The ‘Citizen Kane’ of rock musicals: The glam band feature film Mark Kermode called the greatest
While it met with a lacklustre reception upon its release, one unlikely glam-rock band’s feature foray would finally enjoy a positive reappraisal years after the fact, largely spearheaded by the film critic Mark Kermode.
There are the obvious choices. David Bowie would achieve silver screen immortality with DA Pennebaker’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, the concert film capture of the titular Martian’s final live hour at Hammersmith Odeon. Ringo Starr would sit in the director’s chair for T Rex’s Born to Boogie as ‘T Rextasy’ struck the pop charts. And Gary Glitter even made it to the cinema; the sex offender’s 1974 effort Remember Me This Way was critically panned but fared well at the day’s box office.
There’s a big, top hat and dungareed hole in our glam contenders for the motion picture. Of all the early 1970s stars of Top of the Pops, Slade seemed the most suited to the big screen, the Black Country outfit exemplary of the era’s dressing-up box flamboyance, unfussy rock stomp, and comically misspelt singles like ‘Mama Weer All Crazee Now’. They were perfect. Unburdened by the art school pretences that coloured the critics’ glam favourites, Slade looked destined to appear in their own A Hard Day’s Night caper or The Monkees-style adventure.
The result was 1975’s Slade in Flame, a slice of pop cinema Kermode dubbed the “Citizen Kane of rock musicals” and even included on his 50 greatest soundtracks in cinema’s history contributions for The Guardian.
“The band’s teenybop fans were shocked by the tough tone of the movie, which revealed some unpalatable truths about the myths of fame and fortune.”
Mark Kermode on Slade in Flame
Tough tone? Unpalatable truths? From the band that blasted ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’? A hint of the changes taking place in the Slade camp was spotted on the film’s soundtrack, dropped a couple of months ahead and boasting a brass section and balladry amid the typical stompers, but Slade in Flame indeed sought to shake off the ‘good time’ perceptions, signing up to a surprisingly gritty and dour documentary of 1970s British life and the ruthless money man that circle overhead like vultures in the dog eat dog music industry.
Mixing the cliches of a band’s rise to fame with a low-level crime mobster tale, Slade play as the fictitious Flame, a working-class band from the Midlands who ‘make it’ under the wing of a dubious manager and make a lot of cash before their former manager and suspected gangster demands his cut. Cue a pretty dark tale of Flame’s pop takeover while the criminal underworld chases after them, before the band finally come to a pessimistic close as Noddy Holder’s character, Stoker, turns his back on the band once the mob manager finally digs his contractual claws into the Flame group.
Like a cross between Alan Clarke and Richard Lester, Slade in Flame certainly cut a different picture of the glam stars, presenting a surprising spike of social realism amid the moments of humour and rocking numbers. The kids were left cold, however, and the press couldn’t decide if their silver screen outing had been worth the effort.
For long-time fans, Slade in Flame sparked the end of an era; Holder and the gang were never to touch on the chart success they’d enjoyed early in the decade. Its reputation only grew, however. Slade’s big feature was showered with renewed acclaim for its bold creative detour for the band, and Kermode selected the musical for his Uncut Film Club blog in 2012.
Despite its interruption to their public image, Holder always knew they’d made the right decision in Slade in Flame’s direction away from the glam stage and toward a darker view of the music industry. “The teen audience didn’t get it,” he reflected in 2007.
Concluding, “We half expected that to happen, but it was no good us catering for that audience. Making a movie was a totally different ball game to anything we’d done before – we could not make a credible movie and expect it to entertain that young market of ours.”
