The all singing, all dancing, fab & groovy
Slade In England 'Pepper Poster'
In the spring of 2015 I read an article somewhere about 'Sgt Pepper' and how it had changed popular music, apparently it was almost fifty years since it had been released and all sorts of events and trips down memory lane were being organised for when it did eventually clock up the half century since it's release.
I grew up with The Beatles, the son of a Liverpudlian soldier stationed around the world there was always that link with home that The Beatles sent around the world from Liverpool. I remember clearly the day my father brought it home and carefully placed it on the spindle of the huge radiogram that took up almost a whole wall in the apartment we lived at in Jufayre, Bahrain. My sister and I really wanted to clip out the cardboard moustache and Sgts stripes from the insert.....
The Beatles were indeed the 'Fab Four', but they belonged to my father, it was to take another three or four years before I discovered my own Fab Four, Slade. As the 50th anniversary of Sgt Pepper drew closer the internet, and in particular social media platforms were saturated with coverage including the iconic and groundbreaking album cover art. It set me thinking that as a concept album The Beatles had metamorphosised into 'Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band', I could use the same concept to take Slade from themselves to of course Flame, the fictional band that they portrayed in the feature film that they starred in during their heyday, and that maybe I could create a pastiche of the original album artwork, and if so, who could I use as 'extras'
It quickly became a bit of a laugh on the fab and groovy Slade In England facebook group where the members came up with some clever and occasionally extraordinarily tenuous characters with a connection to the band, nonetheless, it made for a fun filled couple of weeks as the 'extras' came and went. Once the tableau had been filled the only thing that needed to be thought of was the name for the bass drum. It was during a brief chat with film producer and Slade fan Alan Parker that the name was found! It took Alan about two seconds to say, "It can only be one thing.....them kinda monkeys can't swing!" It worked perfectly and once I had finished photoshopping it in I thought that the image and project was complete, how wrong I was! In stepped long term Slade fan and member of Slade In England, Peter Farrington.
Peter had an idea that it would be good to have the image printed as a full sized glossy poster that the Slade In England Facebook group could have if they so desired, and from that germ of a thought a limited run of full sized posters was produced for the members of the facebook group and VIP's, the VIP's included the four members of Slade, the late Graham Swinnerton, Frank Lea, rock royalty Chris Charlesworth and Alan Parker. The images posters were produced and mailed around the world by Peter at no small cost to himself and all were gleefully received. The poster is much sought after but there will never be another like it produced despite being offered silly money for one, it was a one off thing that grew and grew!