It's been half a century since it first reached the peak of the hit parade, but it still brings a happy feeling to one of its performers.
The Slade hit "Merry Xmas Everybody" has become a Christmas tradition, played on the television, at Christmas parties, in pubs and clubs and even at schools and colleges across the country since it first became the UK Christmas number one in 1973.
The song has become one of the most loved by the Black Country band, who enjoyed a string of hits in the 1970s, and is still a highlight of any Slade concert played by the band, of which Dave Hill is still a full-time member.
The 77-year-old was the guest of honour at Wolverhampton College for a festive sing-a-long with Futures tutor Richard Cooper and students from the programme, which encourages independence, employability and inclusion and ensures each young person has maximised opportunity to progress to independent adult lives, on Monday.
The Slade hit "Merry Xmas Everybody" has become a Christmas tradition, played on the television, at Christmas parties, in pubs and clubs and even at schools and colleges across the country since it first became the UK Christmas number one in 1973.
The song has become one of the most loved by the Black Country band, who enjoyed a string of hits in the 1970s, and is still a highlight of any Slade concert played by the band, of which Dave Hill is still a full-time member.
The 77-year-old was the guest of honour at Wolverhampton College for a festive sing-a-long with Futures tutor Richard Cooper and students from the programme, which encourages independence, employability and inclusion and ensures each young person has maximised opportunity to progress to independent adult lives, on Monday.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Hello, I'm Joseph Reavich, we're at the City of Wolverhampton College and I'm here with
00:04 Slade guitarist and Legend of Christmas, Dave Hill.
00:07 Oh, thank you very much.
00:09 Good intro.
00:10 Pleased to speak to you as well.
00:11 So, 50 years on, what does the song mean to you, 50 years on?
00:17 I think the song means a lot to me, but I think greatly it means a great deal to everybody.
00:26 Not only England, but across the world.
00:30 Making that song, we never realised at the time when we made it, what that song would
00:35 mean.
00:36 And there are a few stories which you might like to hear at some point in this interview
00:41 about the making of the Christmas song.
00:43 Well, I suppose the first thing I'd be interested about is where did the idea come from?
00:46 Was it something that was written by Maddy and Jim or did you start to have ideas about
00:50 it?
00:51 Well, I think the start of it was that, I think Jim's mother-in-law said, "Nobody
00:59 writes any Christmas songs."
01:01 And that was a good point actually.
01:03 I mean certainly no rock band would write a Christmas song.
01:07 And nobody was doing anything above the Ronnets records or, you know, the usual records you
01:15 might hear, Bing Crosby.
01:17 I mean I grew up in a generation of Bing Crosby and Queen, so Christmas was all about those
01:23 films and all that.
01:25 But this time, I mean we were absolutely huge in 1973 and we just had "Squeeze Me, Please
01:34 Me" just came out of noise.
01:37 And this comment from Jim's mother-in-law stemmed an idea.
01:44 And I don't know the exact way they wrote it, but I know that Nod had got a chorus to
01:52 another song about a guy riding in a rocking chair which happened with the melody of "So
01:58 Eerie 'Tis" - "So Eerie 'Tis" is his guy.
02:01 And I know that to be true.
02:03 And I think Jim was thinking, he was working on a verse I think, you know, or hanging his
02:08 stocking or something like that.
02:11 And he remembered that Nod had this melody and they came together and they put it together.
02:16 And then they mentioned it to Chats Chammo, who was our manager and producer, also our
02:21 manager of Jimi Hendrix.
02:23 And he said, "Oh, that's interesting."
02:25 And then we went off to America and we forgot about it.
02:30 And we were in New York, bored as we often are, hanging about.
02:35 And Chats said, "I'm going to try and get some studio time.
02:38 We're going to put that down while we're all doing nothing."
02:42 So he rings up the studio and John Lennon's in there.
02:45 But John Lennon is actually going to cancel the week in there, which freed it up for us.
02:52 I mean, John Lennon was a friend of Chats' anyway.
02:55 And I know John Lennon loved Nod's voice because he told Chats Chammo about it.
03:00 He said, "Great singer, sounds like me."
03:03 And I thought it was such a compliment.
03:05 But when we decided to go in, we had to work on it for a day because I didn't know.
03:12 Our drummer didn't.
03:14 So we worked on it.
03:15 And then we started to build it up and then we started to put ideas into it, you know,
03:21 like the boogie guitar I put on a lot of records I've played.
03:25 And a certain thing with jam, you know, kind of accents and things like that.
03:30 And the drumming was very important with the shuffle.
03:33 Bit by bit it built.
03:35 And during the week we said, "Oh, there's a harmonium in there."
03:41 He said, "It's John Lennon's."
03:43 He said, "He won't mind using it."
03:45 Well, obviously he wouldn't.
03:46 So we put it on.
03:47 Now, if you listen to the intro at the start, he talked about "Boh, boh, boh, boh."
03:53 And you'll hear John Lennon's harmonium.
03:56 So in a way, John Lennon cancelled the studio, which was a favour, and then used his harmonium
04:01 in his own biggest Christmas record of all time.
04:04 These little steps that sort of built along the way to making the song.
04:06 It was.
04:07 And it was so funny.
04:09 When we did the track, we always go in the foyer of wherever we are to...
04:17 We all sing together, you see, to give the impression there's a crowd.
04:21 So we were in there, but unfortunately, people were coming to work, you know.
04:26 It was 100 degrees outside, and they come in and we're all singing, "So here it is."
04:33 And they come in, you know, "What the heck's going on here, man?"
04:38 You know, it was a little bit like that.
04:40 It's 100 degrees outside.
04:41 He said, "Are you crazy?"
04:42 I said, "No, no."
04:43 He said, "We come from England."
04:44 He said, "Oh."
04:45 He says, "Why are you doing a Christmas song?"
04:46 I said, "We're going to release it in England at Christmas time."
04:47 He said, "Yeah."
04:48 But it must have sounded so strange.
05:00 But it was good fun.
05:01 Well, we didn't know how good it was until we went back to England.
05:06 Chas mixed it.
05:07 And I think late November, beginning of December, he played it.
05:08 And we were going, "What?"
05:09 Because we didn't feel Christmas at the time.
05:10 And he played it, and then he said, "I'm taking it around the record store."
05:11 And we were going, "What?"
05:12 And he said, "I'm taking it around the record store."
05:13 And we were going, "What?"
05:14 And he said, "I'm taking it around the record store."
05:15 And we were going, "What?"
05:16 And he said, "I'm taking it around the record store."
05:17 And we were going, "What?"
05:18 And he said, "I'm taking it around the record store."
05:19 And we were going, "What?"
05:20 And he said, "I'm taking it around the record store."
05:21 And we were going, "What?"
05:22 And he said, "I'm taking it around the record store."
05:23 And we were going, "What?"
05:24 And he said, "I'm taking it around the record store."
05:25 And we were going, "What?"
05:26 And he said, "I'm taking it around the record store."
05:27 And we were going, "What?"
05:28 And he said, "I'm taking it around the record store."
05:29 And we were going, "What?"
05:30 And he said, "I'm taking it around the record store."
05:31 And we were going, "What?"
05:32 And he said, "I'm taking it around the record store."
05:33 And we were going, "What?"
05:34 And he said, "I'm taking it around the record store."
05:58 And we were going, "What?"