(SLADE in) FLAME (1975)
At the height of Slade’s three years of fame as a British
glam rock group, with three of their singles hitting number 1 in their first
week, their manager ex-Animal’s member Chas Chandler master-minded a plan to
make movie stars of the band as part of a planned Beatles-style career
trajectory. The band were keen to make a gritty film of a rock band’s fictional
story grounded in reality rather than a slapstick film the fans would have
expected.
After considering a number of scripts, one of which was
a pastiche of THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT called THE QUITE-A-MESS EXPERIMENT,
they settled on working with writer Andrew Birkin (whose sister was Jane ‘Je
t’aime’ Birkin. His script, like many, tended toward the myths of rock n’ roll
– the glamourisation rather than the true picture. The band wanted him to
understand the reality of life on the road, so they took him to the USA on
their tour. He only lasted two weeks amongst the mayhem, but came back with many
stories that Slade had told him about their touring lives and that of other
groups – so the resulting script is truthfully about many different bands, not
to be confused as an autobiography of Slade. Setting FLAME in the ‘60s also
helped in slightly distancing the plot from being confused with Slade’s own
history.
The plot is the downbeat cautionary rise and fall of a
rock band comprising most of Slade, from their low-rent beginning scratching a
living with a singer Jack Daniels (Alan Lake) and a rivalry with the similarly
tacky the Undertakers, a Damned-style theatrical horror band led by Noddy
Holder. The band ditch Daniels and take on Holder, then are dropped by their
manager Harding (Johnny Shannon). When a smooth corporate marketer Seymour
takes them on and aims to construct a successful image for them, Flame
gradually fall apart, not helped by the re-emergence of Harding trying to cut
himself a portion of their new-found profits.
SLADE IN FLAME is a satisfying film. Although it
shrewdly features all-new songs at the time such as the atypical ballad ‘How
Does It Feel?’ and a couple of concert performances, it’s not a
thinly-disguised promo outlet for the band’s music. It works as an admirably
unsanitised down and dirty depiction of the back-stabbing and deceit within the
music business, a gratifyingly adult movie in many ways, with bad language and
some violence to reinforce this, much like the nastier STARDUST released at the
same time and the later BREAKING GLASS. (You can’t imagine a group like One
Direction daring to present something this daring to their fan-base).
The film was shot in roughly eight weeks and all on
location with no studio scenes. Slade’s own experience of filming as completely
novice actors affected each member differently and they acquit themselves well.
Jim took his part and the trauma he undergoes very seriously. Don, the ‘mad
drummer’ was the buffoon in real life but the year before filming had suffered
an almost fatal car-crash rendering his senses of taste and smell non-existent
and his short-term memory only functioning haphazardly. This meant that mostly
he could only be filmed in short one-liners but managed an extended
heart-to-heart beach scene well. Dave Hill and Noddy Holder both had enough
confidence to handle their roles and emerge as the most convincing actors, Dave
feeling on reflection that they should have made a lighter rather than darker
movie. Noddy stuck to his belief that it was better to challenge the fans’
expectations. It ‘killed the myth’ of the jolly japesters they were on stage
yet earned surprisingly strong critical reception for their performances and
desire to reach for something a little more sophisticated. Mark Kermode has
since called it the ‘Citizen Kane of rock musicals’.
The profesional cast included Tom Conti, whose first
film it was. In the DVD interview Noddy Holder said they got on well with him
and that any aloofness he had was perfect for his role. Two others who fitted
their parts perhaps too well were Alan Lake and Johnny Shannon as the manager
Harding. Lake was a heavy drinker, and although full of tales that made him
great company for the band and ideal for his character, he was prone to liquid
lunches that rendered him aggressively the worse for wear to the point where he
was fired, and it took his wife Diana Dors to persuade the studio to take him
back, holding him to an honoured promise that he stay dry for the rest of the
shoot. Johnny Shannon, a non-actor who became known for his first gangster role
in PERFORMANCE, was hired on the strength of that film and made the most of the
menacing relationship with Slade that was true to rough manager dealings the
band had experienced. During a confrontation with Holder in one of their
scenes, Noddy recalled that he suffered repeated painful hair-grabbings by
Shannon without any fakery for the camera for each take. Rather than apologise,
the East End tough declared that it would make the scene more authentic.
SLADE IN FLAME made money; although it would perhaps
have been more succesful had it pandered more to fans’ pre-conceptions. Knowing
that St Louis was a big market for the group in the U.S. they chose to hold the
American release there. Such was the difficulty Americans had in understanding
their Black Country accents, that the film had to be subtitled. (US fans on
tour always mistook them for Australians).
Slade were offered a follow-on film - a Russian spy comedy with the Two Ronnies -
but it was never formalised and the band were also concerned about the time
another movie’s commitment would take out of their relentless schedule of
recording and touring.
SLADE IN FLAME is well worth seeing, both for Slade
fans who want to see a different side to the group and for movie-buffs who
enjoy rock music behind-the-scenes biopics…
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