It was a great pleasure to read this book. I have followed the ups and downs of Slade since 1972 and have met the band a great many times. It's good to read the REAL truth about those ups and downs in such a well written and heavily researched book.

Don tells us about how the band formed, their glory years, the USA misadventure and the University gig years as well as the bitter ending, the squabbles afterwards, the Slade II years and hints at the business disagreements that have fragmented the band forever afterward (but not saying quite enough to get himself sued to Hell and back by Holder and Lea).

Though Hill and Powell were effectively shafted by the other two business wise (two have to work, two don't), he remains good natured about it all and this book tells his / their story in an unbiased and natural way.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. It's far closer tot he definitive word on Slade than Holder's autobiography (Who's Crazee Now??) which placed Holder in one certain situation he never saw in Germany... that doesn't therefore make it into Don's book.

This absolutely excellent book was first issued by Omnibus in 2013. 2019 sees it reissued as a paperback edition with an extra chapter which brings us up to date with Don's story.

The book follows Don's story with brilliant contributions from Don. He was born in the Midlands in 1946 into a normal, working class family. He became interested in music at an early age and joined The Vendors - a band which Dave Hill later joined, giving Don the claim to be the founding member of Slade. His journey through that early pub band and The N'Betweens is told with wit and humour. It wasn't a star studded tale at this point.

To be honest, even when Don achieved major success with Slade, it wasn't a case of glitzy glamour all around. Wobbly Top Of The Pops sets and grinding travel on the road were the norm. He worked hard with the band for what they got. What they got in 1973 was a major tragedy, with Don right at its epicentre. A car crash in which his girlfriend was killed and he was lucky to survive, left him with memory and sensory issues that persist to this day. He lives with a diary by his side to tell him where he is and why.

Even when Slade rode high in the charts, the slog never stopped. Once you get success, you have to maintain it. Don doesn't flinch in telling road tales and talking honestly and candidly about how his life spralled out of control, when the success slowed down and trickled away.

An ordinary man with an extraordinary life, maybe. A staggeringly good drummer, too.

I am not going to spoil your enjoyment of this book by telling you too much about it. For a Slade fan, it is an absolutely essential purchase and the book to read, if you want to understand the kind of life he's led with the band.

This book is a great read for the Slade fan AND the non Slade fan alike.

Slade have always been a greatly underrated rock band, and having been a Slade fan since around 2004, when I was about 10 years old at the time, I've grown up to become a massive fan of the band. Extremely under-appreciated for most part, Slade not only had a great reputation as a live band but also recorded excellent albums/songs, one after another, from 1969 to 1991. They always held a unique sound that was Slade, but over their career they managed to creatively evolve through the times and mould their sound around new styles from glam rock, hard rock, heavy metal and pop rock amongst others. Don Powell's biography, as noted in the book itself, started in around 2006, and certainly took a good number of years to fully come together. The long wait for Slade fans was certainly worth it.

Powell's biography covers his life in the most honest and detailed way. Noddy Holder's "Who's Crazee Now?" biography from over ten years ago was a good read but I did feel it lacked detail on certain parts of the band's career, and was perhaps all too brief for most part. Together Powell and writer Lise Lyng Falkenberg have covered all parts of Slade's career, and Powell's life, in a balanced and honest account. It must be said first off that this book consistently comes up with the goods, from chapter to chapter, as Powell's life is put across to the reader in such a way that the book will be nagging at you until you complete it from start to finish. A great advantage for the book was Powell's own personal diaries, and this means the readers are ensured of an accurate and honest insight into an underrated rock drummer. We learn about Powell not only as the Slade drummer, but on a personal level too, as he is very sincere and frank about all aspects of his life. Additionally we have plenty of comments and quotes from many other people in the music business etc and this gives the book much more depth than it would have had otherwise. They enrich the book with interesting comments on varying parts of Powell's life and career.

As someone who has consistently searched for all things Slade over the years, and even contributed pretty much every bit of information on Wikipedia articles of Slade's albums and singles, as well as having my own Slade website, I was pleased to find plenty of new information I wasn't aware of in Powell's book. I believe I have a lot of deep knowledge on the band, and so it was a treat to read things new to me, and entirely from Powell's perspective on Slade's career in general. In that sense the book will appeal to the most diehard Slade fans but also to those who are only casual Slade fans, or even those who cannot particularly call themselves fans of the band. The book acts as great insight into the rock 'n' roll lifestyle for anyone who has an interest in rock bands in general. I must thank Don Powell and Lise Lyng Falkenberg for a wonderful read. "Look Wot I Dun: Don Powell - My Life in Slade" is everything a biography should be, and deserves all the merit it can get.

Quite an interesting read. I was a teen when Slade was a chart act. I only really heard the string of hit singles so I was interested in reading about the band and some anecdotes. The car crash that Don was involved in was big news at the time and I thought I'd try reading the book to see what happened and how things eventually worked out after Slade fell from the mainstream pop world. I'm not going to do a big critique of the book, but it does make a fairly good read. The guy does not come away looking like an egotistical nerd and dealt with the ups & downs of his career really well. If you are of the same generation and were caught in the whole glam scene of the early 70's it is interesting. I personally enjoyed a few of the Slade singles (together with T Rex and Bowie etc). Being written by 'the man at the back' (as always...the drummer) it gives a less 'ego inflated' version of things. Enjoy.

This is a very honest, sometimes funny and often sad story of one of our best drummers. It takes you right back to the Black Country roots of Don, the quiet one at the back of the loudest band of the 1970's, then based on his personal diaries, Lise Lyng Falkenberg takes us on a roller coaster ride through the life of this very modest man. Through all the ups and downs, his life has certainly been "colourful" and could so easily have ended in disaster in more ways than one, but how brilliant that he has come through it all to find happiness and contentment. Thank you Don for allowing us a peep inside the diaries, and thank you Lise for taking the time to make them into this book.....a very good read, and not just for Slade fans. Highly recommended for anyone with the slightest interest, however small in British music and bands.

I noticed this book a couple of days ago and was interested enough to read some of the reviews. Slade were the first band I ever saw live (Torquay 1972) and I have been a fan ever since. Two days later, I have just finished it.

It has long been accepted that the film "Slade in Flame" is one of the best screenplays which depicts the highs and lows, backstabbing, funny and tragic life of a band during the sixties.

This book is the equivalent and more!

From the humble beginnings, the terrrible accident, success, endless touring, the break up of both relationships and the original line up, through to the present Slade incarnation and Don's settled and happy life in Denmark, it's a genuine pleasure to read.

It's a shame that Noddy was not able to contribute, but it does not detract at all. Anyone reading this will get a true impression of a RocknRoll lifestyle covering nearly fifty years. Please read it.

Fascinating read about how Slade, my first ever favourite band, was formed, how the members of the band were with each other and of course the effects on Don and the band of the horrible accident Don and his girlfriend were involved in.

It would have been so easy for Don to disappear forever into a world of drugs and alcohol like so many musicians of the era, but he had the strength of character to get through it and learn to cope with the amnesia and lack of senses the accident left him with..

I have an enormous amount of respect for how Don coped with the after affects of the accident and am so pleased that he now seems to have found love, happiness and contentment in his life.

Don and Slade will always be legends.

I think Don's life is a really fascinating one to know of, not only due to his unfortunate car crash accident but also because he's the amazing drummer of Slade!

The book was written very cleverly and it was so engaging, I rarely wanted to stop reading it. So many bookmarks left in the book as there were so many great stories told there. It's really really funny and worthwhile reading. To get the background as well of the time (as my mum was only a kid at that time), know about the influences of the time and the musical surroundings and who toured with whom and why the states was so difficult to break through. A really good book all in all. Really good. :)

I'm not normally a fan of books which are mainly made up of quotes from multiple sources, which this is, but it's an interesting read with quite a lot of stuff I never previously knew.

Great book. The insights and the gory behind the scenes of the rock and roll life style are incredible. Something I didn't know, they almost hired Robert Plant before Noddy Holder. Wow how would the music world have been different?

A thoroughly engrossing story and one of the best written biographies I have ever come across. Recommended for all readers.

A rock and roll autobiography that skirts around any mention of sex, drugs and money quickly becomes a bit of a slog to read. I guess it’s to protect reputations because these people and their mates are or were still trying to make a living and keep relationships intact. However it made for a fairly disappointing and frustrating book unfortunately. We played here, we played there, then we made a record, kind of thing.

Dieses Buch ist absolut lesenswert - egal, ob man nun seit jeher Slade Fan ist - oder nicht.

Die Geschichte von Don berührt sehr, kämpft er doch Zeit seines Lebens mit den Folgen seines schweren Unfalls. Ich habe mit ihm gelacht und geweint und habe auch manches Mal geschimpft ;-)

Es geht wirklich zu Herzen- und ist in einem English geschrieben, dass jemand versteht, der English als Fremdsprache hat.

Don Powell hat sich seit seinem Unfall im Juli 1973 stets Notizen machen müssen, um sich an Dinge wieder besser erinnern zu können. Diese Notizen hat er zum Glück nicht in seinem Buch abgedruckt, diese wären wohl zu normal und uninteressant gewesen. Stattdessen hat Don Powell tatsächlich interessant und für den Leser und Sladefan neue aufschlussreiche Anekdoten und 'Stories geschrieben, die zum Schmunzeln sind, aber auch sehr nachdenklich machen und jedenfalls interessant sind.

Ich freue mich schon jetzt wieder im Buch Look wot I dun Neues und Interessantes zu finden und zu lesen.

Danke Don und alles Gute jedem Leser wünscht

Sladie1 No. 1 Fan in Austria - Salzburg