Former AC/DC drummer Chris Slade discussed playing with Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page in a new Vinyl Writer Music interview.
“I got a call one lunchtime, and it’s like, ‘Hello, David Gilmour here.’ I went, ‘Oh, come on, Fred. I know it’s you; you’re messing me around.’ He goes, ‘No, no. It’s Dave Gilmour.’ I went, ‘Oh! Hello, Dave. How do you do?’
“And he said, ‘I’m putting a tour together, and I’d like you to play drums.’ I went, ‘Wow, that’s fantastic. But you know, I’m working with Mick Ralphs.’ And he said, ‘Oh, yeah. That’s fine because Mick’s doing it as well.’
“So, I said yes to that back in 1984. I think that was – actually it was ’83 – because I said to my Mrs., ‘OK, we’ll go down to the pub and celebrate. I’m going out with Gilmour in a few months.’
“I came back from the pub, the phone rings, and it’s like, ‘Hello, it’s Jimmy Page here.’
“I said, ‘Fred, I know it’s you now, mate…’ ‘No, no, no. It really is Jimmy Page.’ I went, ‘Wow, I can’t believe this.’ And he said, ‘Paul Rodgers and myself are putting a band together, and we’d like for you to play drums.’
“I went, ‘Wow, you won’t believe it, Jimmy, but an hour ago, I said to David Gilmour that I’ll go on the road with him.’ He said, ‘Oh, how long is that going to take?’ Initially, it was going to be three months; it was a three-month tour, and apparently, he was already booked.
“I said, ‘It’s gonna take three months.’ And Page goes, ‘Oh, that’s OK; we’ll wait.’ I looked at the phone incredulously. That tour changed from three months to a year. I kept ringing Jim and saying, ‘Ah, Jim, they put another month on. Ah, they put another two months on.’
“And he went, ‘Oh, well, let us know,’ which I did. In the end, they ended up waiting a whole year for me to come off the road with Gilmour. So, that was really something; that was a red-letter day. I can’t remember the date, but I marked it in my calendar at the time.”
