In honour of the British Film Institute (BFI) marking 50 years of Slade in Flame with its return – newly remastered – to the big screen in the UK and Ireland, then a BFI Blu-ray/DVD release, WriteWyattUK presents the first of two features celebrating the golden anniversary of an acclaimed cinematic statement from the Black Country’s finest.

This week in 1975, Slade in Flame was playing to audiences all over London, part of a staged roll-out around the UK and Ireland, and what the Black Country’s finest saw as the next step in their bid for world super-stardom.

A week earlier, on February 13^th 1975, Noddy Holder, Jim Lea, Dave Hill and Don Powell had arrived in a blaze of glory on a vintage fire engine ahead of the London premiere of the film at the Metropole Cinema, Victoria, handy for the nearby New Victoria Theatre, where they would put on two dates 10 weeks later on a tie-in UK tour, that set of dates the last before they quit the home circuit in an ultimately unsuccessful bid to crack America.

That London premiere came a month after the film was first rolled out at the Pavilion Theatre and Cinema in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, with a number of UK public appearances following, such as that on March 10^th in Glasgow where Noddy turned up in a horse-drawn hearse (the rest of the band in a Rolls Royce behind, as per John Milne’s story below), a nod (ahem) to their frontman’s character, Stoker, who gravitates to the film’s star turn, Flame, after a spell with the funereal Roy Priest and the Undertakers.

And while the overall public reception to the Richard Loncraine-directed Slade in Flame was initially somewhat mixed – for an outfit riding the waves of success barely a year earlier – the film is now rightly recognised as something of a classic, and it’s set to return to the big screen on May 2^nd courtesy of BFI Distribution, a tie-in BFI Blu-ray/DVD release 17 days later, including new extra features.

I won’t go into too much detail as to the premise of the film, but in a nutshell it charted the rise and fall of fictional pop group Flame in the late Sixties, from raw beginnings on the club circuit to superstardom, its darkly realistic take on that world veering someway from the pop movie expected, a ‘warts-and-all portrait of a band in freefall amidst the music-industry suits who want a piece of the pie’. 

The common consensus is that it was the band’s manager, Chas Chandler (the Tyneside-raised Animals bass player who previously discovered and managed Jimi Hendrix), who decided a film should be Slade’s next step after a couple of years of huge chart success. That and finding fame in America. And despite the public image of the band during the glam era, Slade as a unit largely agreed that they didn’t want to do a ‘running and jumping around’ film in the fashion of The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night (much as they loved that, instead commissioning a script based on the real life adventures of many of their contemporaries and peers on that Sixties scene, The Animals among them.

The result was something closer to Nicolas Roeg’s Performance perhaps, and the previous year’s David Essex cinematic hit, That’ll Be the Day, Richard Loncraine (working on his first feature film) and screenwriter Andrew Birkin (sister of Jane) joining Slade on the road in America in a bid to soak up their experiences and hear their stories and those of other acts they worked with.

If you’ve yet to discover the film, or if it’s been a while since you caught it on the big or small screen, you’re in for a treat. Film critic Mark Kermode, a major fan, labelled it the Citizen Kane of British pop movies, one largely put together on location in London, Sheffield and Nottingham, the Black Country quartet – none of whom had properly acted before – supported by a cast including Tom Conti (the Oppenheimer actor’s first main film role) as manager Robert Seymour, Alan Lake as singer Jack Daniels (at one point fired from the set for disorderly behaviour, only reinstated thanks to his wife Diana Dors’ persuasion), Johnny Shannon (Performance) as manager Ron Harding, and DJs Emperor Rosko and Tommy Vance.

The tie-in soundtrack album, released in late November ’74, six weeks before the film premiered in Chas Chandler and fellow Animal turned co-manager John Steel’s home city, reached No.6 in the UK LP chart, preceded by lead single ‘Far Far Away’, which got to No.2 (kept off the top by Ken Boothe’s ‘Everything I Own’). As for the sublime ‘How Does It Feel?’, the second single, that stalled at No.15 in early March. No accounting for taste, but it seemed that Slade’s stellar chart reign was as good as done. And yet here we are, half a century later, that single (and the opening sequence of Slade in Flame in which it features) remaining among the finest ever moments in the history of pop and rock for this scribe, the tie-in long player one I still have to put on and savour every now and again.

The newly touched-up film – remastered by the BFI from the best available 35mm materials for its cinema release and its first ever release on Blu-ray – premieres at BFI Southbank on Thursday 1st May, and that’s as good an excuse as any to reproduce below five excerpts from Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade (still available to order from Spenwood Books via this link) in relation to the original release, the first from a certain James Robert Morrison, better known as Jim Bob, formerly of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine fame, who caught the film at his local South London fleapit on release in mid-February 1975.

ODEON CINEMA, STREATHAM, SOUTH LONDON

JIM BOB

It feels like Slade have always been there. One of my life’s constants. On all those Top of the Popses I watched as a kid and soundtracking my Christmases since forever. When I went to Streatham Odeon in 1975 to see Slade in Flame it was the time in my life I’d decided I was definitely going to be in a band. I was going to be the bass player. Like David Essex’s character in ‘Stardust’, Jim MacLaine, and like Ray Stiles from Mud, who lived on the same road as my old primary school. And Jim Lea in Slade. The bass players seemed like the coolest band members. Years later, in 2020, Jim Lea had seen the video for my song ‘Kidstrike!’, was getting a video made and wanted to know who made it. He’d apparently said he liked the song too. I don’t know if that’s true, but I still boast about it whenever the subject of Slade comes up. 

In 1999, if it wasn’t for Slade, my band Jim’s Super Stereoworld’s second single ‘Could U B The 1 I Waited 4’ would have been called ‘Could You Be The One I Waited For’. Boring. Also, there’s a song on my new album {Thanks For Reaching Out, 2023} called ‘Bernadette (Hasn’t Found Anyone Yet)’. When we were recording it, it reminded me a bit of ‘Coz I Luv You’, so we added a military type snare drum and a violin to make it more like it. We even talked about putting a microphone in the dance studio upstairs to record the kids’ dance class stamping along with the bass drum. Yes, all those years after seeing Slade in Flame at the pictures, I still want to be in Slade. 

ABC CINEMA, ENFIELD, NORTH LONDON

KEVIN ACOTT

This is your music.

You’re 13. The furthest, furthest away you’ve been is Lowestoft. You’ve (sort of) loved one girl in your life. And the only red light you’ve ever seen is the one upstairs in that boozer in Edmonton, the one with bullet holes in the front, the one they’ll knock down soon, right after punk. 

Music has been there though, kissing and embracing you, every day of those 13 years. Your mum and your dad love music. They both sing, sometimes. Not often enough, but when they do, it’s a sign they’re happy.

They love their music. Though not your music: they say they don’t really like your music. They don’t like His hair, of course. Or His cockiness. Or His hat. Or The Other One’s teeth. Or Their trousers. They don’t like the way these so-called musicians talk. Northern. Rough. You realise right then, as mum tuts, that you want to be Jim. Or Don. And that it’s never going to happen.

They did quite like that Christmas song though, mum once said. But you don’t care what they think: this… this is your music. Yours. You don’t know how. Or why. But you go to watch Slade in Flame at the ABC on Southbury Road, Enfield, full of thrill and fear, and you sneak in – it’s a double A – and soon you don’t know what you’ve just seen but all the adult world’s sex and darkness and violence and harsh scrambling-for-joy starts to enter you, engulf you. And so does its sadness and its regret, its sweetness and laughter and melody and harmony, its sillinesses and seriousnesses, its out-of-timeness. Changed.

Ha! How does it feel? HOW DOES IT FEEL?! I don’t know, Noddy mate, I don’t know. I didn’t know then and I don’t really know now. But: when I listen to you these days, I miss my parents and I smile and I understand at least a little more than I did. And I realise the Flame you helped light in so many of us still burns. And that makes me feel good.

This was our music. And it’s still our music.

OK. Yesterday was yesterday. But this was our music. And it’s still our music.

STUDIO 1 CINEMA, SUNDERLAND

PETER SMITH

I began to lose faith in Slade during 1973 and 1974. I thought they’d become too much of a teen pop band and didn’t feel it was ‘cool’ to go and see them live. I felt I’d lost that fine loud raucous rock band to the teenage girls who would scream at Noddy and Dave and go to the concerts sporting top hats with silver circles stuck to them, Slade scarves and tartan baggies. So, while all the girls at school were going to see them at the City Hall, Newcastle, telling me how great they were, I resisted the urge to go along. I didn’t fancy standing in a hall full of screaming girls. And anyway, I told myself, I’ve seen them before they ‘sold out’ to celebrity status, when they were a proper rock band. Looking back, that was a mistake; it’s funny how important it was to appear ‘cool’ at the time. And all along I secretly wanted to go and see them again. Still, I consoled myself by spending my time going to see Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, The Groundhogs, Uriah Heep and lots of other ‘proper’ rock and ‘underground’ bands.

The next time I (sort of) saw Slade was when they made a personal appearance at a local cinema to promote Slade in Flame (February). I went with a group of mates to see Slade introduce the film. We were cutting it fine, timewise, and as we arrived at the cinema, we saw a big silver Rolls Royce pull up outside. Noddy, Dave, Jim and Don jumped out, ran straight past us, and made their way into the cinema. We quickly paid our money to the cashier (probably £1 or so) and followed them in, just in time to hear them say a few words to introduce the film, then run out just as quickly as they came in. I think they told us they were off to another cinema in the region to do the same thing. Strangely, given the band were making a personal appearance, the cinema was nowhere near full. Or maybe their popularity was already starting to wane.

I finally relented from my Slade abstinence and went to see them in concert again (City Hall, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, April 30th).

APOLLO THEATRE / ALBANY HOTEL, GLASGOW

JOHN MILNE

Me and my friends were Slade fans from when ‘Get Down And Get With It’ came out. When Play It Loud came out, they were dressed as skinheads and we dressed the same; that’s the way we were. My mum and dad used to get me Slade singles, and when I was 21, they bought me the American version of Play It Loud because I didn’t have a copy. Me and my pals would go to concerts together, and in 1974 I met Jessie, who I married later that year, and we started going to concerts together.

I missed seeing Slade perform ‘How Does It Feel?’ on Top of the Pops the first time because I had to go to hospital to see my wife and our new baby, Neville John Holder Milne. The next month (March 10th) Slade came to Glasgow to promote Flame. DJ Richard Parks was on top of a horse-drawn hearse with Noddy, who was dressed as an undertaker. The rest of them followed in a big black Rolls-Royce.

They started going down Bath Street, from where they were staying at the Albany Hotel, towards the Apollo, where the film was going to be shown. All the fans were running down the road with the hearse, including me. I had on white skinners and a Slade in Flame t-shirt and had a wee tartan gonk. As the hearse slowed down at the traffic lights I managed to jump up and I gave Noddy the gonk. My white denims got covered in oil because I was jumping up the wheels.

There’s a photo of me in the local paper running after the hearse. Me and Jessie kept running and running and running until we got to the Apollo. We decided to go home and get changed, then go to their hotel. We got there and the place was swarming with fans. We walked up to the main door and could see them walking about inside, so just walked in. We went to the lift, it opened, and Don Powell got out. We got a picture of him. He looked at us as if he got a fright. We said, ‘Where’s the rest of the band, Don?’ He said, ‘They’re in there getting something to eat.’ So we went to their table and who should be sitting there but Noddy, Jimmy and Dave Hill. I’ve got a picture of me sitting with Noddy, with Dave standing behind us. Fans were hitting the windows. They were so jealous.

When I showed Noddy my son’s birth certificate, he said, ‘Has your son got fair hair and blue eyes and long sideburns like me?’

CAPITOL THEATRE, CARDIFF

CHRIS HARRIS

Slade in Flame was out on general release in February 1975, and I was fortunate enough to attend the Welsh premiere, held at the Capitol Theatre, Queen Street, Cardiff, in April, a short distance from where I first saw the band live in June ’73.

This was thanks to my dad, a photographer for the Western Mail and South Wales Echo. How lucky was I? All four members of Slade were there in person. I managed to meet them briefly and have the album signed by each one of them. What a day that was, meeting the band, watching their film and tucking into a buffet! To my shame, I no longer have the signed album.

I also went to see Slade in concert at that same (a week later). Sadly, that fine building closed in January 1978 and was demolished in February 1983. What an absolute waste of an historic building. It was eventually turned into a faceless, half-empty indoor shopping centre. Shocking.

I remember fans en masse trying to pick up small pieces of Dave Hill’s discarded colourful face glitter that littered the stage and floor. All no doubt eager to take home a small souvenir of a fantastic evening.

I got to see Slade again in October 1979 at Cardiff Uni’s Students’ Union, then in December 1981 at Sophia Gardens, an indoor venue situated near Bute Park, a stone’s throw from Cardiff Castle.

Keep On Rocking back to this website and you’ll soon discover part two of my Slade in Flame special. And for a copy of the hardback of Wild! Wild! Wild! A People’s History of Slade and more details about the book, head here.

And to pre-order a copy of the BFI-remastered Blu-ray/DVD release of Slade in Flame, head here.