Here is Slade’s movie musical satire from 1975, a film with all the pungent historical presence of a pub ashtray, about an imaginary band called Flame which looked and sounded a lot like Slade, fronted by Stoker, played by Noddy Holder. It came out a year after the film’s soundtrack album was released, and now gets a rerelease for its 50-year anniversary. Slade in Flame – which is to say, Flame, starring Slade – is regarded by fans and non-fans alike with enormous affection and regard, and it certainly has a weird, goofy energy: the audio mix sometimes surreally privileging ambient sounds such as doors closing and glasses chinking, with the dialogue way in the background.
It’s about an innocent working-class Midlands band getting taken up by creepy adman-type smoothie Robert Seymour, played by Tom Conti, who exploits their raw talent for cash and takes them on a rollercoaster ride of fame, the action regularly suspended while the band sing their various tracks. But then their former manager, dodgy cockney mobster Mr Harding (Johnny Shannon) reappears – a man who never gave a hoot about them in their early days and contributed nothing to their career – demanding his share of the action. So it bizarrely mixes the madcap comedy of A Hard Day’s Night – or a late-period Carry On – with the brutal nastiness of a crime thriller like Get Carter. The effect is striking, in its way, but finally somehow depressing in a way that isn’t entirely intentional, and depressing in a way that actually listening to Slade is not. It also shows the unexpected influence of a particular kind of Brit social realism with a generic loyalty to unhappiness.
Flame is the amalgam of two sparring local bands, one fronted by tricky geezer Jack Daniels, played by Alan Lake, always conning his fellow band members out of their share of the fee, and the other a comedy combo called Roy Priest And the Undertakers, the lead singer being Holder’s irrepressible Stoker. They have a monumental fight which lands them all in the cells, where a grim-faced custody sergeant is shown walking down the corridor, flushing each of their lavatories in turn with a chain that dangles outside. (It’s this kind of brutal touch which makes the film a vivid guide to the tough 70s.) They join forces and Daniels is dispensed with.
Flame then enjoy the fruits of the Faustian bargain that they don’t remember making: packed crowds, screaming girls, lots of money. There’s a thoroughly bizarre interview aboard a pirate radio ship in the Thames estuary which is interrupted by gunshots which Seymour may or may not have staged for publicity purposes. But there’s a creeping sense that it’s all going to come crashing down. The best bits are always the band performing, with Holder’s compelling rock’n’roll growl.
• Slade in Flame is in UK and Irish cinemas from 2 May, and on Blu-ray and DVD from 19 May.
