The studio was within an office complex, so we went out on to the staircases to add echo to the choruses. “Our manager, Chas Chandler, decided we should head to New York, out of the limelight, to record Merry Xmas Everybody. “The doctors said if he’s ever going to play the drums again, he needs to get behind a drumkit as soon as possible,” says Holder. Four days later, Slade’s drummer, Don Powell, was in a car crash, killing his girlfriend and putting him on life support for six weeks. Slade had just finished a big European tour in July 1973 the first ever band to play Earl’s Court. I went back to my old bedroom at my mum and dad’s, rather merry, and wrote the lyrics in one go.” That night, I was drinking with the locals and my best mate, our tour manager, Graham Swinnerton – Swinny – at this jazz pub called the Trumpet in Wolverhampton. Jim had this melody knocking around, so he put my hook and chorus into his verse and played it to me round his house. “Jim’s mother-in-law said: ‘How come that you’ve never written a song that could played every year for a birthday, Christmas or Valentine’s Day?’ The first song I’d ever written, in 1967, was this hippy, psychedelic song called Buy Me a Rocking Chair to Watch the World Go By, but the rest of the band said it was rubbish. Merry Xmas Everybody came about after a challenge from one of Jim Lea’s elderly relatives, and was written in one sitting after a night down the pub.įrom left: Jim Lea, Don Powell, Noddy Holder and Dave Hill in 1973. The PRS has quoted £512,000 annually, but the Daily Mail reckons it’s more like a cool £1m. So it’s a nice pension plan, I’ll say that,” Holder smiles.

“It’s like having a hit record every year. All four of the original Slade share performing rights but it just happens that Jim and me were the main writers, so we earn more.” “I’ll get my annual PRS statement and the cross-section of artists who perform it on their Christmas tours is amazing. There’s been all sorts of cover versions, from the Spice Girls, Tony Christie and Oasis” – Noel Gallagher recorded an acoustic version for The Royle Family’s 2000 Christmas special. “Some years it’s used in an advert or movie. “Well, I can’t put a figure on, because it’s just different every year,” says Holder, cryptically.

Everybody everybody everybody song