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Second image courtesy of Dave Kemp.
http://www.davekempandslade.com/faves-and-hates.html

Like the paperback of Flame, this biog was also a very important book to me as a 14 year old. In the absence of much press or information generally about my heroes, this book was a revelation and I read it from cover to cover many times.

At that tender age, the fact that is was a fairly sanitised biog clearly aimed at teenage fans, didn't matter to me at all. The most vivid memory I have of it is that it concluded in mid 1974 when the lads headed off to film Flame. Flame was the most difficult aspect of Slade for me as I was desperate to see it, but had no opportunity to do so.

I tried my damndest; writing to the local cinema manager requesting they have a one off screening. When that didn't work, I then targeted the two local drive-in theatres to no avail. They would run Tommy, and Phantom of the Paradise, but never Slade in Flame. It took me precisely 10 years when in 1985 I found a VHS of SIF at the Virgin Megastore in Oxford Street in London.

So Tremlett's book was for me, the Slade bible.

I was lucky enough to get backstage with Slade on the 'give us a goal' tour and a friend of mine had this book with him. The band had never seen it and pissed themselves laughing at the caricatures of the band on the cover

BanginMan

Now that was lucky BM!! What a memory to have! Have to admit that I also found the caricatures hilarious too. Especially Don's!

steveclassic wrote:Now that was lucky BM!! What a memory to have! Have to admit that I also found the caricatures hilarious too. Especially Don's!

Yes I was lucky. For fans who have not seen the original cover that amused Slade so much, here it is.

BanginMan

It's amazing that they never saw a book about themselves until some years later.
Jim Lea once told me that they hardly had any of their own records.

I find it hard to believe they'd never seen the book. Tremlett mentions in it that he interviewed the members for the biography.

NickSinatra wrote:I find it hard to believe they'd never seen the book. Tremlett mentions in it that he interviewed the members for the biography.

I think they were aware of the book but they had definitely never seem the cover. They passed it around to each other and we pissing themselves

BanginMan

NickSinatra wrote:I find it hard to believe they'd never seen the book. Tremlett mentions in it that he interviewed the members for the biography.

I agree Nick, but BM is no doubt correct as he personally witnessed the band's reaction. Like Ian's anecdote about Jim claiming that most of the band (no doubt except Dave) hardly ever got the records; they were heady days for us, the fans! God knows what it would have been like for the band in 1974; doing two and three week tours at a time around the world, recording sessions, filming Slade in Flame ... it would have been hard for any of them to have had any semblance of a "normal" life.

And while it may seen now strange that proud family and friends didn't go out and buy Slade related stuff, it was a different world back then in the pre-internet days.

Jim was once really baffled about why I had singles in different sleeves with the same tracks on. Why would anyone buy the same songs twice?

bump

The picture's great. Don looks happy (lunchtime-refreshed?), Nod's hat suits him, Dave has the classic "horse" look, and Jim's the Svengali figure. Is there an English version?

As an old git I see this book as below par, but it is of it's time . . .
As a 70's teenager though and a SLADE devotee it was a precious biblical tome & I hung on it's every word.

I loved it when it came out, was me Slade bible bak then, I've still got it tucked away.

Up the Chute wrote: January 16th, 2022, 1:17 pm The picture's great... Is there an English version?

Yes, it was originally published in late 1974 UTC. I bought it late that year or early 1975. It was a bonanza time for Slade related books as I bought the Tremlett book, the paperback of Slade in Flame, and also the SiF sheet music book all within a few months of each other.

And it was reissued (sans photos) by BMG as an inclusion in the When Slade Rocked The World box set. I can only assume that the powers that be found it too difficult to secure the rights to the pics for the WSRTW reissue version, leaving them only needing to get Tremlett's approval to use the manuscript.

Tremlett was very prolific in the 70s and also did books in the same format on Marc Bolan and Paul McCartney, to name just two. My wife has the Macca book from back in the day, as I have the Slade book.