Slade were one of my first favourite bands, along with T. Rex and The Sweet. This came from their album Slade Alive!

I bought all their singles one by one, starting with Coz I Luv U – the first of their six chart toppers – in 1971.

For the next five years they were rarely, if ever, out of the singles chart at a time when only “albums bands” were taken seriously.

So in 1972 their manager Chas Chandler, realised their incendiary live shows could do for them what live shows had done for the last artist he’d managed – Jimi Hendrix.

He booked them into a theatre in Piccadilly and they turned up straight from performing Ciz I Luv U on Top of the Pops, still in their glam gear, to record Slade Alive!

As Noddy later recalled: “Our aim onstage was to hit the crowd between the eyes and grab them by the balls.”

They closed the show, as they always did, with this suitably ballsy cover of Steppenwolf’s classic, which they had first recorded for their 1969 debut album Beginnings, back before glam when they were a skinhead band called Ambrose Slade.

Happy 80th birthday Noddy Holder!