Today’s Song of the Day is “Cum On Feel the Noize” by Quiet Riot. It is off of the iconic Metal Health album, which was released on this day in 1983. In November 1983, Metal Health became the first ever heavy metal album to reach the top spot on the Billboard 200. Bringing metal to mainstream essentially began the “hair band” or “hair metal” craze of the ’80s. The album went on to sell more than ten million copies worldwide.

A large part of the album’s success is due to the huge single, “Cum On Feel the Noize” which would land at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was a cover of Slade’s 1973 hit. In a Songfacts interview with the late, great Quiet Riot drummer, Frankie Banali said, “The idea to do that song was the producer’s [Spencer Proffer] idea – it wasn’t the band’s idea”. Lead singer, Kevin DuBrow was completely and totally against doing it. He wanted the band to write every song on the album, not to mention that he was not a big fan of Slade. So, the band decided to try to cover the song as badly as they could so the label would refuse to release it. The producer kept contacting the band to make sure they were rehearsing the song. The told him they were and it sounded great, but in reality they never played it. Again, Frankie Banali:
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So the day came when it was time to record the song, and I came in early and told the engineer what was going on. I was honest with him. I said, “You might just want to record this for laughs and giggles.”

We went in, there was no intro, no nothing at all. There was a little bit of arguing as to how it was going to start. Finally, when I knew the engineer was rolling tape, I just started playing what became the intro. Rudy joined in, and then Carlos joined in. Kevin was sitting at the corner of the studio, just giggling, waiting for this massive train wreck, and the train wreck never happened.”

Quite the opposite happened. Quiet Riot now had a signature song, and led the invasion of heavy metal into the mainstream.