still making a fabulous noize.