Flame

When 70's Glam Rock champions Slade where asked to appear in a movie, several script options came their way. It was not until Manager Chas Chandler and John Steel came across Flame that the ball started rolling (and Rocking). Original songs where written by usual Slade Songsters Noddy Holder and Jim Lea. Slade spent the latter end of 1974 filming around Leeds and London. The Movie premiered in 1975 accompanied by the hit record "Far, Far Away". The Movie shows the rifts building within the group and the behind the scenes wrangles of Management. Snatched from obscurity, Pub and Club band 'Iron Rod' are discovered just as their relationship with seedy Manager Ron Harding is ending. They are given a make over "Im not a bloody fish-finger" moans Paul (Jim Lea). But Flamboyant Barry(Dave Hill) and reluctant singer Stoker (Noddy Holder) are keen for glory. Drummer Charlie (Don Powell) provides the on screen laughs. New Manager Robert Seymour (Tom Conti) employs ex-Singer Jack Daniels (Alan Lake) to steal the group's contract from Harding, but Daniels gets discovered by Hardings heavies and is beaten up. Harding threatens Seymour with more violence unless his contract turns up. Seymour returns the group to Harding on the same night that Paul walks out on the group. harding goes to the groups hotel room where Stoker informs him "We've all had enough Ron", and the film finishes to the strains of "How does it feel?". Great concert scenes filmed at the Marquee club in 1974 featuring members from the Slade Fan Club. An Album 'Slade in Flame' was released to tie in with the film, and an accompanying book by Andrew Birkin are available. See it just to relive the Glam days of flares and glitz of the early 1970's. Keep On Rockin'

What a brilliant film! This film is a must to watch, not only if you are a Slade fan, but if you like to take a sneak-peek into the seedy and gritty world of pop/rock 'n' roll. The hard cutting realism of the life of a working band rising to short fame during the 70's. The film encapsulates the lives of the band and individual band members that come from ordinary every day life, working through working mens clubs to concerts and star status. you get a shear sense of being there and what it means to work in those circles, (It's not all, 'Glitter 'n' Glam). It's a cut throat world between band and managers, eat or be eaten. There are some great songs in the film to, which everyone from that era will remember. It's not surreal, the film holds up well along with 'That'll be the day' and 'Stardust' and compliments them. Buy it you will not be disappointed. Well done Nod, Jim, Dave & Don, lets have a revival or a sequel eh! Allan.

The backdrop to this film was so bleak and gritty that one would not have been surprised to have spotted Jack Carter (in his black raincoat) passing by in the background.

With Alan Lake, Tom Conti and Johnny Shannon there to do the real acting, despite the serious nature of the film, Slade's thespian talents were little more important than the Beatles's were in Hard Days Night or the Monkees in Head. Despite that, Noddy Holder and Jimmy Lea (who were the brains behind Slade anyway i.e. they wrote all the songs) both aquit themselves extremely well; successfully creating credible, interesting and well rounded characters. Dave Hill simply played himself (not that that was a problem, as he was, to all intents and purposes, cast as himself anyway). I defy anyone to decipher a complete sentence mumbled by drummer Don Powell, but that oddly adds to his character's charm.

This successful hybrid between Get Carter and Stardust is truly a lost gem, that, despite it's rediscovery and favourable reassessment in the 90's, has still not received the popular recognition it deserves.

Who knows, if this had been a major success (as opposed to a major flop) on it's initial release, would it have been that long before we saw The Sweet doing a bullion job in The Sweeny?

This is a real slice of 70's. (Slade in) Flame tells the story of a semi mythical band that crawls out of the midlands of England and makes it into the myth of Rock and Roll. I found the album back in my salad days, and finally found the movie on DVD in my washed up years. There are pluses and minuses, as with any real slice of life film. On the plus side, the story of a band that makes it and self destructs really summarizes the mythos of the era, and realistically and sympathetically portrays the pressures and glories of fame. On the negative side, the accents are so thick you really wish there were subtitles. Notionally in English, it's in REAL English, and as an American, it might as well be Swahili.

The flick is full of authentic and believable characters. The small time manager, the pirate DJ, and the hippy dippy groupies all make the film seem as real as your own life. If you've seen Spinal Tap, you'll see more than a handful of scenes - a singer trapped in a coffin, high class and moneyed fops dealing with the low class entertainers, and the horrors of ridiculous costumes and friends knifing friends. If you like Uriah Heep, UFO, or any band who played a festival at Wolverhampton, this id worth the accents. If you think rock and roll is too loud, pass. But this is rock at its most basic. Loud, dirty, and important for the most unimportant reasons possible.

The rating (7+ at the time of writing) on IMDB might lead you to expect an undiscovered classic. In fact, it is a modest low-budget effort which has stood the test of time pretty well.

The film concentrates on the more mundane aspects of the rock and roll lifestyle: the rehearsals, the on-stage jealousy, the back-stage bickering, having to deal with "the men in suits" who want to package the band like a packet of fish fingers. We also see lots of "it's grim oop north" staples, such as terraced houses, pigeon lofts, dirty canals and a steel foundry. Given the budget, this was a wiser move than attempting to capture Slade in all their foot-stomping grandeur at the height of their fame.

From a technical viewpoint, the sound is a bit iffy and the lighting in many scenes seems designed to conceal rather than illuminate. Tom Conti sleepwalks through his first big-screen role, but then his character (high powered marketing executive with no interest in pop music) is fairly one dimensional, anyway. Johnnie Shannon, however, as the low-life agent who dumps the band and then tries to get his hooks back into them when they make it big, is excellent as the thug with a friendly face.

Surprisingly, the members of Slade make a decent fist of the acting, and the soundtrack contain two bona fide classics among the more bog-standard 12-bar fare. Don Powell has a couple of decent slapstick moments, Noddy and Jim have some good confrontation chemistry going, and Dave Hill plays an annoying buck-toothed twot with a stupid haircut ...

Though it is probably no better than a decent episode of "Aud Wiedersehen, Pet", its saving graces are its gritty authenticity and the songs. I particularly enjoyed the machine gun assault on the pirate radio station in the Thames Estuary (Radio City) - it impressed my kids no end when I told them this actually happened in real life and it was later confirmed by Noddy Holder in the "extra features" interview.