Chris Slade talks to Jason Barnard, taking us from his early days playing with Tom Jones to his pivotal role in Manfred Mann’s Earth Band and AC/DC. He also shares behind-the-scenes stories from his collaborations with legendary guitarists David Gilmour, Jimmy Page, and Gary Moore. Finally, he brings us up to date with the story of his debut album with The Chris Slade Timeline.
Tell us about the ‘Timescape’ album. You’ve been playing live with The Chris Slade Timeline for over a decade. Did it feel like the right time given this is your first major release as a group?
We’ve been recording for probably eight out of the ten years, when it took our fancy. This was a concerted effort and it was all of last year, really, all of 2023 and beyond. Some of the songs have been going around in my head for a long time. So to get them out was great and I’m very pleased with the result. There’s two sides to the CD. One is originals. There’s two Manfred Mann Earth Band tracks on there, which I co-wrote. I wrote the lyrics and the rest is completely original.
There’s original material on there.
I was very surprised. I’ve never come up with words and melodies. So this is like a very great surprise that I could do it. I wasn’t sure at all whether I’d be up to it. But in the end, it came together quite well. I was very pleased with the process, and sometimes I started with the melody, and sometimes I started with the lyrics, and it all sort of just flowed together.
The second CD is about the stuff we do on stage. Being The Chris Slade Timeline, the things that are there include ‘Thunderstruck’, ‘Blinded By The Light’. There’s also an Asia track. I played with Asia for at least five years. So overall, for the musicians at least, it’s a great success.
Which Earth Band tracks did you have a hand in the lyrics on?
‘Joybringer’, ‘Questions’ and ‘Solar Fire’. ‘Joybringer’, was a top 10 hit. It was by Gustav Holst.
Is it The Planets?
Yes, it was Jupiter. The bringer of jollity. So it became, I bring joy.
Was Manfred keen on bringing that out of you?
I wouldn’t say he was encouraging, but he used them. So that’s pretty encouraging to me. The Earth Band wrote quite a lot of stuff on our own. We put it through Manfred to see what he thought with everybody and if you didn’t like it, it didn’t come out.
Tell us about the Timeline band’s line-up. It has been pretty static since around 2012 when you came together.
Yes. In the first couple of years we’re trying all sorts of different singers. We already had a singer for things like Asia and Earth Band stuff, which is Stevie Gee. But AC/DC is a hard act to follow, quite literally.
But we found Bun Davis, who is from southern England, and he does an absolutely amazing job with the AC/DC stuff, and he’s great on stage too. He was the last one to join. I’m very pleased that he did. I vaguely knew them before we were a band and I knew they were fantastic musicians. So I knew they could handle playing AC/DC and Asia. I used to come into the pub, seeing them playing covers from things like Genesis and Kansas and doing them all perfectly.
Not many bands can say that. I had a crew guy who walked into my local one day and I walked over to him and said, “Oh hello.” He said, “Oh, you’re here, obviously. This isn’t a pub band, is it?” He didn’t know. He said “These are great. They are not a pub band.” And they were, the keyboardist and guitarist have been playing together since they were 11 years old in school. So they’re pretty tight.” We’ve always had Stevie Gee on vocals. He’s the bass player right now.
So, I’m very pleased, very tight unit. We are going to Paris tomorrow. We’ve just been working all the time, Germany. We were in Poland two months ago. Been to Tresnier and all points east, as well as Germany. So we drive across the whole of Germany quite often, which takes a full day, actually, as you probably know.
When you hear the Timescape album and your live shows is versatility. Was it a jazz influence that gave you that?
Yes, I started listening to jazz. I wouldn’t call myself a jazz player although I’m able to. That put me in great stead when I was with Tom Jones in the 60s and I had to play with big bands. Not many people go from AC/DC to Count Basie. Which is what happened with the Count Basie band, playing Tom’s stuff. So that was a great experience for me.
It was the bulk of the 1960s you spent with The Squires or was it another name?
Yeah. In the beginning we were called for a few months, maybe a year, Tommy Scott and The Senators. So Tommy Scott decided his name wasn’t, I don’t know, sexy enough, and he came up with Tom Jones. Tom’s real name is Tommy Woodward. He was a local boy made good down in the Green Green Grass Of Home, [laughs] especially with that.
You joined relatively young. People who hear some of Tom’s big ballads don’t necessarily know how good an R&B group you were.
Yeah, it’s surprising, actually, because the guys were older than me. Some were teenagers, but most were in their 20s, which is a huge difference, at that age of 16. You’re 25, and you’re working with a 16 year old on drums. It doesn’t sound true, but it worked. It must have worked, because we went to London and starved! [laughs]
Did you work your way through the clubs?
The working men’s clubs in South Wales, yes. We went up The Valleys. There’s not so many now, but there were always Conservative Clubs and Labour Clubs and things like that. There were steel and mine workers and they wanted a good night out. We used to work probably five nights a week. It got to be really good. And we were making really good money. I was making double what my father was making in a factory working all day long. He was a tap dancer and singer, by the way.
So there is a bit of a thread in the family.
Yeah, probably that’s where I’ve got my rhythm from. My older brother taught me. He went to school with Tom, actually. But I didn’t know Tom, strangely at all. I was in a different age group. So my brother taught me some licks on the drums. He was in a marching band, and he used to bring his drum home every week to polish. And guess who polished it? Me. So in payment for me doing that, he taught me a few licks on the drums. So I became a marching drummer just after that with the Boys Brigade.
It’s a great grounding.
Yeah, with bugle and drum call. It was good. I remember once we did a long march and somebody said, look, keep playing because they’re flagging. I had to play for half an hour on my own trying to keep the beat for them to march to it. Which is really good way to learn timekeeping, actually. But it’s all a great experience. And then trying to translate that to a drum kit, well, that’s a whole different ball game again.
You’ve got that early period of Tom Jones. Then you’ve got the big hits, ‘Delilah’, ‘Green, Green, Grass’, which are different, more vocal orientated. How did it work in the studio? Did they just bring in session players?
Yes. Jimmy Page played on ‘It’s Not Unusual’. Big Jim Sullivan was usually the guy, he became Tom’s guitarist. The Squires went by the wayside because Gordon Mills, Tom’s manager, thought it wasn’t the right thing for Tom anymore. Tom was supposed to go into cabaret, which he did. Then a few months after The Squires got sacked, they asked me to go back. So I did because I needed the money, and I wanted to anyway. So I stayed another five, six years. I was with him for seven years in total.
The Squires released one single, was that after Tom?
No, that was during. It died a death. One day our keyboard player didn’t turn up for that session. It was in Denmark Street. I went across the road to the Giaconda, which was a coffee shop across the street. Everybody went there, So I went across Denmark Street and opened the door and just poked my head in and shouted “Any pianists in there.” So this skinny ginger guy stood up and said “I’m a keyboard player.”
We used to call them pianists back then, or at least piano players. So I said “Do you wanna do a session, you’ll get your 10 quid.” That was going rate back then to do a three-hour session. He said “Yeah”, so we did the session. It lasted about an hour, probably, that’s all. We never talked very much, we were concentrating on the music. I said “What do you do?” He said “I’m a singer-songwriter and I’ve just signed a deal with them upstairs.” I said “Oh, well done. What’s your name? He said “Reg.”
Oh, is that a Reg Dwight?
Yeah, he said Reg Dwight. [laughs]
Did he play on both sides of the single?
Yeah, he must have. It was the song, “Games People Play”.
There’s an instrumental, jazzy, funky thing on the flip.
Ah, wow, you’ve done research. Yeah, that was “Funky Bayswater.”
Funky Bayswater! [laughs]
Yeah, if you’ve ever been to Bayswater. It described it beautifully!
So it’s now about 1970-71 and you get the call from Manfred.
It was 70 actually. He called and I had just finished with Tom. Manfred said, “Somebody told me you were available. Do you fancy forming a band?” And yes, I did. He said, “I know a singer and guitarist. Do you know any bass players?” And I said, yeah, because I knew Colin Pattenden. We worked well together, a very rhythmic rhythm section. I said, “Yeah, of course. So we got together and in 1971, the band was formed. Colin often points out to me that Manfred never said that this is the band now.
He kept you on your toes?
[laughs] So, it’s funny.
That early period, it’s more jazzy, proggy, a bit less commercial.
Yeah, I’d say proggy. We were trying to find our feet. None of us were songwriters. Manfred had this terrible legacy of being a pop star, which was not a good thing to be. And we were in a beat group. That’s what we were called. The Beatles were a beat group. The Rolling Stones were a beat group. So bands didn’t happen until a little bit later on in the 70s. I can’t help saying it now. Bands weren’t called bands in the early 70s, they were groups.
Towards the mid-70s was when things did seem to click. You’ve got ‘Blinded By The Light’, which was bigger than Springsteen’s version. Do you remember first hearing that song?
Yeah, we were always a really good live band, always. We could never capture the excitement that we could generate on stage. We could never capture it on record. But we were more like Cream than we were anything else. We used to go off on musically tangents in every song. Because Mick Rogers was a great guitarist, still is. So when we were in America, somebody gave us a copy of Bruce Springsteen’s first album, ‘Greetings From Asbury Park’, which had disappeared out of the trace.
Nobody bought it. Nobody wanted it. I played this and both Manfred and I got a copy from this guy. And Manfred, particularly, just came in one weekend and said “I’ve done this to this song. What do you think, guys?” It was like, well, that’s really good. It was all Manfred’s arrangement, with the piano, the klink klink piano.
So, we enjoyed that. We liked it. Didn’t think much of it, to be honest. No more than the rest of the stuff we did. It wasn’t like, oh, man, listen to that. That’s amazing. That’s a number one record. And it became a number one record, a multi-million seller. All over the States. It’s played today. It’s played ten times a day in the States. If you’re in one place, just change the radio, you hear it again. It’s amazing. I go there quite often. I hear it all the time. I was talking to an American guy today, and he said the same thing. He said, “You can’t avoid ‘Blinded By The Light’, no matter where you go.
Those were the days of Chris Thompson, as the frontman?
Yes, a tremendous voice. He replaced Mick Rogers because Mick wanted to be a jazzer. So he went off and did that for a bit. He’s back with Earth Band now, I believe.
It’s interesting that you mentioned capturing the live sound. ‘Davey’s On The Road Again’, was that a live single?
Intentionally, to try to capture something, that intangible thing that you either got it on tape or you ain’t. So we thought, let’s try it live so we did that. We did the whole set and made a single out of that. Usually it’s Manfred who chooses the songs for Earth Band. He had a great track record, didn’t he. I don’t know how many hit singles in the 60s with Manfred Mann, 20 or something, so many number ones. So you couldn’t say “Hey Manfred I think this song is quite good” you didn’t do that.
So at the end of your time with the Earth Band, I’ve read that Manfred wanted to stop and a couple of you wanted to carry on. Then he ended up starting and it became a bit messy.
Yeah, Manfred told us he wanted to retire. So a few days later, Colin and I got together and said, “It’s a shame that we can’t keep it going, we’ll get different people. and we do Earth Band.” So that’s what we tried to do. So we put a band together. And the singer we got was Pete Cox.
Really? You had good talent spotting ability there, didn’t you?
He’d never been professional before. That was his first ever gig, Earth Band. We went to Germany and we did some gigs.
At the time Manfred was perfectly okay with that.
Yes, we had three meetings with the band, we had to get meetings to get our things sorted out business wise. So Manfred had said, yes, three separate times. Then the record company said, you can’t do that. It was Bronze Records that stopped us.
Was that Gerry Bron?
Yes, he stopped Earth Band Part Two taking taking shape, stopped it completely
He didn’t want to see the golden egg leaving.
Manfred was still going to retire as far as we had been concerned.
He’s quite a bit older, isn’t he?
He’s about the same age as Tom Jones. Around his mid-80s now.
So, Gerry Bron stopped it and then Manfred wanted to start things again?
Then Manfred decided not to retire and not to work with me and Colin.and go and form another band.
So you were left high and dry?
Yes. Afterwards we were called Terra Nova for a while.
So you did carry on.
For a little while, we recorded an album and I think it was good.
With Peter Cox, or did he leave?
He was there. We still have the album, but it didn’t escape anywhere, unfortunately. So we went our separate ways in the end. Then I knew that Uriah Heap wanted a drummer. We were on the same record label, Uriah Heap and Earth Band. We used to work together quite a lot. So I knew the guys and I didn’t audition.
That was a time of transition for Uriah Heap. It was John Sloman fronting.
Yeah, I’m still friends with John, he’s Welsh, from Cardiff. He’s an amazing songwriter and musician, any any stringed instrument, at least, piano, bass, guitar.
That led to Gary Numan.
For a year.
Wow, so around 1982-83?
Yeah.
That must have been after his initial success, but he was still a big pop star.
He was. We made an album, Colin and I co-owned a recording studio in Shepperton called Rock City. And Gary Numan recorded there. That’s also where the Terra Nova album was done too with Peter Cox. Gary said to me, “Do you know any fretless players?” He wanted a fretless bass player. I said, “I know just the man.” Funny enough, he was a school friend of John Sloman. I met him through John.
I said, “I know just the man you want. It’s called Pino Palladino.” He said, “Oh, he’s Italian.” I said “No, he’s Welsh!” His father was Italian. So Pino, joined the Numan camp and we did an album.
We did tours. That was a great experience working with Pino.
By 1984, you were touring with David Gilmour. That was with Mick Ralphs, wasn’t it?
I was in the Mick Ralphs band. I’d met Dave, he came to see a gig or two actually because he and Mick are really good friends. Gilmour and Jimmy Page called on the same day.
We can come back to The Firm, but you basically had to knock Jimmy on towards the back end of 1984 to give you time to play with David. Is that right?
Yeah, Dave called me and said, “I’m putting a band together and I’d like you to be the drummer.” I said, “Oh, great, that’s amazing. But, I’m playing drums with Mick Ralphs.” He said, “That’s okay, he’s doing it too.” [laughs] So the core for Gilmour’s band was The Mick Ralphs’ band. That didn’t do anything, a few gigs around London.
But it was a fantastic experience with David Gilmour. He is just like you see in the interviews. There’s no airs and graces with him, he’s just like that. He’s the nicest guy, genuinely nice and hugely intelligent. Even though he didn’t go to Cambridge University, all the rest of Pink Floyd are sort of university guys, and he never went to university.
The material you were playing with Dave, was a mix of his solo material and a little bit of Floyd.
Old favorites like ‘Comfortably Numb’. In fact, Timeline does that on stage now. Nobody plays like Gilmour, but James Cornford does a great job of it, and it’s standing ovations every night.
Take us back to that call from Jimmy Page where you had to hold him back.
After David, I took the Mrs down the pub for lunch and came back. I was literally just walking through the door, and I heard, ring, ring, the house phone. I heard “Me and Paul Rogers are putting a band together, and we’d like you to play drums.” First of all, I said, “Come on, Fred, I know it’s you winding me up.” Then it was “No, no, no, it’s really Jimmy Page.” Again, I thought honesty is the best policy. I said, “Just an hour and a half ago, I said, yes to a Gilmour tour.” I thought, well, that’s the end of it. He said, “Oh, okay, we’ll wait.”
I took the phone away from my head, looked at it and went, “Wow, that’s amazing.” He said “Just keep me posted on what’s going on”, which I did. But it went on. It was supposed to be only for three months, but the Gilmour tour got extended and extended. It ended up as being nine, ten months in total of actual gigs, so they waited a lot of time.
There must have been a bit of an element of deja vu. In April you were playing at the Hammersmith Odeon with David Gilmour and then in December you were there with The Firm.
[laughs] I’ve never thought of that. I hope I can get to read your interview because things like that remind me. I just don’t think like that. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m a musician or my brain.
There’s great Firm material like ‘Closer’. How could the band not be great with one of the best lineups that you could ever dream of, being fronted by Paul Rodgers. But at the same time it was new material. You weren’t going back into Zeppelin, Free or Bad Company. What was your perspective?
I thought it was a bit silly, we did some, but nothing very much. So, yes, I think it would have been good if they’d done, an act like myself, in Timeline, snatches of stuff from your career. But Paul and Pagey wanted to be unique and use their songwriting talents which are prodigious. Paul is one of the greatest voices, probably the greatest blues voice.
We’ve had David Gilmour and Jimmy Page. I want to ask you about another of the world’s greatest guitarists. Gary Moore. You had at least a year with Gary, didn’t you?
Yeah, it was a full year. There’s a video of a gig in…
Belfast Kings Hall. Great footage of you guys doing ‘Parisienne Walkways’.
I mentioned James Cornford earlier but we do that as well on stage. Always tremendously well, as long as you can hold that note in the middle. [laughs]
What Gary was like as a person as well as a musician.
I used to go and have a drink with him and his wife actually. Me and my wife and him and his wife in Hampstead, North London. We used to meet occasionally and he was a really nice guy. So I had no qualms in joining and I really enjoyed it. It was great to work with somebody as good as him, because he was, as you said, a great player.
I think Cozy was in the band before me, but he pulled out and they wanted somebody very quickly. So I got the call and I think the next week I was off to Japan. I had four days of rehearsal to learn the full set and that was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.
It’s a broad range of material with Gary, quite challenging to learn.
Yeah, and he just didn’t want me to learn the set, he wanted to learn the set, like every symbol, every hi-hat trick, very demanding in that way.
So it was very much what you had to do at a certain point rather than having more freedom.
Well, it turned into having a bit more freedom. But…
You had to get it down first.
As it loosened up. I think that’s why Cozy left, actually. Because it had to be that precise. And not that Cozy wasn’t capable.
There’s a link between Gary and AC/DC, was it the same management?
Same manager, Stuart Young, no relation to Angus and Malcolm Young. I still had to audition for AC/DC, and I was told after I was number 100, out of 100. That was in England, really top drummers showed up. Not the same day as me.
Versatility again.
I don’t know. They weren’t after versatility.
No but I mean you were able to hit a particular style.
To go from soul stuff with Tom Jones to AC/DC is a bit of a leap for some people.
I don’t know many drummers with the range.
I don’t know about that, but I’m very pleased that I’ve got the range to play it. You know, I can play ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting ting, you know, as successfully and as fluidly as I can go boom bap, boom bap, boom bap, boom bap. The thing is, you’ve got to feel it, and you have to have a great feel playing it. Otherwise, it doesn’t work. It’s very hard to define feel, actually.
How did it work with AC/DC? There seems to be incredible power behind the kit that you had to do. How directing was the rest of the group or Angus to how you should play, say compared to Gary Moore?
Angus plays drums and so did Malcolm. Genius, actually, Malcolm. The best rhythm player, I think, ever. I’ve never worked with better and I’ve worked with a lot. So they both played drums. Angus still does. And so they’d do a demo and your job was to play that demo, the same feel and I wouldn’t say fills because there aren’t hardly any. So you play the same things as they play on the demos. They used to alternate, this is me playing this and they still do that today.
It’s the way I’m sure that Phil would have played. He would have learned the songs, and maybe worked it up in the beginning from nothing. But after that, Angus and Mal took over all the parts. And the strange thing was when we recorded demos, I think Angus would play bass and Malcolm guitar.
So a very self-contained unit really. If you could double them up
Yeah, like all good musicians, they can play anything. I can’t play anything, just drums. [laughs]
The first album that you were on was ‘The Razor’s Edge’ and one of the big tracks was ‘Thunderstruck’.
Which is fantastic.
You do a version of that on the Timeline album.
That is on the album. The record company wanted AC/DC on it, and we had it in the can because over the last 10 years we recorded whatever we do on stage in a studio. So I knew it would come in handy one day. We’ve still got a lot of it in the can in the studio. So I was very pleased to be able to use it. So it is on the album. There’s quite a few things on there.
You did some huge shows with AC/DC. Do you remember, going to Moscow in 1991 for the Monsters of Rock Festival.
That was over a million people.
[laughs] You can’t comprehend it.
It’s big enough doing Download, that’s huge when you see the crowd. But this crowd went over the horizon because it was a disused airfield in Moscow from the Second World War.
Just a strip of concrete as the runway. That’s where it was, because the show was on the runway, on the stage. And the speakers were staggered all the way back for like half a mile or a mile. But it was over a million people and people were asked by the government, who did they want to see? Do you want to see the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, who? They went for AC/DC in a vote.
You’re a young Russian coming out of Communism. The idea of seeing AC/DC, ‘Back In Black’ and ‘Highway To Hell’. It’s a perfect fit, isn’t it?
Yeah, you can’t beat them live, you just cannot. It’s impossible. People have tried. The Stones tried it after I was with them, with Phil Rudd playing drums. AC/DC play for a minimum of two hours every night.
The Stones gave them like an hour and 20. I think Phil Rudd famously said, you don’t give AC/DC an hour and 20 minutes. They tore the place apart. It was a Canadian gig, I think, and a huge stadium. That’s the biggest one in the world. It holds about 150 ,000 people. They did so well, AC/DC, in that show that the Stones couldn’t go on for about an hour or three hours. It was a huge gap between the two of them. I saw the Stones a couple of years ago in Paris, actually, and they were really good. I was surprised because I saw them in the 60s and I wasn’t that impressed.
They matured well, the Stones.
Yeah, they have matured well and matured is the word. They’re older than me.
So by the mid 90s Phil came back into AC/DC and after that you went into Asia.
Yeah, believe it or not, they wrote to me. No phone call, no email. Asia wrote a letter because they didn’t know how to get hold of me. Somebody knew my address and there was no other way to contact me.
You got a letter, opened it and it said “Do you want to play with Asia?”.
Yes, I did. Honestly, I probably still got it somewhere. I couldn’t believe it. Like, oh, this would be good. Yeah, of course I’d like to do it.
About a decade after that, Phil didn’t play with AC/DC and you were brought back in. That must have been a surprise.
It was a massive surprise. People were saying to me, “Have you heard anything?” And I’d go, “No, look, they’re not going to ring me.”. And then they did. I was on the road with Timeline in Switzerland and the tour manager came looking at me like, come on, you’re late. I pointed my mobile to the man and went [mouthing] “AC/DC”. And then went, “Oh, okay, okay. Take your time, take your time.” [laughs[
Did you have much notice? Because you were playing live dates.
No notice. I genuinely was not expecting it. So that was a huge surprise. Very nice though, to be asked back in the band.
I don’t know if it was relatively soon after, you’re playing at the Grammys.
That was my first gig.
That was your first gig?!
Yeah, so we’d done rehearsals and I said to the manager, “How many people are gonna watch this?” He said, “Oh, about 800 million, I think.” I said, “What?”. He said, “No, it’s okay, it’s only eight million.” I said, “Oh, thank God for that.” [laughs] Tom Jones was at that Grammy show.
Did you get to see Tom? That must have been amazing.
Tom and his son were in the audience. I could see them. They were standing at the front.
That must have added something to that moment.
Yeah, it’s bizarre, there’s Tom and his son Mark, who’s his manager, watching me play drums with AC/DC, a hundred years after I’d left home! [laughs]
Then Brian left because he was having issues with his hearing and then a bit out of left field, Axl Rose joined. But that worked surprisingly well.
I was amazed, actually, Axl’s voice. I didn’t know he could sing like that. Honestly, I didn’t. I just heard his Guns N’ Roses sort of voice.
I couldn’t see it, but it works.
I couldn’t see it. Then I met him and shook his hand. And I thought this guy’s all right. He was always telling jokes. Always. I’ve heard all the horror stories, everybody has. But he was never late. He used to warm up for two hours every day, warm down for two hours every day. I knew that because he was in the room next to me.
Do you think it was because he hero worshiped AC/DC. So it was a privilege for him.
I think it was. He felt that way, definitely. He asked Angus if we could do ‘Touch Too Much’, for instance, and ‘If You Want Blood’. He asked Angus, “Do you know that? Can we do that?” Angus said, “Well, we don’t know it, but we will by next week”, which we did. “Touch Too Much” is one of my favourite songs, actually.
It was digging back to some of the Bon Scott material.
Yes, I think Axl was a huge Bon fan, as well as AC/DC, of course, as a band. But Bon Scott was a one -off, wasn’t he?
Absolutely. An incredible front man.
And as a writer too, all that older stuff.
I’d like to close by focusing on the ‘Timescape’ album. Have you got a particular track that you want to highlight?
Well, my favourite is ‘Time Flies’. It’s also my missus. She loves it, too. And I’m surprised by it because it was an experiment, in echo and trying, can I really write? Can I do this? I don’t know. Can I write music as well? I don’t play an instrument. So I got Mike Clark, our keyboard player, Mike Clark, to help me out. And he did a great job. He’d say, “What note do you want? Do you want this one? Or this one?” I’d go “That one!” He’d go “Do you want minor chords, major chords?” I’d say “Well, I think minor on this one.”
I ended up, sometimes, even writing the bassline. I’ve worked with some great bass players. So I think I know what a good bass track is. I actually jammed with Jaco Pastorious one time.
You don’t get any better than that, do you?
It was like, wow. And nobody filmed it. It was on stage in a club in New York. He was billed and his drummer hadn’t turned up yet. He said, “You play with Jimmy Page, get up here.”
You know what a good tune is because I loved listening to ‘Timescape’. I’ve probably taken up enough of your time Chris. Thank you so much. It’s been a real pleasure to hear your stories
It’s been really nice and you reminded me of a lot of things. I really enjoyed it. Thanks a lot.
Further information
The Chris Slade Timeline – Timescape Exclusive Pre Sale
