The REAL inspiration behind Merry Xmas Everybody: Noddy Holder reveals how the iconic festive track came to be

One of the biggest Christmas songs of all time began as a ‘hippy-trippy’ song about a rocking chair.

Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody topped the charts when it was released in 1973 and the track  continues to generate around £500,000 in royalties each year.

The band’s frontman Noddy Holder, 77, told how the song was originally written years before its release and was then later rewrote into a Christmas track.

He said: ‘The song that became Merry Xmas Everybody was written in 1967. It was a hippy-trippy thing and the chorus went: “So won’t you buy me a rocking chair to watch the world go by / Buy me a looking glass to look me in the eye-eye-eye.”

‘One night in 1973, I was staying at my parents’ in the Midlands after a few drinks down the local pub. 

One of the biggest Christmas songs of all time began as a ‘hippy-trippy’ song about a rocking chair

Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody topped the charts when it was released in 1973 and the track continues to generate around £500,000 in royalties each year

‘The whiskey bottle came out when I got in and I rewrote that earlier song in two hours, using the same music for the choris but changing the words and adding verses.’

Although the lyrics conjure an image of the typical  British christmas, the song was actually recorded in a studio in New York in the middle of summer. 

Nody said he wanted to paint a picture of a ‘working class Christmas’, with the idea of writing a festive track given to the group by bassist Jim Lea’s aunt. 

The song was an instant hit upon its release with record company Polydor having to use its French pressing plant to keep up with the demand for the single.

It debuted at number one on December 15 and stayed at the top spot for the next five weeks. Thanks to streaming, Merry Xmas Everybody has rentered the top 100 every year since 2006.

The song has such widespread popularity that royalties body PRS estimated in 2009 that 42% of the world’s population had heard it.

The band formed in Wolverhampton in 1966 with drummer Don Powell and violinist/bassist Jim Lea alongside Holder and Dave Hill.

They became one of the biggest British rock bands of the 1970s, enjoying huge success with six number one singles.

The band’s frontman Noddy Holder told how the song was originally written years before its release and was then later rewrote into a Christmas track

Holder and Lea left the band in 1992, with Hill and Powell continuing to perform as Slade with a variety of other singers and musicians.

But in 2020 Powell said he had been sacked from the band. He claimed Hill fired him by email without warning, something which Hill denies.

And in 2015 Holder said: ‘It saddens me that the four guys who were in Slade can’t get together and sit round the dinner table.

‘Five years ago I got the four of us together to air our grievances, but it was too painful.’

Holder and Hill sparked speculation the band was reforming when they posted a snap together in February.

The singer and the guitarist posed for a picture taken by Holder’s author wife Suzan which she uploaded to Instagram.

She captioned the image: ‘Lunch today. I will not be taking any further questions.’

Holder and Hill have not performed together since Holder quit the band in 1992. He has since said it would take a ‘miracle’ to get all four original members back together.

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