Slade ‘performing to half empty venues on new tour and slash tickets by 80%’ – despite raking in £500K every Christmas thanks to their iconic festive hit
Slade are reportedly performing to half empty venues on their 50th anniversary tour with tickets around the UK being slashed by almost 80%.
The glam rock group are best known for their iconic 1973 hit Merry Xmas Everybody, which continues to earn songwriters Noddy Holder and Jim Lea around £500K every year in royalties – despite both having quit the band.
Now according to The Sun seat-filling websites have reduced tickets for the new gigs from £38 to a fiver in a desperate fill upcoming shows in Southampton and Oxford’s O2 Arena.
The band now consists of Dave Hill, 73, on vocals alongside new members Alex Bines, John Berry and Russell Keefe.
MailOnline have contacted the band for comment.
Slade are reportedly performing to half empty venues on their 50th anniversary tour with tickets around the UK being slashed by almost 80% (most recent line-up pictured)
The glam rock band are best known for their iconic 1973 hit Merry Xmas Everybody, which continues to earn singer-songwriters Noddy Holder (second right) and Jim Lea (second left £500K every year in royalties. (Orignal line-up pictured in 1985)
The band formed in Wolverhampton in 1966 with drummer Don Powell and violinist/bassist Jim Lea alongside Noddy and Dave Hill.
They became one of the biggest British rock bands of the 1970s, enjoying huge success with six number one singles.
Lead singer Noddy andt Jim both left the band in 1992, with guitarist Dave and drummer Don continuing to perform with a variety of other musicians.
But, in 2020, Don said he had been sacked and claimed Dave fired him by email without warning, something which his bandmate denied.
In 2015, Noddy said: ‘It saddens me that the four guys who were in Slade can’t get together and sit round the dinner table.
‘Five years ago I got the four of us together to air our grievances, but it was too painful.’
Noddy recently revealed how the band’s classic hit was originally written years before its release and was then later rewrote into a Christmas track.
He said: ‘The song that became Merry Xmas Everybody was written in 1967. It was a hippy-trippy thing and the chorus went: “So won’t you buy me a rocking chair to watch the world go by / Buy me a looking glass to look me in the eye-eye-eye.”
Now its been reported seat-filling websites have reduced tickets for the new gigs from £38 to a fiver in a desperate fill upcoming shows in Southampton and Oxford’s O2 Arena (original line-up pictured)
Lead singer Noddy (pictured in 1974) left the band in 1992 followed by Jimmy Lea and Don Powell
Dave Hill (far right, in 1973) is the only remaining member of the group
‘One night in 1973, I was staying at my parents’ in the Midlands after a few drinks down the local pub.
‘The whiskey bottle came out when I got in and I rewrote that earlier song in two hours, using the same music for the choris but changing the words and adding verses.’
Although the lyrics conjure an image of the typical British christmas, the song was actually recorded in a studio in New York in the middle of summer.
Nody said he wanted to paint a picture of a ‘working class Christmas’, with the idea of writing a festive track given to the group by bassist Jim Lea’s aunt.
The song was an instant hit upon its release with record company Polydor having to use its French pressing plant to keep up with the demand for the single.
It debuted at number one on December 15 and stayed at the top spot for the next five weeks. Thanks to streaming, Merry Xmas Everybody has rentered the top 100 every year since 2006.
The song has such widespread popularity that royalties body PRS estimated in 2009 that 42% of the world’s population had heard it.
One of the biggest Christmas songs of all time began as a ‘hippy-trippy’ song about a rocking chair
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