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Slade frontman Noddy Holder has opened up about the “crisis” that engulfed the rock band just two months before they recorded their 1973 Christmas song, Merry Xmas Everybody.
In a new interview, the 77-year-old explained that they were in New York during the “zenith” of their career and drummer, Don Powell, was involved in a horrific crash.
Noddy told Kate Thornton on her White Wine Question Time podcast: “He went through the windscreen, as did his girlfriend, and his girlfriend was killed, and they’d given him not even 24 hours to live.
“He was in intensive care, and I got a call from his dad in the middle of the night and he said, ‘He’s been in a car crash and they won’t even give him 24 hours to survive. If you want to see him, you better go up first thing in the morning.’”
Noddy did go and see him and was horrified by “the mess he was in”. The rocker recalled that: “He’d shaved all his head, he got pipes out of every orifice, he just looked horrendous, we didn’t give him much chance.”
Thankfully, Don is a “tough cookie” and made a miraculous recovery which allowed him to be discharged from the hospital six weeks later.
However, Don had lost his memory as well as his sense of taste and smell.
Noddy went on: “Couldn’t remember any of the songs, none of them; didn’t know any of the hits. You’d tell him something and five minutes later, he’d forget it. The doctor said to him, if you’re ever going to play the drums again, you’ve got to get in the saddle now, otherwise, you’re never going to play again.”
The band then took Don into the studio, and he started playing. Then, Merry Xmas Everybody was born.
Noddy previously revealed how he had penned the hit after a trip to a Wolverhampton pub, with the melody taken from a song he wrote and discarded six years earlier.
He told BBC presenter Tony Snell: “I went to the local pub in Wolverhampton and went back to my mum and dad’s after and I sat up all night with a bottle of whisky and wrote the total lyrics that night.”
It was an undisputed hit, and to this day it is thought that more than three billion people listen to it every year.
White Wine Question Time is available to listen to on all podcast platforms.
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Source: NewsFinale
