Slade In Flame (1975)
January 18, 2025 6:38 PM - Subscribe

Struggling musicians form a band named Flame, and are picked up by new, slick management, only to break up at their peak. A depiction of the rock band business in the UK starring the 70s glam band Slade, as the fictional band.

Sort of like A Hard Day's Night made as kitchen sink realism.

Stars the four members of Slade, Noddy Holder, Dave Hill, Don Powell, and Jim Lea. Also stars UK actors Alan Lake, Tom Conti, and Johnny Shannon.

The only easy streaming option in English I can find is a low quality rip on youtube. I don't think it's currently on DVD. Good copies of unclear legality are downloadable.
posted by 2N2222 (10 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Who knew Slade made a feature length film at the height of their popularity?!?!

Story is their manager, former Animal, Chas Chandler, convinced the band a movie was the next step that would boost them into superstardom, hopefully in the US, too. It didn't quite work out. The band, which I'd characterize as an early 70s UK phenom specializing in sort of bubblegum-y anthems (for those who don't know), saw the movie as a distraction to their bread and butter, didn't really impress fans, and seems to have been largely forgotten. Which is a shame. It's amusing, gritty, and somewhat bittersweet.

The movie band forms when two rival bands, struggling to make money playing dives and weddings, have a reckless encounter that sees a new group born. Johnny Shannon plays their gangster manager, Ron Harding, who doesn't give a shit about them until they start grabbing attention and selling tickets. Then he really wants his piece of the action. Unfortunately, the band is being groomed by another manager, Robert Seymour (Tom Conti) who's interest is strictly marketability, leaving Harding to send thugs to enforce his contract. But by this time, the band members are pretty jaded, have pretty much had enough, and go their own ways.

The performances are pretty decent. Noddy Holder and the rest of the band do surprisingly well on camera as our working class protagonists. They're not shown as wacky buffoons, but rather as more relatable guys, eager to succeed, with youthful but not excessive impulsiveness. Johnny Shannon basically reprises Harry Flowers straight out of Performance. Alan Lake plays Jack Daniels, a Elvis impersonator-like singer cut out of the new band, and unfortunate recipient of thug antics. This is an early movie performance for Conti, playing the posh Robert Seymour, a guy who looks down his nose at the band, their music, and their fandom, but thinks might be a money maker for his firm.

There are some deliciously grubby shots of Sheffield in a past era, a funny scene of Holder doing a sabotaged Lord Sutch act, and a boat ride to a pirate radio station that ends with a sniper (publicity stunt?). And several songs written for the movie.

At the time, the movie wasn't a big success, but seems to have earned more respect since then. Mark Kermode reportedly thinks highly of it, calling it the "Citizen Kane of rock musicals".

Worth searching out, especially if you're a fan of depictions of the UK in the era, or Slade.
posted by 2N2222 at 7:50 PM on January 18 [2 favorites]


I think the word "bubblegum" is a bit misleading there. Slade were a stomping glam rock band, not innocuous pop. I saw them live in their seventies heyday - first proper band I ever did see live as a matter of fact - and they tore the roof off the place.

As a working class band from Wolverhampton, they provided a sharp contrast to the androgynous elfin bop of Marc Bolan - then their only serious chart rival in the UK - and came across as bunch of no-nonsense lads from the local pub wearing glitter and tinfoil costumes for a laugh. Noddy Holder and Jim Lea were a hell of a songwriting team too.

Flame is, indeed, an excellent movie. The band had no illusions about the tough, sleazy world of playing tiny shithole venues on the way up and all the small time crooks they'd encountered in trying to get paid. Far more of that grit than you'd expect made it into the movie.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:38 AM on January 19 [4 favorites]


"Bubblebum-y" is my characterization, and I'm standing by it. In fact, I'd say the overlap of glam and bubblegum got pretty broad at the time, as glam was particularly well suited to appeal to an even younger (and increasingly TV oriented) demographic than the dominant rock/pop from whence it came.

Don't make the mistake by interpreting my characterization as bad, however. Their music is quite good, IMO, possessing a pretty unique sound, and by all accounts they were a very good live act.

It's a pity the band never really got a foothold in the US, not for lack of trying. I was pretty young, but recall the band being on some TV show. They apparently gave the US a couple years of effort, but never really caught on, by the time disco and punk rolled around, their act was looking and sounding dated, getting more difficult than ever to get airplay, despite their strong live act and following back home.
posted by 2N2222 at 9:16 AM on January 19 [1 favorite]


I think there's a way to use bubblegum to be dismissive of music and say it's shallow and juvenile, but there's also a way to use it to describe an act that makes its living purposely driving tweens and younger teens out of their minds. There were glam bands who were the latter for sure.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:01 AM on January 20 [1 favorite]


I'm an old and a US Slade fan, so I had to pause at the notion of bubblegum pop. Sure, some of those UK hits were programmed for the charts like "My Friend Stan" and "Coz I Luv You". And then there's all those chaotic, big chorus, wall of guitars, rockers. Go stream "Mama Weer All Crazee Now" and tell me that if Angus and Malcolm Young didn't hear that and think, "we could have a band that sounds like that", it's a damn coincidence. KISS as well.

Is the Slade Christmas anthem still ubiquitous over there? I am told that it still brings Jimmy lovely checks every year. At the 1980 Reading Festival, Slade took a metal audience that couldn't be less interested and got them so on board that they ended up doing a singalong for "Merry Christmas Everybody". And then went back to getting the throng to stomp the ground into mud.

I saw them only once, in a 8000 seat arena in North Dakota, where maybe a handful of the gathered knew who they were. After they left the place in rubble and everyone's ears were ringing, the unfortunate headliners Nazareth were faced with kids chanting "Slade, Slade, Slade". I wouldn't classify them as the top tier stage levelers that the Who or Zep were, but they could raze a venue and your ears would crackle with fuzz for days.

I've only see a grainy copy of In Flame once. My brother and I played the hell out of the album. There are a few ballads on it but in Slade fashion there are some hellacious rockers. Stream it if you want to hear some balls-out rock from a bygone era, don't stomp a hole in the floor.
posted by Ber at 1:47 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]


…by the time … punk rolled around, their act was looking and sounding dated
My first thought was they could have went back to their initial skinhead look and fit right in.

My second thought was that a lot of Slade’s songs aren’t that far off from what The Damned started out doing.

My third and fourth thoughts were to wonder if The Damned ever did a show with Slade, or if any of them liked Slade. To which the internet revealed this interview with Sensible. Besides mentioning Slade playing the Rebellion Punk Festival in Blackpool, the Cap’n responses to two questions are relevant:
You ever see the movie that Slade made?

Oh god, it’s one of the best films ever made. Slade in Flame. I love it!

Slade never really made it that big in the States, but I think of them as a perennial British pub band that would have been amazing to see. Some of that music is great and stands up to the test of time.

The further you get away from the seventies, it’s kind of a strange phenomenon. You’d think that punk and glam were almost opposite things but now, 40 years later, if you played a Slade song and a Damned song and a Sex Pistols song and a Sweet song and maybe a Gary Glitter song together and said which ones are the glam songs and which ones are the punk songs it’d be quite difficult if you didn’t see, if you were just listening. It’s got that same glorious ’70s sound.
Finally, maybe I’m mistaken but the violin in Coz I Luv You sounds Grappelli influenced. Respect!
posted by house-goblin at 2:39 PM on January 21 [2 favorites]


Yep - from the interview with Jim Lea in this issue of Record Mirror (p31, courtesy of World Radio History):
That was the time when I wrote mainly with Don and Dave wrote with Nod. Nod and I were really into Stephan Grappelli and Django Reinhardt, the violin and stuff, so one afternoon I went over to Nod's on this council estate where he lived with his mum and dad and I said hey Nod, why don't we write a song? I took my violin with me and said why don't we do a Stephan Grappelli thing. Hot Love was in the charts at the time — Marc Bolan, and I said something like that, dead simple and we wrote the song literally in half an hour. We got the structure of the tune and Nod just filled in the gaps. That's the only song we've ever written together like that.
posted by offog at 4:52 PM on January 21 [1 favorite]


And then there's "Run Runaway" with those drums that sound like The Royal Scots is marching into battle, with Lea's Celtic fiddle lead flying over crunching guitars. The lyrics are ridiculous and the video was even more so. Still, the album length version is a real strong piece of work.
posted by Ber at 5:47 PM on January 21


Lester Bangs saw them live in Liverpool in 1973 and wrote this piece about it. He called the experience "a combination of Beatlemania in full bloom and the early MC5".

Slade and its audience have more energy, more raunch and vitality, than the sagging corpus of rock has seen in many a moon. I walked into my first Slade concert totally unprepared, and got shook straight up. It was so powerful, and so beautiful, that you almost couldn’t take it; you almost had to leave the room. The band is big, loud, loose and strong. [... Just like the man said long ago: you can’t resist and don’t want to. You’re too busy returning Noddy’s wolf howl, snapping your own head and shaking your own fist, roaring with the rest. The whole thing brought first chills and then literal tears to my showbiz-jaded frame, and still did even after three straight nights. One of those rare moments that’s testament to the power of rock’n’roll.
posted by Paul Slade at 11:49 PM on January 21 [1 favorite]


There's a (probably apocryphal) story about Jim Lea bringing Noddy Holder a new tune for Noddy to add the lyrics. Noddy presents him with four verses and the chorus "Hullo t'Jane".

"I dunno, Noddy," Lea says."I imagined this one with a sadder kind of feel you know?"

"No, problem, Jim," replies Noddy. He crosses out "Hullo", replaces it with Gudbye", and that was another Top Five UK hit sorted out.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:00 AM on January 22 [2 favorites]


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