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‘Not Fade Away,” the feature film debut from “The Sopranos” creator David Chase that hits theaters on Friday, is about a young man’s love of rock ’n’ roll in the ’60s. Talking to Chase, it’s clear he knows the topic well.
In high school, his own band’s only public performance took place at the same 1965 Newport Folk Festival where Bob Dylan controversially played electric for the first time. Chase and his bandmates wound up in a fistfight to defend the songwriter’s honor.
“We did an impromptu version of ‘Play with Fire,’ the Stones song,” Chase says of his band, which never pursued gigs or even settled on a name during four years together. “We played it on a picnic blanket for a bunch of people who were camping out. It’s the only time we played in public.”
When he and his friends saw Dylan’s groundbreaking set, Chase says they were “ecstatic,” but people around them felt differently.
“I was in my late teens, and these guys were probably 26- or 27-year-old New York folkies. They started booing, and we started razzing them and got into a fistfight. Well, more like a slap fight. It sort of fell apart. We were all basically peaceful people.”
“Not Fade Away” stars John Magaro as Douglas, a teen who grows his hair long and forms a rock band against the wishes of his old-fashioned, blue-collar dad, played by “Sopranos” star James Gandolfini.
Chase dreamed of being a drummer, but wound up banging on cardboard boxes after his parents sold his drums out from under him. “I was really pissed off,” says Chase, who switched to bass guitar. “I wasn’t playing them much, but they were mine. So when my friends asked me to be in a band, I didn’t have drums.”
While Douglas’ tale is mostly fictional, certain aspects are based on Chase’s life. At one point, a girl Douglas pursues, played by Bella Heathcote, tells him that while she’s not ready to date him at the moment, time is on his side. This was a line Chase had heard in real life.
“It was a girl I was in love with who wasn’t ready to go out with me,” he says. “She told me that time was on my side. And then I married her, and I’m still married to her.”
Another true-life element is the hard-nosed demeanor of Douglas’ father. One line Gandolfini directs at Magaro — “One of these days, you and me are gonna tangle, my friend” — is something Chase’s father said to him “all the time.”
While Chase is resigned to inevitable comparisons of the film to his landmark TV show, he hopes that people can enjoy the film for what it is, and sense, at its core, his lifelong love of music.
“I do love rock ’n’ roll,” he says. “Yes, sir.”