Cum on Feel the Noize

This is a glam rock classic. Slade performed loud, anthemic songs in flamboyant costumes, often with lots of makeup and plenty of energy. Glam rock was big in the UK in the mid-'70s, and this was one of the genre's first hits. Slade also hit #1 with similarly misspelled songs "Coz I Love You" and "Mama Weer All Crazee Now."

Jim Lea and Noddy Holder of Slade wrote this song, and it was produced by Chas Chandler, who managed Jimi Hendrix before working with Slade. The song entered the UK charts at #1, becoming the first to do so since The Beatles "Get Back" in 1969. It was Slade's fourth UK #1.

Most Americans know this song from the Quiet Riot cover, which went to #5 in 1983 and helped their album Metal Health become the first metal album to hit #1 on the Billboard 200. It was the band's producer, Spencer Proffer, who asked them to cover the song; lead singer Kevin DuBrow wanted nothing to do with it, since he wanted the band to write every song on the album. He and the band cooked up a plan to sabotage the song, but it failed. In a Songfacts interview with Quiet Riot drummer Frankie Banali, he told the story: "We were supposed to rehearse the song and go in and record it. The producer kept calling the rehearsal studio, 'Are you working on 'Cum On Feel the Noize'?' And we'd say, 'Yeah. It sounds great.' But we never played it. So the day came when it was time to record the song, and I came in early and told the engineer what was going on. I was honest with him. I said, 'You might just want to record this for laughs and giggles.' We went in, there was no intro, no nothing at all. There was a little bit of arguing as to how it was going to start, and finally, when I knew the engineer was rolling tape, I just started playing what became the intro. Rudy [Sarzo, bass] joined in, and then Carlos [Cavazo, guitar] joined in. Kevin was sitting at the corner of the studio, just giggling, waiting for this massive train wreck, and the train wreck never happened. I had already done so many sessions in LA - even before the Metal Health record - that I knew, 'Vamp long, there's no click track on it,' and all of that. And then when we were done, the producer says, 'That sounded great. I wish we had recorded it.' And the engineer said, 'Come on in.' He went in to listen, and Kevin grabbed me by the arm and almost dislocated my shoulder. He says, 'What the hell was that?' And I said, 'I don't know man. I just started playing it!' He says, 'Well, what am I supposed to do now?' And I said, 'Well, you can always sing it s--tty, can't you?' He smiled a little, but he was really pissed off. The thing is, when you listen to the original Slade version and you listen to our version, Slade begins at a different part of the song. Slade did not have an intro - it just goes right in. And because we weren't familiar with the song - and I definitely wasn't familiar with the song - I think I either left out a verse or a chorus in our arrangement. So if you play them side-by-side, they're not going to match. I will say that there is a lot of similarities between Kevin's voice and Noddy Holder's. It was good call on the producer's part to do that. And I understand why he did it: Quiet Riot was a new band, doing music that nobody else was doing, and he just wanted to have a 'safety song' that was a hit everywhere except for the United States. I get it. And the reality is, if we had not done that song, you'd probably be interviewing the drummer from another band right now."