Slade’s Dave Hill talks to Greatest Hits Radio about THAT Xmas song

Speaking to Jackie Brambles on her show this evening the Slade guitarist shares interesting things about the band’s Christmas classic.

Merry Xmas Everybody was released in November 1973 with pre-orders of around 350,000 and went to the top of the chart the following month to become the Christmas Number One that year.

Dave says that one of the Beatles is actually responsible for the song getting recorded. He tells Jackie that the band only nipped into the New York studio after John Lennon had cancelled a recording session.

‘’We were in New York in the summer of 1973 – it was 100 degrees, it certainly wasn’t Christmas,” says Dave. “We didn’t’ really know this song, but when John Lennon cancelled his time in Record Plant Studios we went in just to do this Christmas number.”

The studio was in an office block and the band members were all in the foyer at half past nine in the morning trying to get their vocals going and singing ‘so here it is Merry Christmas’ in front of a group of American businessmen.

Dave continues: “John Lennon had this organ in the studio and if you listen to the intro of the record you can hear his organ on it which is really nice.”

He says that none of them knew the immensity of the song, they just recorded it and let their manager Chas Chandler take the tapes back to England and mix it.

“We hadn’t heard it for months and when it finally did come out, I thought ‘oh that sounds really good’ but we didn’t know how big it would be,” Dave tells Jackie. “Although 1973 was a massive year for us with Cum On Feel the Noize – we had so many big songs that year, but the Christmas song was something special. As soon as the public got to hear it, it just flew.”

You can hear Jackie Brambles chatting to Dave Hill in her show on Greatest Hits Radio this evening from 7pm.