As great as our last chart-topper ‘Vincent’ was, you wouldn’t want to listen to it every day. Thank God, then, for Slade, getting us back into a hard-rocking, glam-boogying groove.

Take Me Back ‘Ome, by Slade (their 2^nd of six #1s)

1 week, from 25^th June – 2^nd July 1972

Their first number one, ‘Coz I Luv You’, was great but, as I noted at the time, it didn’t sound like the Slade that would go on to grab the charts by the balls. Their second chart-topper, though, sounds 100% like Slade. We’ve got Noddy hollering, a nasty riff, and some

Imagine the scene: closing time at a pub in Wolverhampton. Last orders, in more ways than one. Noddy needs a girl for the night, so he gets a wooing. Came up to you one night, Noticed the look in your eyes, Saw you was on your own, And it was alright… He has a way with words to rival Mungo Jerry and their attempts on ‘Baby Jump’: You and your bottle of brandy, Both of you smell the same… Is she really as rough as she sounds, or is he just a brute? Either way, I love the complete and utter lack of glamour.

So take me back home, Take me back home, And we can find plenty to do, And that will be alright… It’s an unsophisticated song. The hook is simply Holder drawing out his ‘all-rights’ in a sneery way. But, it’s great. I kept thinking that the riff sounded familiar, and then I realised that it simply sounds like 50% of Oasis’s mid-nineties output. (They always get the Beatles comparisons, but to me they ripped Slade off just as much. Anyway, more on Oasis in twenty years or so.)

By the second verse, the handclaps have turned into terrifying horse-whips, increasing the glam-stop even further. And by the third verse, the girl’s boyfriend, who’s twice the size of Noddy, has turned up. I didn’t stay around to say goodnight… But it was alright… We fade out with Holder trying to punch through brick walls with his voice, then doing his best Marc Bolan stutter.

So Slade are a-go. Although I’d rank ‘Take Me Back ‘Ome’ more alongside the Stones’ bluesy numbers from the sixties, ‘Honky Tonk Women’, ‘Little Red Rooster’ and the like, than  the pure glam that was to come. Few #1s have been as low-down and dirty as this. But, I like that this came just two weeks after T. Rex’s final chart-topper, ‘Metal Guru’, and that it feels like a passing of the glam-rock flame. Slade were now poised to become the biggest band in the country, and we’ll hear a lot more from them in the next year and a half.