up to now this is the closest to the band any one has got
in words and pictures,but I suppose at the time they were governered
by publishers and legal things in what they could actually say,things are different nowadays
bit more lenient,also I think after being together for so long you can easily slag off the other three
whichever member just like a marriage wich has gone past its sell by date,you can easily pick fights
and moan and complain but they and us fail to remember what brought us together in the first place and the good times that went with it for so long,the book was good and gave a good account of slade over the years,pics were good so good I removed a couple had them framed and they stand proud on my walls in the house
It's a great book, and it was written at exactly the right time. Slade's second wave of popularity was in full swing (and only one man was still wearing horrid clothes). There was no reason to think, in 1984, that Slade would succumb to the ego problems that apparently were just around the corner. The band appeared to be on a serious upper, which Chris Charlesworth has since said was illusory. It's all rather mysterious. This band which had been huge - the highest-profile chart hit band since The Beatles - had come back from oblivion. My Oh My had been a Christmas hit, but wasn't an obvious Christmas record - that alone should've taken the heat off the "Slade are only for Xmas" idea. Run Runaway was a major hit, and it was a new style for the band. It wasn't a Big Country rip-off - Slade had made it their own. So where did the second decline come from? Was it down to '80s-style productions, which dated even more quickly than their '70s counterparts? I don't know. All I know is that the book was very readable, factual, and uplifting (apart from when addressing two or three traumas - Don's and Angela's accident being the worst). I gave the book 7. A dream would for it to be reissued, with a few updated notes by Charlesworth.
I managed to finally score a copy of the "bible" only a couple of years back. I wasn't disappointed, but at the same time I was aware enough to know that CC was a mate of the band and Chas, and also that because Slade were drinkers, not druggers, Feel The Noize was never going to contain too many sensational revelations.
None the less I enjoyed it a lot and felt it was a good representation of Slade's career.
I think it was a very good book. Lots of facts, photos that at least I hadnt seen before. It was not the kind of book
that revealed much about them as individuals and it wasnt reflections by a journalist who had been very close to the band for many years. It was a biography written by a third party about the band looking at the band from an
outside perspective. I havent read it in many years because the binding is about about to crack if I open to many times.
It´s hard to believe that it was almost 30 years ago since it was written. But I think that CC concealed the feelings within the band about each other in the book. I read an interview with CC from the mid 80´s where he was asked what his impression was the last time he met them. He replied: they were clearly tired of each other.
I remember buying my copy. I was in a record store and they had it by the cash and I grabbed it, I never saw another one for sale.
(Well until now when the odd copy shows up on a certain auction site).
I took it home and looked at all the pictures and finally read it - probably in one sitting - and have read it many times through in the past 30 years.
I thought it was fantastic, and very well done. Still do.