C’mon see the noise! Slade in Flame (1975), BFI restoration screenings and Blu-ray

 

The early seventies… they say if you can remember them you weren’t really there… oh, hang on, that’s the sixties. I may have been only ten but I was definitely there for the explosion of grimy glam rock that blew our junior-school minds after years of well-behaved formulaic bubble gum from The Osmonds, Dawn, The New Seekers and even my once beloved Middle of the Road. Glam was a turn in the road, a call to revolt and it touched our unruly instincts as we felt a connection to the sheer naughtiness and noise of Slade, Sweet and T-Rex starting in 1971 and for the next three years and beyond. We no longer cared where our mother had gone, we just wanted to get down and get with it… even if it was only in the Friday lunchtime school disco!

Slade were the greatest exponents of Glam but with a gritty edge that under-lined all of the best acts: these guys may have worn make up and glitter but they were in the main hard as nails: call Steve Priest an artiste and he’d probably give you a bunch of fives in the parlance of the time. Slade were, at one point, a “skinhead act” and, much like Oasis in the 90’s, they were working class lads who just loved The Beatles. Unlike the Gallaghers though, they brought their own songs filled with original melodies as well as fierce riffs.

They may not have known it but Slade had peaked by the time they filmed Slade in Flame and were in search of the new challenge it bought, or at least their manager Chas Chandler (ex-Animal and Jimi Hendrix’s manager) was. Several daft ideas were mooted – The Quite-a-mess Experiment being quickly dismissed not least because Dave Hill would have been despatched in scene two… In the end the band followed the Hard Day’s Night route but, rather than just mimic the actuality of the band’s existence the team devised a harder-edged drama that was loosely- based on their career and, crucially, their characters but one that was also drawn to the cynical end of the pop machine. This wasn’t Slade’s biography but it was an amalgam – amal-glam! – of theirs and many other bands experience in the dingy, cut throat, beer-stained, bingo halls and working-mens’ clubs of provincial Britain.

Noddy Holder in the Seventies

Released in 1974 - it is pure 1974 - the last time Slade would produce material of the quality of Far, Far Away and the sublime How Does it Feel. The result may have confused audiences and critics at the time (Barry Norman apart – he loved it) but now is amongst the best-regarded of its genre: the "Citizen Kane of rock musicals" as Mark Kermode calls it. As if The Monkees had been from Wolverhampton and decided to film Head not just in Sheffield but also using Alan Lake as technical advisor and not Jack Nicholson… it would have looked something like this.

Flame is raw-edged and not just because of the four main leads. The scripting from Andrew Birkin, matched their personalities to their on-screen personas to make it easy for Jim, Noddy, Dave and Don to perform as naturally as possible and was informed by the group taking both Birkin and director Richard Loncraine on tour with them to the US: the pair lasted a couple of weeks before retiring exhausted.

 

The story takes place in a netherworld of the North being filmed in Sheffield, Nottingham as well as London and Brighton. This may have been Loncraine’s first film but that doesn’t stop him opening the film with a single take shot from the bathroom down the stairs and into the garden at a wedding party that Robert Altman would have been proud of. At the end of the sequence, we find the disturbing sight of Jack Daniels (Alan Lake) and his Elvis Presley-stylings fronting a band with a bored bass player Paul (Jim Lea) and a cheeky guitarist Barry (Dave Hill) who sparks off a riot after lifting a girl’s skirt with his foot.

Alan Lake: none more rock or roll...

Alan Lake is superb throughout with a manic energy tempered by genuine acting skill, here in this opening scrap he doesn’t look out of place at all as you’d expect from a man who’d just finished a prison sentence for GBH. Lake has that authenticity from a period when the barriers between criminality and performance was blurred perhaps more than now. Unlike Mr Statham I doubt he needed inordinate amounts of takes to get through his lines too!

 

The band is eking out a living on the club scene and following the wedding fracas has to replace their drummer. Don Powell plays Charlie a metal worker – one of a number of Wolves let lose in South Yorkshire – and he easily gets the gig after rocking up with a full drum kit. The band is “managed” by local bingo-magnet Ron Harding (Johnny Shannon, a man with genuine “connections” who had played the hard man music agent before in Performance) who isn’t that convinced by Daniels’ band but has him on a lock-tight 10% all the same.

 

The band is in competition with another band, The Undertakers, who dress up in Halloween gear whilst their leather-lunged singer Stoker (Noddy Holder) performs from within a coffin. Barry slyly adds a padlock and Stoker gets trapped. Out for revenge the Undertakers chase after the boys and Barry’s girlfriend (Sara Clee – who does a splendid job as the long-suffering, gum-chewing, feather-cut Angie – absolutely the kind of girl I had a crush on in 1974!).

The band on manoeuvers

The band’s car crashes and after being pulled out by the Undertakers they’re all thrown in clink for the night. So it is that ace singer and lyricist Stoker pals up with ace tunesmith Paul and a new band is formed out of adversity… The new band has something more and after one gig are spotted by everyone – not least Ron, but also a detached businessman Tony Devlin (Kenneth Colley) who follows up his interest by posting a note through Paul’s gran’s letter box. Tony is employed by a wealthy advertising executive, Robert Seymour (the studiously laconic Tom Conti in only his second film although already well established on stage) who sees a market ripe for exploitation and believes that this is a band he can monetize.

The boys are made an offer they can’t refuse and gratefully swap Ron for the Home Counties’ comforts of Robert who has plans… A single is cut and the band begins the carefully orchestrated PR circuit beginning with Radio City a pirate radio station based on one of the abandoned sea fortresses in the Thames Estuary. This sequence is well filmed and the sight of the boys gingerly climbing the rusted metal steps of the fort is not entirely the results of acting – Dave Hill in particular was terrified of heights and had to be supported on his way up by Loncraine.

Once in the studio the boys are interviewed by one Ricky Storm (Tommy Vance) before gunfire is heard and the station is attacked by unknown assailants… Apparently this had happened during the pirate wars but, on this occasion at least, it looks like cynical PR from Robert. Naturally it works, and the band goes from strength to strength in spite of cracks already appearing between the moody perfectionist Paul and garrulous improviser Stocker… none of this too far from the truth.

Tom Conti muses...

There are wonderfully-observed moments of discomfort between the band and their social betters – not least Robert’s family and "friends". Then there’s a touching exchange between Charlie and his old boss Harold (Patrick Connor) by a canal in which the latter used to fish and swim but which is now a polluted mess. This sequence is all the more remarkable when you consider that Don Powell was still suffering short-term memory loss after a crash a year before. He had to learn his lines immediately before the scene yet plays a blinder.

He invites Harry to a party with his record company friends and yet Robert dismisses him with contempt… Another guest at the party gets taken a little more seriously, it’s Ron here to claim his winning ticket by informing Robert that he’s still the group’s agent. Then Robert meets Jack who is still in search of his opportunity calculating the odds very quickly Robert works out how he and Jack can quickly help each other…

Now things get messy as the band go from big to huge and a battle begins over the rights to their earnings, control of their creativity… it’s a familiar story and one not too far from the truth for many bands over the course of the rock and this roll, if perhaps not Slade. It also includes one of Holder and Lea’s very best songs in How Does it Feel which somehow manages to encapsulate a hopeful vulnerability with a defiant anthem pretty much as John and Paul did. Noel was taking notes.

Sarah Clee and Dave Hill... 

There may be occassions when the dialogue is muffled or when events rush along just a bit too quickly but Flame is still a triumph. All four members of the band perform well which not only shows the value of writing their parts so closely to their own characters but also their native ability to be authentic – the very foundation of Slade’s appeal. Unlike some they actually meant it, man… And from the young boy from the second year at Deyes High School, it takes me back to an era I only experienced as a child but I certainly felt the noise.

Slade in Flame is back in cinemas on 2 May 2025 and released on BFI Blu-ray/DVD on 19 May 2025. Details of tickets are on the BFI website and you can pre-order the home media on the BFI Shop.

 

There’s also a new trailer highlighting the lovely restoration on the BFI site too!

Parts of this review previously appeared on my other site: DustyVideoBox...