Slade launched themselves on a squence of big hits that made them one of the kings of Glam when they topped the charts for the first time with Coz I Luv You at the end of 1971.

Those of us who had already nailed our bright shiny colours to the mast of Glam were kept waiting a while for it to turn into a movement after the arrival of T. Rex. Exactly a year after Ride A White Swan, along came Slade with this song. And went to Number 1 in October 1971.

If Marc Bolan got the girls going (and he most definitely did), then Noddy Holder was definitely a pop star for the boys. Defiantly proletarian, and with more than a hint of the football ‘bovver boys’ about them, Slade had been a skinhead band with a loyal following in their native Black Country.

They had already had a minor hit with a foot-stomping rabble-rousing cover called Get Down And Get With It. This was different.

Holder’s glammed-up Dickensian garb and sandpaper rasp, his caps (and top hats), his platform boots and loud check trousers at half-mast, and Dave Hill’s piss-taking gender-bending outfits – so swishy in his satin and tat, as Bowie might say – were a hoot. The music was something else too.

This is by no means their best song but it’s still great. It was written in half an hour after the bass player, Jim Lea, brought his electric violin over to Holder’s house and suggested trying to emulate T. Rex’s Hot Love, then topping the charts, with a Stephan Grapelli influence.

That’s exactly how it sounds too, with its slow chugging intro building up to that wild and unexpected violin section. I like to imagine that after knocking it off in half an hour, they went down the pub in Wolverhampton to sink a few pints and play a few games of darts with the locals.

The song was recorded in just two days but when it was completed the band felt it was a little mild as a follow-up to their rowdy debut hit, so producer Chas Chandler added the foot-stomping and hand-clapping and, in yet-to-be-invented Spinal Tap parlance, turned everything up to 11. On the finished record they sound like whipcracks, and that became their signature sound. The final piece in the jigsaw came when Holder felt the title ‘Because I Love You’ was too weak and suggested changing it to the misspelt ‘Coz I Luv You’ to reflect the band’s Black Country dialect.

Despite that, and despite it going to No.1 in just two weeks (unusual at that time), Lea said later that he always felt the song was “namby pamby” and, for that matter, “a pile of shit” because it was “so wet.”