Slade - Til Deaf Do Us Part
#570
By Rob Slater
November 13 1981
Slade
Till Deaf Do Us Part
Rob Slater
Genre: Father of AC/DC, Grandpa of Quiet Riot, Brother of Sweet, and on this album Son of QUEEN!
Allen’s Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Rob’s Rating: Solid 4.75 (was a 4 on the first listen.)
Highlights:
“M'hat M'coat” - Amazing, bluesy instrumental
"Ruby Red"
"That Was no Lady that Was My Wife"
"Knuckle Sandwich Nancy"
Nevermind, they’re all good.
This album’s running theme (joke) is Rock ‘n’ Roll Religion. You can see it in five of the titles and hear it in many of the other lyrics.
The opening of "Rock and Roll Preacher (Hallelujah I'm on Fire)" is, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here to...” This isn't Prince, but makes you wonder if he heard it and a few years later it inspired the beginning to his song. Though there are the more obvious inspirations.
"Lock Up Your Daughters" starts out sounding like Queen. Can you say, “Tie Your Mother Down.” Actually it continues to sound like Queen.
Both of these songs make you realize where AC/DC must have gotten some of their inspiration.
The first track rock and roll preacher sounds a lot like for those about to Rock We salute you except I think there's gunfire instead of cannon fire. Interestingly enough, Noddy, got the nod to audition for AC/DC after Bon Scott died. I think he would have been much better for AC/DC, though a major blow to SLADE (Who he didn’t tell about the audition). His naughty song writing chops would have kept things at a Bon Scott level, I think. Though we probably wouldn't have Back in Black, which would be a shame.
"Funk Punk & Junk" (B-side of "Ruby Red") Bonus track on the new extended edition is a GREAT song. (And Slade almost always did extra B-sides of good songs that didn’t make the album. Massive amounts of music over the years.)
They remind me a lot of Sweet as well, though Sweet had a fair amount of U.S. success. It's hard to believe that these guys had put out 9ish (Some were mixes of releases) studio albums by this point. You could certainly see how Quiet Riot did fairly accurate respectful covers and made them into monster Hits in the US. But why not Slade? The mention that they’re a bunch of ugly blokes, but that didn’t seem to hurt AC/DC. They were usually costumed unusually.
It would take an invite by Ozzy Ozbourne to open the Reading Festival as a replacement that lit the American fire. In 1981 they released TWO albums. This was the second. We'll Bring the House Down was a collection of previously released and new works. This one was all new and aimed for a harder sound. It was successful at that, but still did not bring them the recognition they deserved on this side of the pond. It would take "My Oh My" and "Run Runaway" (Which I loved.) in a few years to finally break into the American market, sadly they stopped touring in ‘83 before the Quiet Riot singles even came out.
I wished I’d gone back then and found all this great music. If I don’t get The Very Best of Slade for Christmas or Birthday in February, (Their #1 album came out on my 7th birthday.) I will be buying it for myself! Now, excuse me, I’m going to go listen to it again.
https://open.spotify.com/album/5TaKuX3UNuNwNLLmAFRsHG?si=BP3Si4DkT_aZQwWiD-EgjQ
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