“I tried to walk away from it in 1980, when I had to be talked into doing the Reading Festival, because I was in financial trouble. Our manager Chas Chandler convinced me to do Reading and the rest is history. After that we went on to have more hit records and all sorts of stuff but in a way it kept me there. Then when Nod left in 1991 that was difficult because I didn’t know what I was going to do. Jim left because he didn’t want to do it without Nod, I was in a bit of a quandry and I was either going to form a new group or use the Slade name in some shape.

“I was talking to Status Quo’s manager about it and we were getting into doing something, then I got a call from Len Tuckey and he told me that I didn’t want to be starting again, playing pubs./ Everybody knew who I was and we had all these great records so why shouldn’t I go back out again as Slade? As he said, so many bands don’t have their original members and now a lot of them aren’t with us anymore, so when push comes to shove it’s about peoples’ memories. When they see us they know me and more importantly they remember what they love about the music and the things that were important about the band. We were, as Nod says, a great rock’n’roll band. We had good style and good songs.”

Good songs indeed, which leads us onto the chief frustration of many Slade fans. Do you think that the band’s back catalogue could be looked after better? As far as I know there’s never been a proper video collection, it took ages to get Slade on Spotify, no unreleased material ever comes out. Then you look at the amount of stuff that’s available now from bands who were around at the same time – Sweet, Thin Lizzy and Queen for example. They seem to have a remaster with bonus tracks or a new live album coming out all the time and it all helps keep them in the public eye.

“Our albums were good and a lot of things we did later on when we were struggling, on independent labels, the writing and the ideas were still there. You’re absolutely right there’s some really good stuff there. I don’t know if it’s something to do with the deal that’s been struck. We have someone who looks after Slade’s catalogue, he knows what he’s doing which is why you won’t see us on cheapskate compilations like some bands.”

While that seems a sound commercial decision, other things that happened during Slade’s heyday have led to frustration for diehard fans. They would have snapped up anything that could had been released since the original line-up went their separate ways in 1991. The acclaimed Slade Alive for example, was around thirty-eight minutes long, the same length as the Who’s Live at Leeds, but the Who’s album has since been extended and a release more than two hours long is now available. But there’s never been any more from the Alive sets despite it having been recorded over three nights.

And there’s so much other stuff that’s gone down in Slade mythology – the Earls Court show from 1973 when they were at the peak of their success, the Lochem festival of 1981, the legendary Reading show that revitalised the band. All sorts of tantalising glimpses come up on YouTube and elsewhere but the full footage has never been available to show the world just what a great live act Slade were.

“I sometimes think our career needs a reappraisal. It’s very difficult when you’ve got several members who don’t perform anymore. I’ve kept the flame going a bit for years and the band still being in existence is helped by that but there is a situation where there’s a missing link of appraisal. You’ve got Live at Leeds and Thin Lizzy’s Live and Dangerous, they’re excellent records, of course they are, but when you do weigh up when you hear How Does It Feel on the radio, you stand back and think, there’s something not quite right here, in a sense of the quality of stuff like that and where it could have led to.

“Sometimes we’re not being remembered for our best work – with the Christmas song, we’re being remembered for a great record but it maybe clouds some of the great things that we did until people finally realise what other great things there were.”

When you put all that together, it seems that somebody, somewhere, has decided that cultivating and maintaining Slade’s heritage is more trouble than it’s worth.

“I don’t know about that. We’re with BMG, they’ve got all the back catalogue so they might do something. They’re a good company, they haven’t disappeared so maybe this year, next year there’ll be some reappraisal of us. I can play all the gigs in the world but it doesn’t mean I’ll be back in the charts. I’m constantly in people’s memories, the ones that care and the ones that know. The general public might not realise the quality of the work you’re talking about until they hear a song and think ‘Blimey, is that you?’ They’re thinking of Coz I Luv You or Cum On Feel the Noize. They see you in the aspect of singles, when in fact our albums were really good, and our live albums and our shows were spectacular.”

Which makes it such a pity that they’re not out there for the world to see.

“There’s a film of us on YouTube live from the Winterland in San Francisco from 1975. Nod says to me, “Have you seen that H, it’s really good”. Now we were struggling to make it in America and we’re on that stage, it’s one of the better nights we had over there, we were supporting somebody and when you listen to it you realise how good we were. We start off with Them Kinda Monkeys Can’t Swing, and watching it you realise how great Nod’s vocal is, and how tight we were. The rhythm of it and at Lochem in particular, listen to how fast we played. Bloody hell…”

Finally, I was talking to Hazel O’Connor some years ago and she said that the man who played the sax break on Will You, the song she’s best known for, sued her for royalties after it became popular. The case went on for so long that nobody except the lawyers really won in the end so although it’s her most famous work she said that it still hurts to think of it. Do you have similar mixed thoughts about the Christmas song – if that had never happened the subsequent history of Slade would have been completely different?

“It might have been, but we might not have been talking about it forty-odd years later. And for the reason of the Christmas song I’ll always get the interviews and the tours. You can’t really monitor which side to go. Some say Christmas isn’t the way, some say ‘Great record.’ It’s not just a great record, it’s a bloody monster so I don’t think we’d have been better off without it. Maybe it might have pulled in some of our other stuff but that’s speculative and all in all we are where we are because of what we’ve done. As the song goes, look to the future now so I want to continue playing and keep the flame flying.”