Chris Slade
Documented by Drum Faster
The Welsh drummer who played on AC/DC's The Razor's Edge, and before that Tom Jones, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Uriah Heep, David Gilmour and The Firm. A big, plain, deliberately unfussy rock player who retired in 2026 after sixty-three years — and whose Paiste endorsement outlasted every band he was in.
2024 — The Chris Slade Timeline
His own band, playing music from across his own career, and the last rig he toured. The same DW-and-Paiste setup scaled down from stadiums to theatres. They released their debut album, Timescape, in 2024, and were still touring Europe when he announced his retirement in August 2026.
2015 — Rock or Bust world tour
Called back at 68 to replace Phil Rudd for a stadium tour, and he rebuilt the 1990 kit in a different brand: DW shells cut to the same sizes as the old Pearl kit. The one real change was ergonomic — the hi-hat came back to his left after the open-handed Razor's Edge years. No raised kicks this time either. Just a very large, very plain rock kit.
1990 — The Razor's Edge world tour
The famous one. Slade played Pearl through the AC/DC years, and the rig had two bass drums slung high behind him at head height on frames his tech built specially — not a double-kick setup, but a visual: he wanted the "dum, dum" that had been overdubbed toms on the record to be something an audience could actually see him hit. He also played this tour open-handed, with three separate sets of hi-hats around the kit.
1984 — The Firm and David Gilmour
The shells of the early years are not reliably documented, but the cymbals are: Slade became a Paiste artist in April 1984, the year he was playing with David Gilmour and forming The Firm with Jimmy Page and Paul Rodgers. He never left. Forty-two years on one cymbal brand, across half a dozen bands, is close to a record.
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