In 1983, Quiet Riot recorded and released the song, Come On Feel The Noize and had a Billboard top five hit on the pop charts with it (I was never a fan).
Quiet Riot’s version of the song was actually a cover of the song written and recorded by Brit glam-rock band Slade.
At the peak of their popularity in the 70’s, Slade had six #1 songs. Their best selling #1 hit by far was Merry Xmas Everybody. The band was encouraged by their manager/producer, Chas Chandler, to record a Christmas record. (In the 60’s, Chandler was the bassist for The Animals and was Jimi Hendrix’ first manager.)
“We’d decided to write a Christmas song and I wanted to make it reflect a British family Christmas. Economically, the country was up the creek. The miners had been on strike, along with the grave-diggers, the bakers and almost everybody else. I think people wanted something to cheer them up – and so did I. That’s why I came up with the line ‘Look to the future now, it’s only just begun’. Once I got the line, ‘Does your Granny always tell you that the old ones are the best’, I knew I’d got a right cracker on my hands,” said Noddy Holder, one of the original members of Slade.
Merry Christmas Everybody has been covered dozens of times by the likes of R.E.M. (in 2007), Train (on their brand new Christmas record, Christmas In Tahoe) and even The Spice Girls.
I actually came about the song via Noel Gallagher’s cover of it on the BBC sitcom, The Royle Family (I watched Gallagher’s version on youtube – never watched the program). Noel Gallagher’s version is an acoustic number and is quite good.
Tonight I’ll feature the original Slade version followed by Noel Gallagher’s version. If you want to see more versions, I’ve included links above.) Slade’s version was originally released as a single. You can find it here. Gallagher’s version was released as part of of compilation record NME in Association with War Child Presents 1 Love (it’s actually listed as being performed by Oasis of which Gallagher was then a band member). You can find it as part of a different compilation record here.
As a side note, Slade is still around and even features a few of the original band members. They released a short clip of themselves performing Merry Xmas Everybody on their Facebook page yesterday (live from Finland).
Tom's Christmas Music Blog 