The REAL inspiration behind Merry Xmas Everybody: Noddy Holder reveals how the iconic festive song was created
One of the greatest Christmas songs of all time started out as a “hippie-trippy” song about a rocking chair.
Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody topped the charts when it was released in 1973 and the song continues to generate around £500,000 in royalties every year.
The band’s 77-year-old frontman Noddy Holder told how the song was originally written years before its release and was later rewritten as a Christmas song.
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 glass one to look me in the eye.”
‘One evening in 1973 I was staying with my parents in the Midlands after a few drinks in the local pub.
One of the greatest Christmas songs of all time started out as a “hippie-trippy” song about a rocking chair
Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody topped the charts when it was released in 1973 and the song continues to generate around £500,000 in royalties every year.
“The whiskey bottle came out when I got in and I rewrote that earlier song in two hours, using the same music for the chorus but changing the words and adding verses.”
Although the lyrics evoke a typical British Christmas, the song was actually recorded in a New York studio 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 song given to the group by bassist Jim Lea’s aunt.
The song was an instant hit upon release, with record company Polydor having to use its French pressing plant to meet demand for the single.
It debuted at number one on December 15 and remained at the top spot for the next five weeks. Thanks to streaming, Merry Xmas Everybody has reached the top 100 every year since 2006.
The song is so widely popular that in 2009 the royalty organization PRS estimated that 42% of the world’s population had heard it.
The band formed in Wolverhampton in 1966 with drummer Don Powell and violinist/bassist Jim Lea alongside Holder and Dave Hill.
They became one of the biggest British rock bands of the 1970s, enjoying huge success with six number one singles.
The band’s frontman Noddy Holder talked about how the song was originally written years before its release and was later rewritten as a Christmas song.
Holder and Lea left the band in 1992, while Hill and Powell continued to perform as Slade with a variety of other singers and musicians.
But in 2020, Powell said he had been fired from the band. He claimed that Hill fired him by email without warning, something Hill denies.
And in 2015, Holder said: ‘It makes me sad that the four boys who were in Slade can’t get together and sit around the dining table.
“Five years ago, I got all four of us together to express our grievances, but it was too painful.”
Holder and Hill sparked speculation that the band was reforming when they posted a photo together in February.
The singer and the guitarist posed for a photo taken by Holder’s wife Suzan, which she uploaded to Instagram.
She captioned the image: “Lunch today. I will answer no further questions.’
Holder and Hill have not performed together since Holder left the band in 1992. He has since said that it would take a “miracle” to get all four original members back together.