Slade - would not have been the 70s without them.
Slade – Live At The 1980 Reading Festival – Past Daily Backstage Weekend
Click on the link here for Audio Player: Slade – Live at Reading Festival 1980
Had it not been for the phone call asking if they would be last minute replacements for an ailing Ozzie Osborne, Slade may very well have packed it up by the end of 1980. One of the biggest selling bands of the 1970s (well over 20 million units), they were enormous everywhere in the world, except the States. And since it was such a tough nut to crack, Slade decided to settle in the U.S. and work on getting an audience. It almost cost them their careers. And so the 1980 phone call to appear last minute at The Reading Festival proved to be a dramatic jolt and revival of a career.
And it just happens the BBC were recording everything at Reading, so here is that milestone career-resurrecting concert by one of the iconic 70s bands, that proved to be influential to a number of artists – the inimitable Slade recorded live at The Reading Festival, 1980.
So if the BBC recorded everything at this festival,do they also have/own the video footage too? Which has never seen the light of day.Photos exist of Slade being filmed but footage remaining elusive must be the understatement of the year.Any advice/help would be greatly appreciated,thank you.
It’s hard to say. I know much of what the BBC has done in the past has been wiped or otherwise lost. A lot of things currently available via the BBC are actually materials purchased back from private collectors who either made airchecks or who got hold of the original BBC Transcription Service discs. The videos may be a different story, although I suspect the individual record companies may have those portions of the festival their acts were in. I know Island for quite some time had an extensive video library of performances (not music videos – everybody has those). Whether Polydor did it or the other labels did, is a matter of speculation. In Slade’s case, I would probably contact someone at Universal and then track-back to their management at the time and see what possibly turns up. Stuff turns up all the time in the strangest of places – assume it probably exists.