THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
1,247) Ambrose Slade/Slade — “Knocking Nails into My House”
Cum on feel the pop psych! Yesterday, I featured the Idle Race’s ’68 A-side “The Skeleton and the Roundabout”. Today I feature the B-side, the equally “superb” “Knocking Nails into My House (David Wells, liner notes to the CD reissue of The Birthday Party) But “Nails” a done by Ambrose Slade (see #1,165), which is even better. Don’t just listen to me: “I am a huge Idle Race (also Jeff Lynne) fan………but I will admit……I love the original, but this Slade version is better…..just my opinion. [:-)]” (kiethblack3870, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ns95Vrcj114), “Just heard the original…… more serious than this but bloomin’ marvellous. A stroke of genius by Slade to cover it in the first place and to produce an equally good version, albeit in a lighter vein. Long live Slade, Brum rock and Youtube !!” (bigmagic96, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skG8oPee1Ao) “Slade made a 100 times better version, I would not have appreciated it had Slade not made a cover of it” (carlphone, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skG8oPee1Ao), “[e]ver heard Slade’s version of “They’re Knocking Nails into My House”? Really brings out the best in was a great psych song to start with”. (Seeker_UK, https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/elo.138746/)
Imawalrus recalls:
I started off in the whole Move/ELO etc family tree around the El Dorado period and worked my way back to The Move, Roy Wood and so forth. Along the way I found a copy of the Idle Race’s Birthday Party . . . . I was getting into Slade and doing a similar thing with them. I got a US copy of their first album as Ambrose Slade called Ballzy (Beginnings in the UK). brought it home and started playing it and . . . a song called “Knocking Nails Into My House” came on. I thought “That sounds like a goofy Idle Race song”, so I look at the writing credit, sure enough it was written by Jeff Lynne. . . . I was just amazed at how much of Jeff’s/Idle Race’s style passed thru the Slade filter who seemed very eclectic in their choice of material on their first album.
About Slade, Vernon Joynson writes:
The roots of Slade go back to a 1964 Wolverhampton-based band The Vendors who included Dave Hill and Don Powell and cut a four-song demo EP. By 1965 The Vendors had evolved into The In-Be-Tweens. The same year Noddy Holder was guitarist and backing vocalist in another Wolverhampton-based band, Steve Brett and the Mavericks. During 1966 The In-Be-Tweens split into two with only Hill and Powell remaining. They were then joined by Noddy Holder and another Wolverhampton lad Jimmy Lea. In early 1969 the foursome, who were now known as Ambrose Slade and playing Motown, Beatles and ska covers, moved down to London. They were spotted playing at Rasputin’s Club by ex-Animal Chas Chandler who became their manager/producer, got them a record deal with Fontana and fashioned them in boots, braces and close-cut hair to cash-in on the skinhead movement. By the end of the year, he’d also persuaded them to shorten their name to Slade.
The Tapestry of Delights Revisited
Chas Chandler recalled:
I was going to take time out to take stock of things. Then John Gunnell told me about this group in the Philips studio… I went to Rasputins to see them. They were like a breath of fresh eayer… Mon. . . . There was a certain amount of amateurism about them but the main fault was that they didn’t play any of their own material. I liked the arrangements they did of other people’s material and I thought that if they could do that, they must be able to write as well. I made up my mind to manage them that night.
https://sladestory.blogspot.com/1971/02/ambrose-slade.html?m=1
Pay to Play! The Off the Charts Spotify Playlist! + Brace for the Obscure 60s Rock Merchandise
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