Track Listing

1. Be
2. Lightening Never Strikes Twice
3. Gypsy Roadhog
4. Dogs Of Vengeance
5. When Fantasy Calls
6. One Eyed Jacks With Moustaches
7. Big Apple Blues
8. Dead Men Tell No Tales
9. She's Got The Lot
10. It Ain't Love But It Ain't Bad
11. Soul, The Roll And The Motion
12. Forest Full Of Needles
13. Burning In The Heat Of Love
14. Ready Steady Kids
15. My Baby Left Me/That's All Right
16. OHMS
17. Give Us A Goal
18. Daddio
19. Rock 'N' Roll Bolero
20. It's Alright Buy Me

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8840 in Music
• Released on: 2008-12-15
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Extra tracks
• Dimensions: .25 pounds

Customer Reviews

No hits but all classics
This album breaks away from Slade's glam era and enters a new phase: classic rock licks pound away, one after the other, in one of Slade's best-ever rock albums.

This is an over-looked gem. The cover and the title are as good as the non-stop, no-nonsense contents.

Don't expect the jokey Slade of the early seventies: this is Slade developing a harder edge, which peaked a few years later with "We'll Bring the House Down".

great slice of seventies rock!!
The sleevenotes refer to this as being Slade's great underrated album of the seventies and that is certainly true. Whilst coming after their heyday of regular chart success, it is by no means the worst for it. It rocks from start to finish and is highly recommended to anyone who may shy away from it, because it does not contain the familiar chart hits we all know from the radio.

Whatever Happened to Slade - It has to be asked!
The 'Whatever happened to Slade' album dates from the beginning of Slade's so-called 'wilderness years' on the Barn label, recorded at Portland Studios in London, which was owned by Chas Chandler, with investment from the group. Slade had returned from a long self-imposed exile concentrating on the American market and had a serious amount of rebuilding to do, career-wise.

Slade had been replaced in the charts by newer and younger pop heroes and the transient section of their teenage fan base had moved onto 'the next big thing', leaving Slade with just their hard core fans (not the majority of their previous customers) desperate to hear their next release.Their previous album, 'Nobody's fools' had shown Slade's formidable ability to diversify, but 'Whatever happened to Slade' (note the deliberate lack of a question mark - this album tells you in no uncertain terms EXACTLY what happened to Slade) saw them concentrate on a solid, deliberate return to the type of hard rock that they had played best.

Slade made a most deliberate and serious about-turn from their comfort zone of easy on the ear, catchy rock songs in order to re-invent themselves as being more of a 'rock' than 'pop' group. The playing on the songs is disciplined and the subject matter is not all typical or immediate Slade fare. Tracks like the astonishing 'Be', 'Lightning never strikes twice' and 'It ain't love but it ain't bad' show Slade's unerring ability to play hard rock at it's best. The American influence lingered on and is most obvious on 'Big Apple blues', and 'Dead men tell no tales'. One of their very best stage rockers, 'One eyed jacks with moustaches' (think playing 'cards') comes from this album and is a complete joy to hear it again, especially when it's cranked up a bit. 'Nobody's fools' sounds totally lightweight by comparison.

The packaging for the album states the album is 'the connoisseurs choice as the best Slade album of them all'. While this is arguable, this album was extremely well-received by fans at the time, and it has certainly been fondly regarded by the majority ever since. Slade were determinedly forging ahead with smashing a number of people's perceptions of what they were all about musically. They stubbornly ignored the current music trends (they were SLADE, after all) and remained a totally insular, solid four-man unit. This was the last Slade album with production to be credited to Chas Chandler. It was also their first for years not to chart in the UK.

The reissued CD contains the most generous selection of bonus tracks so far in the excellent Salvo reissue series and basically rounds up the first half of Slade's mostly under-rated 'Barn Years' output. The single A-sides, 'My Baby left me', 'Give Us A Goal', 'Burning In The Heat Of Love' and 'Rock 'N' Roll Bolero' - as well as the largely excellent accompanying B-sides (that evaded release on any album of the time). Why some of these - especially 'It's alright buy me' - didn't get put out as A-sides still baffles many fans. The CD booklet contains mainly unseen out-takes from the photo sessions for the album. The sound is once again a great improvement on the previous Polydor issue (copies of which should now be gathered up and put in a skip and burned). Slade fans who are already aware of this album will be overjoyed to hear it again, sounding like it does.... and the 9 bonus tracks make it a compulsory purchase for all Slade fans.

1. Be
2. Lightning Never Strikes Twice
3. Gypsy Roadhog
4. Dogs Of Vengeance
5. When Fantasy Calls
6. One Eyed Jacks With Moustaches
7. Big Apple Blues
8. Dead Men Tell No Tales
9. She's Got The Lot
10. It Ain't Love But It Ain't Bad
11. The Soul, The Roll And The Motion

Bonus Tracks
12. Forest Full Of Needles
13. Burning In The Heat Of Love
14. Ready Steady Kids
15. My Baby Left Me: That's All Right
16. O.H.M.S
17. Give Us A Goal
18. Daddio
19. Rock 'N' Roll Bolero
20. It's Alright Buy Me