A Defiant Stand Against Fate’s Grind: Slade’s “I Won’t Let It ‘Appen Agen”
In the gritty summer of 1972, Slade, Wolverhampton’s stomping glam-rock titans, unleashed “I Won’t Let It ‘Appen Agen”, a raw track from their live album Slade Alive!, which roared to #1 on the UK Albums Chart for three weeks after its March 24 release by Polydor Records. Though not a single—unlike “Take Me Bak ‘Ome”, which hit #1 that June—this Jim Lea-penned cut, with Noddy Holder’s feral howl, became a fan favorite, later re-recorded for their 1972 studio LP Slayed? (also #1 UK). The album cracked #69 on the Billboard 200, but its live roots fueled Slade’s ascent to million-selling glory. For those of us who banged heads in the early ‘70s, when rock was loud and unpolished, this song is a scuffed boot heel—a vow to fight back, a memory of nights when defiance drowned out despair. It’s the sound of a pub stage shaking, tugging at the soul of anyone who’s ever sworn to rise above the rubble.
The birth of “I Won’t Let It ‘Appen Agen” is pure Slade—chaos, grit, and a spark of rebellion. By 1972, Holder, Lea, Dave Hill, and Don Powell were shedding their skinhead past, their live shows a sweaty proving ground under manager Chas Chandler’s eye. Lea wrote it in a Wolverhampton bedsit, a bass-driven snarl inspired—he later said—by years of factory-town grind and broken promises. First captured live at London’s Command Studios in late ‘71 for Slade Alive!, it was a three-track blitz—producer John Alcock miked the crowd’s roar, Powell’s drums thundering like a brawl. The studio take for Slayed?, cut at Olympic Studios, polished it with Hill’s glittery guitar, but the live version’s edge—Holder’s “agen” growl—stayed raw. Released as glam erupted, it bridged their bar-band roots with chart-topping swagger, a battle cry before “Cum On Feel the Noize” sealed their reign.
At its core, “I Won’t Let It ‘Appen Agen” is a fist-shaking oath—a man done with losing. “I won’t let it ‘appen agen / I bin there once before,” Holder snarls, his voice a jagged blade over Lea’s chugging riff, “I’m sick and tired and had enough / Won’t take no more.” It’s a soul battered but unbowed—“My head’s been high and I’ve touched the sky / My back’s been against the wall”—vowing to rewrite fate: “I’ve fallen down before, it won’t ‘appen agen.” For older listeners, it’s a portal to those ‘70s nights—spilling from gigs into cobbled streets, the air thick with ale and attitude, the rush of a crowd chanting back. It’s the echo of a Marshall stack’s buzz, the flash of a mirror-ball jacket, the moment you swore the world wouldn’t break you. As the final “agen” crashes out, you’re left with a rugged fire—a nostalgia for when every chord was a stand, and defiance was the loudest song you sang.