The loose ramshackle sound of this song can be attributed to one thing – they had never played it before the day they recorded it. And this was only the second take.

As ever, it’s built on a great guitar riff, stomping drums, an insistently shaken tambourine, and a melodic bassline by the ever underrated Jim Lea.

Chas Chandler’s production, as usual, makes it more than the sum of its parts, especially the massive echo on the handclaps during that chorus: “I say you’re so young, so young” (a lyric which probably doesn’t bear close analysis) and Hill’s little guitar runs at the end of each line.

Slightly stretching the misspelling gimmick on this one, Gudbuy T’Jane was the second single from their third album Slayed? It failed to match the last two, stalling at No.2 (behind Chuck Berry), but became their most successful single in America, where it peaked at the dizzy heights of No.68. America never “got” Slade.

The tune is written, as ever, by Jim Lea, who had the idea while sitting by a pool in San Francisco – and completed the song sitting on an airplane toilet on his flight home. Strange but (apparently) true. As with others in their esteemed canon, Noddy’s original lyric was slightly different – his first stab was “Hello T’Jane” – but he was overruled by his songwriting bass player (and viiolinist, and keyboard player).

Curiously, the titular Jane (and I use ‘titular’ carefully) was based on a real woman who the band had met when they appeared on an American TV show, where she was demonstrating a “sex machine”. That’s what it says here: I have no idea what it actually was, but I like to imagine it involved James Brown.

The band were not massive fans of the song. “It was knocked up in half an hour at the end of one of our studio sessions.” said Lea later. “We all hated it.”

I’ve been hunting for either of the music videos they apparently filmed to promote the single, one of which apparently portrays the band as scientists in an observatory, sporting white coats and clipboards. I was rather hoping Dave Hill would have adorned his with tinfoil and glitter.