Dave on Flame

Simon Stabler talks to Slade's Dave Hill about “the Citizen Kane of pop movies”

- By Simon Stabler

Back in the 1960s, several pop groups of the day appeared in feature films created around them. They were largely good clean fun, especially in the case of the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night and the Dave Clark Five's Catch Us If You Can. Even the Small Faces' Dateline Diamonds has a certain innocence, despite its diamond smuggling plot.

However, by the 1970s, the movie musical had got a little grittier, think David Essex in That'll Be the Day and Stardust. But even grittier was Slade in Flame, a film described by The Guardian as mixing “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 film is a history lesson of the 60s,” explains Slade guitarist Dave Hill who, along with bandmates Noddy Holder, Jim Lea and Don Powell, starred in the film as the fictional Flame.

“Chas [Chandler, Slade's manager] said: 'We don't want to make A Hard Day's Night. Now, we probably did. But Chas said: 'No, we want something with more foundation, something that represents your life and your time.' He was clever, Chas.

“So, there was a combination of stuff, but they wanted to send the scriptwriter, Andrew Birkin, whose sister was Jane Birkin. And he came along and said: 'I want some ideas of your past. I'll come on tour with you.' We said: 'Well, we're going to America, we can tell you all the stories round the swimming pools and all that.'

“So, he comes to America, and he wants to know how we developed. So, we gave him the theory of the stories. As you know in the film, there are a couple of slit your throat type individuals. There's an agent that's always conning somebody. Well, those people did exist, not that we personally knew them, we knew of them. I mean, there's all sorts of stuff you hear about, stories of people hanging somebody out of the bedroom window to get the money. There was always somebody who didn't pay.