Mistakenly thinking they were the glam-rock band Sweet (the passionate ones, oh yeah!, according to “Ballroom Blitz”), I now realize the musically similar band Slade is, of course, the glam-rock band Slade. (But no disrespect to Sweet!)
Known for their kinda-sorta bottom-tier glam-slams in the ’70s, Slade had a few hits like “Mama Weer All Crazee Now,” “Cum on Feel the Noize” and that one festive Christmas song that everyone in Britain seems to like. In America, they are incorrectly known as a Quiet Riot cover band.
In 1975, at the height of polyester-uniform infamy, the band was an overseas hit machine that somehow starred in the rabble-rousing, rags-to-riches fable Slade in Flame. They play the fictional band Flame, a working-class combo that starts from the bottom and, in a drastic move, stays there.
The movie, with the benefit of hindsight, goes nowhere but down, down, down.
After being the backing musicians for a tepid wedding singer with a lounge act that really is terrible, the guys — Dave Hill, Jim Lee, Don Powell and Noddy Holder — drop all their pretensions and precognitions and become the band Flame, a very popular (I guess) but volatile musical act.
But this is no A Hard Day’s Night, as Flame burns out with stuffy money men, wanton groupies and a seemingly terrorist organization that takes down pirate radio stations of the middle of an estuary — the brightest spot in the movie, referencing Radio Caroline — as they all tire of fame and stardom, disbanding after a (pretty good) show.
As expected, the members of Slade are semi-passable as working-class musicians and real ne’er-do-wells. With footage of the screaming audience passing around Flame merchandise, banners and signs, I was led to feel that the act was truly real.
And that’s great, but the one thing that should work here is the soundtrack. Sadly, it’s ho-hum, reworking Slade’s already formulaic music that already doesn’t do much, except go in one ear and out the other. A band with their own movie should have some real rippers, but instead they had to concentrate on their acting. And scene!
Though Slade in Flame has been rediscovered by a minute cult audience over the past decade, there are so many other gems in the rock era to cover. While the real Slade is a serviceable band that can rest on their laurels; much like the wholly fictional Flame, they should go their separate ways with no reunion tour. —Louis Fowler
Get it at Amazon.