page_title: Return to Base
section_title: Legacy and later reviews
hierarchical_section_title: Return to Base / Legacy and later reviews
caption_attribution_description: Reading Festival 1974
context_page_description: Return to Base is the eighth studio album by the British rock group Slade. It was released on 1 October 1979 by Barn Records, and did not enter any national album charts. At the time of the album's release, the band's success had waned and were receiving little fortune. Forced to play at small halls and clubs around the UK, the only income they were reliant on was Noddy Holder and Jim Lea's songwriting royalties. Their recent singles had sold poorly and they were no longer drawing in large audiences. Prior to their last-minute call up for the 1980 Reading Festival, they were on the verge of disbanding.
  The band's previous album, Whatever Happened to Slade, featured a "straight" hard rock sound, dropping the band's glam rock image, and despite critical acclaim, had brought the band little commercial fortune. Return to Base was conceived as a continuation of the band's sound, and an attempt to raise the band's fortune. The band aimed to record twenty songs, with the best eleven being put onto the album. In the 1979 July–August fan club magazine, drummer Don Powell confirmed that seventeen tracks had been recorded at the time.
context_section_description: In mid-1980, by which point the band were on the verge of disbanding, the band were offered to appear at Reading Festival in August 1980 in a last minute call-up. The band only had a couple of their road crew to help them on the day. Jim Lea recalled "We had to pay to park in the public area. With no roadies, we had to carry our own gear and there was even trouble getting into the backstage area." Despite the failure of Return to Base and the band's lack of success, the performance at the festival was a success and the band became popular once again. As a result of this success, several tracks from the album which the band considered the strongest reappeared on the band's next album, We'll Bring the House Down (1981), which successfully rejuvenated the band's successes, both critically and commercially.
  A retrospective review from AllMusic noted that Return to Base "marks Slade's low ebb in terms of popularity and morale", and were mixed in their reception to the album, rating it two stars out of five and noting the album was "certainly not a high point for the band, but they kept on keepin' on, no matter how bad things got. Secure in the knowledge that practically no one had ever heard the thing, Slade eventually redid the record as We'll Bring the House Down, a fully realized project." In early 2010, Classic Rock considered the album "superior, reputation cementing" and wrote: "We'll Bring the House Down was cobbled together quickly after the band's Reading triumph, largely from the contents of their previous (overlooked) album, Return to Base." Colin Harper of Record Collector said: "Searching for the UK zeitgeist, 1979's now abjectly obscure Return to Base ironically had a pleasingly diverse, reinvigorated musical palette."
  The album was re-released on CD in Germany in 1997 by RCA and BMG, and was remastered for another CD release in Japan in 2006 by Air Mail Recordings in their Archive series as part of the band's band catalogue remasters there from the label. However, the album was not remastered for its own album release in 2007 for the UK "Feel the Noize: Slade Remastered" series unilke the rest of their studio albums. Instead, the songs from the album which did not also appear on We'll Bring This House Down (1981) were remastered as bonus tracks for that album's remaster. Thus Return to Base remains the only Slade album never released in the UK on CD, or re-released on any other format.
caption: In 1980, the band performed at Reading Festival (pictured in 1974), reviving their career.
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