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GLAMFLIXX
"I'm not a bloody fish finger!"
We're not the types who habitually trace every development in modern music back to The Beatles in order to lay a knowing pop finger alongside our collective nose, but we have to admit that the Fab Four are, to all intents and purposes, behind that cinematic phenomenon normally only associated with the word "fab" in ice lolly terms - the glam rock-based feature. The first bona fide glam film we're aware of is Marc Bolan's Born to Boogie from 1972, and it has the Beatle stamp all over it. It's an Apple Corps production, directed and produced by Ringo, for one, with the original pop pixie doing numbers, looking cod-mystical and generally arsing about in the grounds of Lennon's mansion, joined by Ringo, Mickey Finn, Elton John and Geoffrey 'Catweazle' Bayldon for a number of shambolically vague Magical Mystery Tour-type sketches.
The next logical step is, of course, to Bowie, but we know that the heart of glam lies in a far more down to Earth tradition, as exemplified by the David Essex films That'll be the Day and Stardust. It's not really a glam film, is That'll, being set in the '50s, but it does come from the stable of Goodtimes Enterprises (of Performance, Bugsy Malone and Dougal and the Blue Cat fame) who did plenty of good work in this field, and you do get another cameo from Ringo Starr, as a dodgem car attendant and mentor to Essex's wannabe rock star. There's also Billy Fury as Stormy Tempest, Keith Moon as, er, Keith Moon, Robert Lindsay, Vivian Stanshall and Karl Howman among the names to look for, all set against a bleak Isle of Wight landscape, with woodbines and squalid caravan sex adding to the grittiness. A year later, the Michael Apted-directed Stardust moved into the early '60s, with Dave now the lead in The Stray Cats, a Beatlesesque band on the way up - namely Paul 'Kneetremble Johnny' Nicholas, Dave Edmunds, Karl Howman on keyboards and Keith Moon, again, on drums. This time Adam Faith is the suave manager/older brother type, and the "romping" takes place in a proper hotel room, although, winningly, the tabloids of the time abounded with tales of David refusing to take his kecks off for the filming. Elsewhere Larry Hagman fights for screen time with Marty Wilde, Peter Duncan and Michael Elphick, and one of the main "themes" of these films - that the music industry's a right bugger - is laid out in no uncertain terms.
Meanwhile, back in the land of pure froth, Cliff Richard was moving his film career on from the Stubbs/Hayes days with the delirious Take Me High, which went all the way back to the "hey, let the kids groove" ethos of the old '50s rock 'n' roll films, by way of a promotional film for a freshly BullRinged-up Birmingham. Cliff plays narrow boat-dwelling fast food entrepreneur Tim Matthews, who invents the Brumburger, markets it to tremendous success, sings a song about it and then, for reasons we never quite followed, gets into a mini-hovercraft chase on the Gas Street canals, before triumphing over staid old Britain with his youthful winning ways. It is, you may have guessed, fantastic, and George Cole's in it to boot. Less than fantastic is a film unlikely to see the light of day anymore, and quite frankly it's no loss. Remember Me This Way is part live concert footage of Gary Glitter at the Rainbow Theatre, part half-arsed backstage "portrait of the artist" vanity cobblers, a sort of Netto version of Bowie's Cracked Actor. But it was the first film made by GTO records, under the aegis of one Ron Inkpen, who would produce a couple of real stormers before the genre fizzled out.
1975 saw probably the greatest of all the glam films, indeed very possibly the only one that stands up as a "proper" film at all, in the revered Slade in Flame, with the boys working their way up from the pubs (as Iron Rod) to fame as the titular Flame, under the wing of cynical advertising exec Tom Conti. As with Take Me High, the Midlands provides the backdrop, though this being another Goodtimes production, it's far from tourist board fodder. Yep, it's all seedy stuff under the foil-toppered surface, as their crooked former manager sends the boys round to sort Conti out, tensions flare between Noddy and Jim, and crazed Sladettes smash up a venue as a helpless Emperor Rosko looks on. But there's a nice line in sarky dialogue, comedy aplenty with Dave Hill and Don Powell buying a new car, and Tommy Vance as one Ricky Storm. Plus there's Slade's best ever song - fact - How Does It Feel, on a bulging soundtrack. Perfect, innit?
GTO were also busy that year, turning out two Inkpenned compilation showcases for their acts, no less. Side by Side is a classic old school rock film, a tale of two rival club owners, old fashioned Terry-Thomas and slightly more turned-on Billy Boyle, the latter enlisting Barry Humphries (with hideous greasy Richard III hair) to book some glam acts for his venue, among them Hello, Stephanie de Sykes and the immortal Fox, whose performance of Imagine Me, Imagine You (shame it wasn't S-S-S-Single Bed) is the undoubted highlight. Even better was GTO's magnum opus, the infamous Never Too Young To Rock, with a plot premise to make Side by Side look like Crime and Punishment - in a hazily defined near future, with pop music outlawed, Peter Denyer converts an ice cream van into a "group detector van", enlists curmudgeonly old silver band fan Mr Rockbottom (Freddie Jones) to drive it and generally grumble, and goes out into the British countryside to, er, find some bands. What he comes up with is Mud starting a food fight in Sheila Steafel's transport cafe (RIP Les), Bob Kerr's Whoopee Band arsing about in an old house, the Rubettes doing Sugar Baby Love on the back of a lorry, and best of all, a pre-Tiswas Sally James. While not holding a candle to Flame's magisterial closing rendition of Far, Far Away, the final song's a belter, too - an ensemble performance in a knackered-looking hall of the specially-written anthem which neatly sums up the determinedly inoffensive ethos of the GTO films in 6 1/2 words - Bless My Soul, It's Rock 'n' Roll.
Not much happened in the cinema after glam's miracle year, sadly. Marc went into telly, Bowie became a Proper Actor (kind of), and the only film that sneaked in under the wire before Bill Grundy momentously decided to have an extra scotch before work was Confessions of a Pop Performer, which did admittedly have Jill Gascoigne, the sainted pretend band Kipper ("I fink the ol' joanna comes in 'ere!") and Robin Askwith's arse going up and down in double-time to Spike Milligan's On the Ning Nang Nong, but its very existence spelt the end of the glam film, if not (quite) glam itself, as disco films moved in to seduce the SRB-gulping public. But that is, natch, another story. Still, before that, some of the disco film's instigators did manage to drag the glam film back for one last outing, and a sort of sorry return to its Fab Four roots - yes, the concept movie Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a direct precursor of Ben Elton's West End follies, with the Bee Gees as The Hendersons! Peter Frampton as Billy Shears! Frankie Howerd as mean Mr Mustard! George Burns as Mr Kite! Steve Martin as Maxwell Edison! Thus were the genre's forebears repaid for their pioneering cinematic work. Cheers, lads.
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